Architecture and People (Tiesdel and Oc) Architecture

Architecture and People (Tiesdel and Oc)

Architecture can be assessed aesthetically alone, as with a photograph, or experientially and as environments. This chapter is concerned with the latter.

while architecture can impact and improve social behavior, there are exceptions to that, it does not always work

Determinism: Environment determines behavior (is a crude belief, narrow minded) -- also takes away attention from real problems that the architecture was intended to solve but doesn't (like poverty)

Non-Determinism: also limited

Ideally, accept both; there is a mutual relationship between behavior and environment; environment is not the only determinant of behavior but it can be one factor

Amos Rappaport -- expanded view: determinancy is a "generic term for the continuum begtween determinancy and non-determinancy"

Continuum: One end is Physical environment determines human behavior=====Other end is Possibiliism (physical environment offers opportunities for people to make choices). IN between these two is Probabilism (physical environment not determining but makes some choices more probable than others)

Notion of environmental opportunities. Behaivor is situatonal, contextual

Gans (1968) -- distinction between potential and effective environments -- physical setting is potential environment with opportunities (not deterministic); people can moderate their reactions to the environment

Ppl can moderate feelings by selecting neighbors or spending more/less time in the neighborhood

Ellis (1975) -- dynamic perspective, influence of environment varies over time; some environments more effective than others; concept of conducive effect (more potential to become effective)

People -- hierarchy of needs -- based on Maslow's but adapted by Lang:

Survival/safety (shelter)

Belonging (communal settings, symbolic)

Esteem (control, personalization, symbolic aesthetics of self)

Self-actualization (choice, control, symbolic aesthetics and the consideration of others)

Cognitive/Aesthetic (formal aesthetics, art for art's sake)

Criticism of hierarchy of needs -- too absolutist; and it ignores the relativity of all the different variables but the most important is territoriality

Importance of territoriality (need for identity) -- opposed to anonymity, privacy