A section of the book: Creating Architectural Theory: The Role of the Behavioral Sciences in Environmental Design by Jon Lang really struck a cord with me. Is this damaging the integrity of the architectural profession? A few quotes from the section:
'The writings of interior designers, architects, and landscape architects contain many assumptions regarding the effect of the characteristics of the built environment on human behavior. Community facilities are said to create communities, parks to reduce vandalism, architectural unity to create social unity, architectural magnificence to lift spirits.
Often these pairs of variables are indeed correlated, but to assume that they are linked causally without considering intervening variables is a foolhardy belief in architectural determinism' (Lang 11).
'We need to design from "knowledge not belief" (B. Jones 1962); we need to be guided by "tangible observations rather than abstract speculations" (Neutra 1954).
- Conclusions about how a particular design will work tend to be drawn from casual experience of the world rather than from a body of systemic and systematic knowledge' (Lang 12).
