Building programming and evaluation of building performance with respect to the aims of organizational users, policy development, and the process of planning and design decisions.
This course examines recent debates about the cultural, organizational and individual functions of architecture, buildings and cities. It examines theories and methodologies for understanding functions and linking them to design decisions, starting with the early modernist architects and focusing on recent efforts to build systematic approaches to function, including architectural programming, post-occupancy evaluation, space syntax and environment and behavior.
The course is organized around several questions:
The course introduces programming, design and evaluation theory and methods for a range of generic and specific functions, such as the role of architecture in creating community, creating spatial experience, increasing user productivity, providing flexibility, reducing crime, reducing crowding and stress, improving wayfinding and intelligibility, providing access to people with a range of abilities and others. These functions are examined in a range of situations and building types: home and housing; workplaces; public buildings such as schools, courthouses and museums; urban spaces and the city.
Reading are an online compilation of papers and selections by Duany, Duerk, Hall, Hillier, Lynch, Newman, Peponis, Sommer, Whyte, Zimring and others.