Customer Reviews

Culture, Architecture, and Design

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I'm just beginning my self-study of Environmental Behavior Research as it relates primarily to residential interior and product design. However, I have completed extensive study of architecture, interior design, product design, and working my way through rather academic books on various human centric sciences such as cultural anthropology, evolutionary psychology and neurology, etc. So much for my current study background.

This is a thin book and a rather easy read. Rapoport seems to really know his topic and he moves right along. He likes to explain his hypothesis with diagrams that have small hand printed words that are a bit awkward to read. He does support his conclusion that designing for meaning and components of culture is more important than function and form, a conclusion I reached about a year ago from other means. He proposes not designing for culture, which is unrealistic, but by breaking culture down into components and working from there. I agree with this approach after several years of working on culture and design.

He proposes a conceptual framework which I'm unsure of at this time. I'm working on my own framework with a pile of books and this book is just one of them.

I have never thought much of the architecture and interior design profession's output and after reading Rapoport it is more clear to me what they lack. Aesthetic design lacks meaning, and meaning, along with other cultural issues such as privacy, matters most.

What I miss with this book are complete end notes with a full reference section. He mostly quotes his own studies but he refers constantly to sciences outside his field but with no references to sources. Due to obvious editing problems the fault may be more with the publisher than the author. This can be a bit frustrating if you are looking for serious depth but not a big deal if you want to get a quick grasp of his concept. You could figure out the concept diagram on the cover and pretty much have the whole story, but best of luck with that approach :-)

Is this content covered by other authors such as John Zeisel in "Inquiry by Design"? I'm still studying that one and others so I don't know for sure but I don't think so. Rapoport really focuses on developing one important concept and not on all the issues of EBR.

- jim