Study on the relationship between the seated area features and floor plan compositions of open reading spaces in public libraries in Japan

This study aimed to clarify the relationship between the seated area features and floor plan compositions of open reading spaces found in 55 Japanese public libraries completed since 2000. These elements were approached from the viewpoints of floor plan forms, bookshelf area arrangement, seated areas, and seating arrangements in seated areas. As the result of the statistical analyses of 792 seated areas—based on the nature of users' coexistence with the sociopetal, sociofugal, and side‐by‐side viewpoints—eight types of seating arrangement in seated areas and the relationship between seating arrangement types and floor plan types were found.