Privacy Barriers in Restaurant

1022 Words5 Pages
Stephani K.A. Robson’s (2008) article, “Scenes from a restaurant: Privacy regulation in stressful situations” conducts an exploration regarding a study that examines the use of architectural features to regulate privacy under hypothetical situations that are likely to generate low, moderate and high stress, comparing the seating choices of males and females in a variety of dining scenarios in a restaurant. Privacy is generally said to be a means of obtaining the freedom to choose how much of ourselves to expose to observers, with exposure not being strictly limited to being seen by others. Privacy can be violated physically by means of spatial encroachment, visually through an extended unwelcome gaze, or acoustically via loud conversation or other noise stimuli. Regardless of its form, the invasion of privacy causes discomfort through a presumed level of intimacy, consequently causing emotional stress, which initiates a variety of conscious and unconscious behaviours that attempt to regulate personal boundaries. In an effort to alleviate the ensuing stress, individuals are known to either physically retreat, or involve the use of physical barriers, attempting to regain a sense of control over an environment. Standing or sitting next to walls, partitions or other features of the environment protects the user from spatial invasion; which demonstrates how pre-emptively using the physical environment to regulate privacy where there is potential for spatial invasion, can influence a person’s choice of seating. It may be assumed that the more stressful the situation, the greater the reliance on regulating privacy, even if privacy invasion was not actually the cause of stress. Design features that offer the potential for limiting access to a person have been collectively termed “anchors”, and include walls, columns, windows, partitions and furniture, which provide a
Open Document