Restoration-Oriented Environmental Modification Preferences in Design Studios: An Exploratory Study of Student Sketches and Desk-Level View Access

Design studio education requires sustained attention and prolonged occupancy of a shared workspace, making environmental opportunities for brief recovery potentially relevant to students’ well-being. This exploratory study used affordance theory as an interpretive lens to examine the environmental modifications students proposed from their assigned desk positions and the extent to which sketch content was associated with academic year, studio location, and desk-level window view access. The dataset comprised 71 structured sketches, geometric view metrics for 85 workstations that were linked to the 71 sketch participants for inferential analyses, and a nonmatched lighting survey administered to the same cohorts one year later (n = 57). Sketches were coded into 17 modification categories. Water and Collaborative/Social Space were retained descriptively but excluded from inferential interpretation because of quasi-complete separation. Fifteen ordinary logistic regression models were evaluated with Benjamini–Hochberg false-discovery-rate correction, together with a complementary specification omitting studio location. Plants (73.2%), natural shapes/patterns (52.1%), and electric light quality (52.1%) were the most frequent modifications. In the primary models, Technology (q = 0.033) and Plants (q = 0.047) retained FDR-supported omnibus fit; only the academic-year coefficient for Technology retained FDR support (OR = 0.17, 95% CI [0.06, 0.50], q = 0.021). The study identifies environmental preferences and hypotheses for future intervention in restorative learning environments research.