Lakhasly

There appears to be a growing dissatisfaction with the visual environment of the past few decades, in contrast to the positive feelings evoked by its historical predecessors.Further, places in the environment have been iden tified where those messages are often "read." Such places are described in scenarios where sequences of activities take place, and related messages and concepts are studied. These are entrances, buildings, inside buildings, and pathways. Some of the places that stand out visually in the environment are familiar to us, either because they have been part of our everyday experiences, or because they are similar to places we have experienced in the past. Through learning, these are the places that "tell" us about people and their activities, and evoke either good or bad feelings reftecting our present sensations and associations we make with our past.The rationale for a new professional outlook is not necessarily unique to the design field, but to the ubiquitous gulf between academics and professionals, between theoreticians and practitioners, or between researchers and designers, in all fields.We lose the ability to orient ourselves and spend more time determining where we are in relation to where we want to go. More significantly, we cease to identify with places and things that surround us because their formerly unique characteristics have been homogenized for the sake of practicality and economics. Research, however, indicates that professionals differ from the public in their environmental preferences (Canter, 1969; Groat, 1982; Hershberger and Cass, 1974).In short, continuous and indiscriminate changes contribute to the creation of environments at least lacking the character of their local makers and users, and often introduce inappropriate and destructive forces.Becoming aware of perceived environmental effects is a necessary first step in striking the delicate balance between familiarity and monotony and boredom, and between variety and confusion and disorientation.At the extreme, large-scale urban projects are so interjected into existing cultural and physical situations that marked and distressing forms of antisocial behavior result.As evidence of contemporary dissatisfaction with urban environments in particular increases, the need for understanding and knowledgeably modulating the interaction of people and place becomes more critical.Recognition and deliberate repetition of meaningful elements provide a culture with a powerful mechanism for self-proclamation and stability.The tradition of criticism in the design fields, too, has contributed to superficial reactions of highly subjective judgments about the quality of the environment.When buildings are demolished and neighborhoods modified, familiar environments become unfamiliar, altering our feelings of comfort and safety.This inability to effectively embrace issues of visual quality can be traced to many factors, least of which is the planning and design process.Consequently, criticism has very little value for design professionals because it fails to explain the reasons for those subjective judgments.Integrating design research and practice can be viewed as a new strategy for achieving a productive dialogue about the visual environment.

There appears to be a growing dissatisfaction with the visual environment of the past few decades, in contrast to the positive feelings
evoked by its historical predecessors. This inability to effectively embrace issues of visual quality can be traced to many factors, least of
which is the planning and design process. The tradition of criticism in
the design fields, too, has contributed to superficial reactions of highly
subjective judgments about the quality of the environment. Consequently, criticism has very little value for design professionals because
it fails to explain the reasons for those subjective judgments. As a
result, design professionals rely upon their intuition for decisions
about visual quality. Research, however, indicates that professionals
differ from the public in their environmental preferences (Canter,
1969; Groat, 1982; Hershberger and Cass, 1974). While some designers have little interest in public values, many professionals seek to
produce user-sensitive environments. Therefore, inquiry into the application of research findings to design and planning can have a positive impact on improving the quality of the environment.
Integrating design research and practice can be viewed as a new
strategy for achieving a productive dialogue about the visual environment. The notion sterns, in part, from Lewin's (1946) concept of action
research, a model that integrates theory and practice. This approach
no Ion ger calls for more applied research, nor for a form of research
findings usable by practitioners. This new attitude does not deny the
need for basic research, but has substantial implications for a new
outlook on the practice of architecture and planning.
The rationale for a new professional outlook is not necessarily
unique to the design field, but to the ubiquitous gulf between academics and professionals, between theoreticians and practitioners, or between researchers and designers, in all fields. While there have been
valiant efforts by many disciplines to "bridge the gap," there still remains a gulf between the fund of available visual information and the
application of this knowledge. In a similar way, conventional architectural practice usually undervalues the expertise of the users and denies
their involvement in decision making. Quite often, design professionals and the public do not share the same aesthetic values. Designers
differ from the public in their reactions to the environment. This
xi
factor has significance for the development of aesthetic controls and
public policy, since community decisions about aesthetic regulations
often requires strong support for aesthetic judgments.
