How buildings influence society and how society is influenced by buildings - an introduction

Ana-Maria Ghinita

Ana-Maria Ghinita

Published Jun viii, 2016

This is the introduction part of my Ph.D. Research Proposal that I sent to the University of Trento, Faculty of Sociology and Social Sciences. Even though not approved I would like to share it with you with the promise that it would be useful in 1 mode or another. I am addicted of discovering the relationships and variety of factors that determine certain choices related to architecture, pattern and even lifestyle. And I believe them to exist very trivial connected to philosophical inclinations or extensive reading of books of the abstruse kind. This luxury belongs only to a few and is understood by even fewer. The rest of the world has a much more empirical arroyo, which is far more intuitive and easy.

The connection between architecture and society is obvious and even though sometimes ignored, it is something that we have to keep in heed whenever we want to build or design something for people other than ourselves.

We all know people and their activities are inherent to architecture.

Buildings, essentially social and cultural products, are influenced past the ideas, values, behavior, activities, relationships and forms of the social organizations that they sustain. Society produces buildings, and the buildings, although not producing society, help to maintain many of its social forms.

But don't y'all sometimes wonder that peradventure our physical environment influences the way we live together and bear toward one another in social situations such as housing, work, schoolhouse, wellness care, and that buildings influence and become influenced by society and its organizations, equally well as by human behavior?

And then what can nosotros understand about a society by examining its buildings and physical environment? And what can we empathize about buildings and environments past examining the social club in which they be?

Simon Unwin in his book, Analyzing architecture, states that people make places in which to practise things they do in their lives - places to eat, to sleep, to store, to worship, to debate, to learn, to shop and then on. The way in which they organize their places is related to their beliefs and their aspirations, their world view. As worldviews vary, and so does architecture, at the personal level, at the social level and cultural level, and between different subcultures within a society. I find this to exist profoundly subtle and inspiring. If you lot empathise how a person relates to the world, you understand how to design for that person. And perhaps fifty-fifty judge less, considering that all worldviews are valid, mainly since they are so strongly related to the variety of factors to which a certain individual is exposed.

It is more obvious that buildings and the entire built surroundings are essentially social and cultural products. Buildings result from social needs and adapt a variety of functions: social, political, economic, religious and cultural. Their size, appearance, location, and form are governed non simply by physical factors but past a society'due south ideas, it's forms of economical and social organizations, it'southward distribution of resources and authority, its activities, and the beliefs and values, which prevail at whatever one period of fourth dimension. Equally changes in the society occur, so too does change in its build surround. New edifice types sally every bit old ones become obsolete. Some buildings are modified, extended and have on unlike functions; others may just disappear. Society produces its buildings, and the buildings, although not producing gild, help to maintain many of its social forms.

And as a effect, if nosotros are to sympathise buildings and environments, we must understand the club and culture in which they exist. Not only volition this help contribute to the development of methods for designing with intent, furthermore generating pattern patterns for environmental and social behavior change, merely information technology will contribute to emphasizing the importance of inter-disciplinary collaborations in general, and sociology and architecture in detail.

I believe a research related to this topic would exist useful in the sense that it will attempt to establish what is mutual to all men as humans and social beings and what is unique to them equally individuals, or as members of whatsoever one society or culture. The consequence would not but bring a possible social explanation of built form simply the way in which built class can be used to understand society and its institutions. Then if sure institutions are mutual to all societies, practice they give rise to common building types? If so, how practise such types vary from culture to culture? The office block, for case, may be a universal building type in modern societies, yet how practise its form and internal arrangements vary between Frg and Cuba, or Canada and Indonesia?

By studying the connection between order and the built environment, we could determine how architecture, as well every bit the larger built surroundings, is used as an instrument of social control. Information technology is not just a question of 'society's' ideas and beliefs being incorporated into congenital course. True, some ideas and beliefs are shared by all members of a item society (indeed, it is partly these that distinguish them every bit belonging to the same civilisation); others, however, are not. The social distribution of ideas, knowledge or values is equally important. So I ask on the basis of whose ideas, whose beliefs, whose values or whose view of the earth are decisions based? These questions can be asked every bit about any aspect of the built environment today.

Every bit a conclusion, I take this question from a zen teaching that I like very much: "If a tree falls in a forest and in that location is no one there to hear information technology, does it still make a sound ?" Similar to it, I enquire if at that place were no people would the built environment nevertheless be? The answer is not only obvious only it's also full of meaning. Buildings are influenced by society and to some extent lodge tin can exist influenced by its buildings, and I believe this is a topic worth sharing and exploring.

Further reading suggestions

Books

  • Castells, 1000. (1978), City, Grade and Ability, Macmillan, London.
  • Douglas, M. (1973), Rules and Meanings, Penguin, Harmondsworth.
  • Duly, C. (1979), The Houses of Mankind, Thames & Hudson, London.
  • Dumont, 50. (1972), Homo Hierarchicus, Paladin, London.
  • Eisenstadt, South.Northward. (1968), 'Social institutions', in International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Macmillan, New York, pp. 409–29.
  • Hurd, Grand. (ed.) (1978), Human Societies, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London
  • Rapoport, A. (1969), House Form and Civilization, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
  • Rapoport, A. (1971), 'Some observations regarding man-environment studies', Architectural Research and Educational activity, vol. 2, no. 1,four–14.
  • Rapoport, A. (1976), The Mutual Interaction of People and Their Congenital Surroundings. A Cross-cultural Perspective, Mouton, The Hague.
  • Rapoport, A. (1977), Human Aspects of Urban Form, Pergamon, London.
  • Rex, J. and Moore, R. (1967), Race, Community and Disharmonize, Oxford University Press, London.
  • Scheflen, A.Due east. (1976), Human being Territories. How We Behave in Space—Fourth dimension, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
  • Alexander, Christopher and other, A pattern Language: Towns Buildings, Construction, Oxford UP, New York 1977
  • Alexander, Christopher, The timeless way of Edifice, Oxford UP, New York, 1979
  • Atkinson, Robert and Bagenal, Hope – Theory and Elements of Compages, Ernest Benn, London, 1926
  • Norberg-Schulz, Christian, Beingness, Infinite and Architecture, Studio Vista, London, 1971
  • Norberg-Schulz, Christian, Genius Loci, Towards a phenomenology of architecture ,Rizolli, 1979
  • Gutman, Robert, Compages from outside in, Princeton Architecture Press, 2010
  • Gutman, Robert, People and Buildings. New York: Basic Books, 1972.

Articles

 Gutman, Robert

"A Sociologist Looks at Housing." In Toward a National Urban Policy, edited by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 119–32. New York: Basic Books, 1970.*

"Utilize of Sociology in Blueprint Exercise." In Proceedings of the Interprofessional Council on Environmental Design: Conference on Application of Behavioral Sciences to Environmental Pattern, 109–14. New York: American Club of Civil Engineers, 1971.with Barbara Westergaard.

"Edifice Evaluation, User Satisfaction, and Design." In Designing for Human Beliefs: Architecture and the Behavioral Sciences, edited by Jon T. Lang et al., 320–29.Stroudsburg, PA: Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross, 1974.*

"The Social Office of the Congenital Environs." In The Mutual Interaction of People and Their Built Environment: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, edited by Amos Rapoport, 37–49. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton Publishers, 1976

*Brisbane, multiple exposure photo by Mi Zhang