Plazola

MIND, LAND & SOCIETY

ARQUITECTONICS

CULTURA, ARQUITECTURA Y DISEÑO

AMOS RAPOPORT

MIND, LAND & SOCIETY

ARQUITECTONICS
5

CULTURA, ARQUITECTURA Y DISEÑO
AMOS RAPOPORT

Directores de la colección: Josep Muntañola Thornberg Luis Ángel Domínguez Primera edición: febrero de 2003 Dibujo de la portada: Amos Rapoport Gráficos interiores: Amos Rapoport Diseño gráfico: Luis ÁngelDominguez Maquetación: Wilson Mogro Miranda Diseño y fotografía de la portada: Wilson Mogro Miranda © © Amos Rapoport Edicions UPC Edicions de la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Sl Jordi Girona Salgado, 31. 08034 Barcelona Tel. 934 016 883 Fax 934 015 885 Edicions Virtuals: www.edicionsupc.es E-mail: edicions-upc@upc.es Copisteria Miracle S.A. Rector Ubach 6-10, 08021 Barcelona

Producción:Depósito legal: B-4105-2003 ISBN: 84-8301-680-X
Quedan rigurosamente prohibidas, sin la autorización escrita de los titulares del copyrigth, bajo las sanciones establecidas en las leyes, la reproducción total o parcial de esta obra por cualquier medio o procedimiento, comprendidos la reprografía y el tratamiento informático, y la distribución de ejemplares de ella mediante alquiler o préstamopúblicos.

Índice
Table of Contents

Introduction The Nature and Role of Environment-Behavior Studies I

Introducción La naturaleza y el papel de los estudios de la relación entre el entorno y el comportamiento humano (EBR) Naturaleza y tipos de entornos La importancia de la cultura Las preferencias, la elección y el diseño La naturaleza de la cultura La «escala» de la cultura Haciendo«utilizable» la cultura Ejemplos de aplicación Posdata: la necesidad del diseño abierto

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The Nature and Types of Environments The Importance of Culture Preference, Choice and Design The Nature of Culture The ‘Scale’ of Culture Making ‘Culture’ Usable Examples of application Postscript: The need for openended design

II III IV V VI VII VIII

33 61 87 129 141 157 171 207

ARQUITECTONICS3

Introducción
Introduction

ARQUITECTONICS

5

Introducción

The underlying premise of this book is that architecture is not a ‘free,’ artistic activity, but a science-based profession which is concerned with problem solving. Moreover, these problems need to be discovered and identified, not ‘defined’ by designers, i.e. not invented. It, therefore, follows that architecture andrelated design fields such as urban design, landscape architecture, interior design and, up to a point, even product design, together comprise the field of environmental design. This is the term I will use throughout. The purpose of environmental design is not for its practitioners to express themselves ‘artistically.’ An ‘extreme’ formulation of the consequences of this position is that designers’satisfaction should come from problem identification and solving. Designers might thus need to produced environments which they themselves may detest, if they work for the users concerned. The purpose of design is then to create environ-ments, and their constituents parts, that suit users, i.e. settings and their ‘furnishings’ that are supportive for these users, their wants, activities and so on. Ithus take design to be user oriented, designers being surrogates for users. This means that the products of such design (buildings and other physical environments) must be based on an understanding of human cha-racteristics, must fit, and be supportive, of those. This will be elaborated later, but in the case of this book, designs need to respond to ‘culture,’ i.e. be culture-specific. It thenfollows that design must be based on knowledge of how people and environments interact, i.e. on research (basic and applied) on environment-behavior relations (EBR)—design becomes the application of research-based knowledge. Such know-

La premisa en la que se basa este libro es que la arquitectura no es una libre actividad artística, sino una profesión basada en la ciencia y encaminada a la...