Occupying Architecture: Between the Architect and the User [Paperback]

Jonathan Hill (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415168163 | ISBN-13: 978-0415168168 | Publication Date: June 7, 1998 | Edition: 1

Occupying Architecture focuses on the importance of the user of architecture. It emphasises the cross-currents between design, theory and use, and the need for a wider cross-cultural approach to architecture. Beginning with the architect, the book proceeds to explore models for architectural practice that actively engage the issue of use, and concludes with examination of the user. The authors draw on illustrations and examples from London, Las Vegas, Barcelona and Bruges to discuss how and why architecture ignores the user. The apparant contradictions between the 'producer' and the 'product' of architecture are highlighted before the activities of the architect and the actions of the user are explored.
This book illustrates that architecture is not just a building: it is the relation between an object and its occupant.

Editorial Reviews

Review

To a practising architect in the field of socialhousing and tenant consultation, editor Jonathan Hill's stated aim, to undertake an investigation of the relationship between the architect and the user, was bound to be intriguing..
–Dominic May

It is a good idea and a worthy aim....
–Collin Davies The Architects' Journal, Oct 8 1998

About the Author

Jonathan Hill is Lecturer in Architecture at University College London. He has exhibited his architectural works extensively and has written numerous articles. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (June 7, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415168163
• ISBN-13: 978-0415168168
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,072,448 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting foray into architects vs. client vs. user, February 10, 2000

By 

V.M. Williams - See all my reviews

This review is from: Occupying Architecture: Between the Architect and the User (Paperback)

I found this book in a small bookshop in Cambridge, England, and was immediately intrigued as an architecture student whose design philosophy is based in a user-needs-come-first approach. Hill's selection of authors, including one of his own writings, is just as varied as the authors' individual response to the challenge of "write about architecture and the user."

Each article varies in its dissection of the profession as practice and application. Katerina Ruedi, for example, presents her resume, then dissects it in terms of cultural, educational, and social context. Lesley Naa Norle Lokko discusses architecture and a sense of place from a cultural and racial point of view, the cultural aspects of imagery, territory, and "response-ability" as a creative source and outlet. Hill's own article indirectly jabs at the heart of New Urbanism, as this book came out in 1998, by making the distinction between "community" and "society"; one is physical, while the other is truly a product of commonalities or/of conflict. Muf Art and Architecture records the comments of the locals in one British neighborhood and uses these to compare and contrast the spatial and civic aspects of the surroundings.

Overall, Hill's book encourages the reader to consider the client as a different faction than the user, and to own up to the differences between those of us getting the degrees and those having to tolerate our actions upon the built environment. It was not, as I'd expected, an environmental-behavior text, but rather an analysis of social forces at-large that are at work in our surroundings. I also recommend Andrew Ross' book on "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property Values in Celebration FL" for anecdotal relation to Hill's article.