Although visual input in the design process is inadequate, userrelevant decisions about their visual environment have increasingly
become a requirement in finding community acceptance. People who
use the environment, who are the traditional subjects of research, can
become active participants in the research, and, consequently, in
changing the environment. This idea is predicated on the belief that
people who use the environment have an expertise equal to, but different from, the expertise of the design professional. User involvement, then, becomes a central component of the research approach.
Users can evaluate research results and subsequently develop recommendations about how to address environmental problems.
This action approach offers design professionals, who are concerned with users' visual comprehension of the environment, a new
set of social science tools. These new tools provide designers not only
with a deeper understanding of people's perception of the environment, but also an opportunity for engaging in an effective dialogue
with people who use the environment. This is in contrast to the use of
more casual methods of inquiry, which typically reveal what is already
obvious, or traditional social science approaches, which tend to verbally describe the visual environment.
There are many benefits accruing from an integrative approach for
the community, the users, and the designer. First, from the social point
of view, integrating research and participation can result in a greater
meeting of people's visual needs and an increasingly effective utilization of resources at the disposal of a particular community (Cashden,
Fahle, Francis, Schwartz, and Stein, 1978). Second, to the user group,
it represents an increased sense of having inftuenced the design
decision-making process and an increased awareness of the consequences of decisions made. Third, to the design professional, it provides more relevant and up-to-date information than was possible
be fore.
If we are concerned with improving the quality of the physical world
around us, it is evident that there needs to be an increased awareness
of the impact of the visual environment on people's everyday lives.
This renewed awareness can be brought about in many ways. One
approach seeks to integrate research into the design process as an
integral element of information gathering. The benefit of this approach is that future decisions about visual quality can become the
product of informed designers' intuition.
The enhancement of environmental knowledge has been an issue
for more than a decade, constituting the main idea behind all environmental education trends. There is no question of its value in building
the sense of citizenship essential for the care and improvement of the
world we live in.
A large portion of the work in the field has dealt with the built
environment. Yet, more emphasis has been placed on information
about its physical character than on the more abstract aspect of the
relationship between people and their physical surroundings. This
field of environmental study is still new, with no established research
conclusions and some contradictions. But the increase in the amount
of inquiry, and the spectrum of interested researchers and practitioners, acknowledge this "complex, systematic, ecological interaction"
(Rapoport, 1971).
This book deals with that relationship, with the intent of increasing
the awareness of nonverbal environmental messages which are important to our psychological well-being in a place. It raises questions and
issues which, while constantly affecting our relationship with the environment, sometimes remain unnoticed during our daily experience.
In short, this work is an attempt to bring forward, through a variety of
methods, psychological effects that the physical world exerts upon uso
One might question the need for awareness of these effects. It is in
the physical world itself, the world that we create and change according to our needs and values, that we find reasons.
Urban environments, for instance, especially those of large cities,
are constantly changing and growing, often indiscriminately. Buildings are demolished to give place to new ones, and neighborhoods are
modified to create more space for cars. Decisions are made under the
guise of progress, to facilitate their acceptance by those who do not
have a say in the decision-making process.
However, such changes have many more effects than we might realize. When buildings are demolished and neighborhoods modified,
familiar environments become unfamiliar, altering our feelings of
comfort and safety. We lose the ability to orient ourselves and spend
more time determining where we are in relation to where we want to
go. More significantly, we cease to identify with places and things that
surround us because their formerly unique characteristics have been
homogenized for the sake of practicality and economics. At the extreme, large-scale urban projects are so interjected into existing cultural and physical situations that marked and distressing forms of
antisocial behavior result. The necessary destruction of the Pruitt-Igoe
complex in St. Louis is still one of the most convincing examples of
environmental psychosis that we have.
