Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc)
Pratt Institute
University of Southern California (USC)
Tulane University
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Temple University
University of Oregon
Cranbrook Academy of Art
New York Institute of Technology (NYIT)
Kansas State University
Choice of theory
I am currently working on my PhD application (Near Eastern Archaeology, writing about the socio-spatial analytical potential of doors and doorways in the Roman and Byzantine period)
In this respect my main theoretic approach is Space Syntax, partially backed by additional stuff on the liminal and boundary related aspects and qualities of doors and doorways. However, I do need a second theoretical approach, and myself and my supervisor agrees on that it should pertain to architecture.
The first part of my theoretic approach facilitates the investigation of how built space can be read to portray human behavior (Space Syntax).
I would very much like if I could reach the other end of the spectrum with my second approach; namely understand human behavior involved before and during the construction of a built planned environment. What I'd like to reach is by what methods and based on which considerations is built environment and space produced.
I have looked at sociology, anthropology and on architectural theory proper, but haven't really been able to come up with something.
I have considered intelligence based design theory; more specifically Christopher Alexander's "patterns and centers", and to a lesser degree environmental psychology. The first is seemingly still very recent, and I think it lacks the applicable tools I am looking for, and the latter seems to be based on a wide variety of interdisciplinary fields that muddies any concrete comparison to ancient archaeological societies.
Anyways, if someone here could give me an example of a theoretic approach that considers human behavior (as in cognition) before the construction of a built planned environment I'd be forever in your debt.
Have you looked at Diane Favro's work? This may or may not help you in The Hunt For Theory Number Two, but might provide other insights.
The fact that you found nothing may be a clue that you may--may--not be doing this correctly. Alexander would say that those built exemplars that you are studying were not built self-consciously, but unself-consciously through repeated iterations across generations--until they got it 'right'. But here you are trying to impose, or presume, that there was a self-conscious theoretical presupposition to these built exemplars.
You may either be right, or completely wrong. As a researcher you must acknowledge the possibility of this prospect.
I would encourage you to study these built exemplars through an empirical approach: find out what people who still experience them say about them, feel about them, or if any, wrote about them. This may be a comparative exercise where you compare this data to folks who don't use these exemplars. And from this comparative exercise, generate your own theory. While you are comparing, you would have to do your literature review on the psychological effects of spaces, and this review will inform and guide your methodological framing. Vinod Goel has done some work in neuroscience on this before. I would stay away from Alexander from a methodological point of view. His pattern language has been agreed to be ambivalent to say the least: is it a pattern to choose or does the pattern emerge from social participation (hence there are more than that 253 or so). Habraken made this point. Good luck!
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