This scientific understanding of how our environments shape human experience has been accumulating and applied successfully in entertainment, marketing, and other professions for decades. But why not in architecture? Is it because “the evidence is still thin” or “design is not science?” Or is it because, secure in our personal “design sense,” we’re facing the reality that our hard-earned intuitions may be becoming obsolete?
Well, the evidence is not thin to get started, and the sciences permeate design. The problem is a different one. Today’s research results—organized and introduced, naturally, in scientific and academic venues—are not being translated into the concepts and vocabulary of a design office and client meetings, the places where design decisions are made. That can and will only happen when this growing world of empirical, experimental knowledge is integrated, step-by-step, project-by-project, in effect “plugged-in,” to enlarge and adjust what we already know and believe. It won’t happen by confronting a new scientific paradigm head-on. And just as we did when challenged by so-called sustainability, we can start by first taking a step back.
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