Culture has a central place in this course, from both professional and humanistic perspectives. For example, the central concepts of this research field, known as person-environment studies, are privacy, territoriality, density, crowding, proxemics, personalization, and way finding. These concepts are described more less as universals and need to be reexamined from the point of view of America s different cultures because the ways these concepts are expressed in people s lives vary by gender, class, age, and ethnicity. The plan is to contrast and compare European Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Chinese Americans. The lectures summarize what is known about these groups demographically and culturally so that we have a base from which to project differences and similarities regarding architectural and environmental issues.
Students read selected research studies on ethnic variation in environmental use or perception.
Assignments help students generate original data and insight on how these groups compare to key concepts in person-environment studies. Studying these concepts at work in different settings requires research methods so the course introduces qualitative and quantitative research methods through lectures, readings, and assignments. A major assignments is a term-long field study using semantic, sometimes called cognitive, ethnography. Students to team up into groups of three and select one organization housed in a bounded place and large enough to be used by different ethnic groups and for each team member to select a different informant representing a different ethnic group. The other major assignment is a group project evaluating a local building, usually a new one, from the point of view of its various user groups.