In short, continuous and indiscriminate changes contribute to the
creation of environments at least lacking the character of their local
makers and users, and often introduce inappropriate and destructive
forces. As evidence of contemporary dissatisfaction with urban environments in particular increases, the need for understanding and
knowledgeably modulating the interaction of people and place becomes more critical. Variety and change, nonetheless, are necessary
ingredients of a pleasurable, memorable, and healthy environment.
Becoming aware of perceived environmental effects is a necessary first
step in striking the delicate balance between familiarity and monotony
and boredom, and between variety and confusion and disorientation.
With understanding of how physical surroundings affect us psychologically, we can become more aware of our effects on them, and on
ourselves, when we allow them to be changed. We will then start to
realize the importance of our concern for our surroundings, and eventually work toward the improvement of their quality.
We may think twice be fore deciding how to remodel an old building,
taking ca re that it remains familiar to us and to other members of our
community. Or we may design the public spaces of our towns to be
pleasant environments in which even outsiders feel comfortable and
safe. Awareness of our psychological relationship with the built environment should help us to recognize problems and work for their
solution. Ultimately, it should make us better citizens in arousing oUf
sense of responsibility for the world that sUfrounds us, deliberately
making some decisions and accepting others.
Nonverbal environmental messages are part of all of our experiences, and are conveyed in many parts of our immediate surroundings. For the purposes of this work, they have been categorized under
four major concepts-identity, orientation, meaning, and territoriality. Explained separately for darity, they maintain a dose relationship
to one another. Further, places in the environment have been iden tified where those messages are often "read." Such places are described
in scenarios where sequences of activities take place, and related messages and concepts are studied. These are entrances, buildings, inside
buildings, and pathways.
Some of the places that stand out visually in the environment are
familiar to us, either because they have been part of our everyday
experiences, or because they are similar to places we have experienced
in the past. Through learning, these are the places that "tell" us about
people and their activities, and evoke either good or bad feelings reftecting our present sensations and associations we make with our past.
A place has meaning to us as individuals when it relates to, and has
in fact become the setting for, events of oUf personaliife. It can be a
secret location in the yard where we used to hide to be alone with our
thoughts, the place where we met a best friend for the first time, or
any of the pi aces whose meaning only we can understand.
So me meanings are shared by a group or even by a whole community, when they relate to the events of its communal life. The school
we attended during childhood, for instance, has meaning to all of our
former peers; and the very word hometown is meaningful to everyone
who grew up there. On a more abstract level, the concept of meaning
allows us to recognize the nature and purpose of places in the environment because of their resemblance to others of the type. Recognition
and deliberate repetition of meaningful elements provide a culture
with a powerful mechanism for self-proclamation and stability.
Familiarity with places through direct experience depends upon
how many times we visit them, and how long each visit lasts. Through
increasing involvement we "leam" a place, and it eventually becomes
the area where we feel most comfortable and safe. Familiarity through
association with past experiences does not imply a continuing deep
involvement, but it does make us more understanding and responsive.
In any case, to be familiar with a place is to share identity with it.
The ability to identify features in our environment is to recognize
visual elements that stand out in the landscape by their size, height,
color, or any other aspect that contrasts with the surroundings. It is to
see characteristic elements in a background, which can range from a
door in the wall, to a building in the streetscape, a park in the neighborhood, and so on. The ability to identify parts of the environment
allows us to recognize the familiar as weIl as to appreciate the new.
The identification of elements in the landscape is extremely important to our sense of orientation within the environment. Only after
recognizing a specific point or location can we establish its spatial relationship with ourselves, thus knowing where we are and how we
should move (Canter, 1983).
The intention of this book is to identify visual methods for explaining the physical environment in a way that will enable researchers and
designers to find a common mode of communication. Many of the
techniques traditionally used by researchers have application potential
for designers. Similarly, approaches used by designers equally lend
themselves to a more systematic use by researchers.
Each section of the book discusses a different method for describing
and communicating features of the visual environment. Included are
a variety of studies conducted by the author, and others that focus on
how the environment communicates messages to the viewer, how to
observe and document behavior in the enveloping environment, how
to portray two- and three-dimensional environments, and finally, how
these methods are applied by architects and planners.