Dear Jerry and Lubomir,
Thanks for your clarification. I'd pretty well assumed that was your position and that was what I was suggesting needed to be addressed in a more nuanced way.
Going back to the core , the essence, of environmental determinism is environment and human functioning are not independent. I'm being very exact in the words here. This is not specifying how they are dependent or interdependent, only that in the limit they are not wholly independent
In the case of design activity, the essence of environmental determinism is that designed outputs and human functioning are dependent or interdependent in some way , from miniscule to prescriptive.
To conceptualise something as a 'room' depends on that essence of environmental determinism that something being a room can only be conceived due to some kind of relationship between that environment and something in terms of human functioning.
Put differently, to be able to conceptualise something as a 'room' is not totally independent of human functioning. Rather, the ability to make such a concept depends in some way on its relation to human functioning.
The same dependence in essence on a relation to human functioning applies to many concepts such as 'building', 'street', 'interface', 'communication', even the concept of 'design'.
Put bluntly, at this ontological/epistemological foundation point in concept building we assume and require the essence of environmental determinism is true. We cannot do without the assumption of environmental determinism at this level.
At much larger scales however, for example of geography in the 1970s and before, the idea of 'environmental determinism' (like early social systems) was inappropriately developed into an idea that oversimplifies the behaviours of humans and assumes a one on one exactly predictive match between designed thing and human behaviour. This is demonstrably false in most cases.
The word 'determine' has a broad spectrum of meaning from at one end of the spectrum meaning loosely influencing outcomes in some way , to at the other end of the spectrum meaning specifying a single unique outcome.
This spectrum of meaning in the word 'determine' offers a similarly broad range of meanings for 'environmental determinism'.
We crucially depend on the idea of environmental determinism at one end of this spectrum (as designed contexts influencing human outcomes in some way) for the theory foundations of design and design research.
In contrast, the idea of environmental determinism as all designs causing single unique human outcomes can mostly be set aside.
The nuanced question of the use of the concept of environmental determinism in design and design research then is how much influence do designs have over human outcomes, and causally why, in which situations, and influenced by which other factors?
Like the comment ascribed to Churchill and Lady Astor, we are just haggling on the amounts.
Best wishes,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
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-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Diethelm [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, 7 December 2014 6:57 AM
To: Terence Love; PHD Design
Subject: Re: Environmental determinism
I thought I'd send this again as the snip was poorly clipped and there were several edits needed. Jerry
Dear Terry and all,
It isn't especially radical in the design professions these days to step back from the belief that designs are predictably causal with respect to human behavior. In fact I would say that the opposite is true. Lubo, Diane and others on the list have tried to explain why.
Material designs offer up frameworks on which others hang their meaning, their own affordances, the constructions they bring to the experience that are built out of a repertoire of who they are.
And material designs often have many lives beyond the original one for which they are designed. For a time it was popular to talk about "loose fit."
And it still is to think and talk about adaptability.
I particularly (and radically) admire Louis Kahn's extended poetic insight:
Room: a place with a particular character
Building: a society of rooms
Street: a room of agreement
City: an assembly of places vested with the care to uphold the sense of a way of life.
With regard to systems dynamics, I ran the early Forrester models with students when The Limits to Growth was first published and then again twenty years later when Donella Meadows' group brought it up to date in Beyond the Limits. The latter software allowed us to examine the model's assumptions and vary their parameters. The upshot was that the outcomes were all highly dependent on qualitative assumptions, such as the one Lewis Mumford called plenitude, what was really needed for a good life.
Best regards,
Jerry
On 12/6/14 7:43 AM, "Terence Love" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> In its essence, environmental determinism is the core concept of
> architecture, planning, landscape architecture even, as well as
> graphic design, typography, advertising, the ideas of communication,
> affordances, signifiers, meaning making, sense- making, usability, CPTED, ergonomics...
> I can't at this moment think of any design field for which the essence
> of environmental determinism isn't the core concept.
>
>
> It would seem that to argue to remove the essence of environmental
> determinism means to argue for removing most aspects of design and
> design research - quite a radical position.
>
> I understand you have radical views but I didn't think that radical!
--
Jerry Diethelm
Architect - Landscape Architect
Planning & Urban Design Consultant
Prof. Emeritus of Landscape Architecture
and Community Service € University of Oregon
2652 Agate St., Eugene, OR 97403
€ e-mail: [log in to unmask]
€ web: http://pages.uoregon.edu/diethelm/
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