A Study on the Space Syntax of the Location and Usage Rate of Children's Art Museums

With the arrival of various technological innovations through the Industrial Revolution, art museums are gradually pivoting from serving as mere exhibition spaces to becoming user-centered "post-museums."Since 2000, when the government began launching projects to support culture and art education, the number of art museums has gradually increased.Children's art museums have also garnered growing interest from the public, contributing to this increase.However, these museums pose challenges to children who wish to visit them alone, as their spatial cognitive abilities are limited compared to those of adults.Furthermore, there is a lack of research that addresses this issue.Therefore, this study analyzed the urban hierarchy of children's art museums using space syntax, a quantitative analysis methodology, to gather essential data for future children's art museum designs.The analysis focused on children's art museums in Seoul that opened after 2000 when the Korean government started providing enhanced support for arts and cultural education programs.The scope was limited to children and their guardians who visit children's art museums, and the results were compared based on space syntax.The main findings are as follows.1) All children's art museums analyzed in this study were small, which reflects the specificity of museums targeting children.2) The scope of analysis was set to a 1 km radius around the center of each museum, which is based on the average walking distance of children, and the results showed that most were not located in the center of the traffic flow.3) The usage of museums was analyzed by deriving variables such as global and local integration.Museums adjacent to axis lines with high global integration were shown to be more accessible.4) The utilization rate of museums in residential areas was higher than in commercial areas.This study is significant, as it compares the urban hierarchy of children's art museums based on space syntax with their actual usage in the real world.However, the methodology has limitations in 3D analysis using only space syntax, so future studies should include additional methods.