designing the environment

8/12/2019 Designing the environment

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There is no doubt whatever about the influence of architecture and

structure upon human character and action. We make our buildings andafterwards they make us. They regulate the course of our lives.

Winston Churchill, addressing the English Architectural Association,

1924

In designing and constructing environments in which people live and work, architects

and planners are necessarily involved in influencing human behaviour. While Sommer

(1969, p.3) asserted that the architect in his training and practice, learns to look atbuildings without people in them, it is clear that from, for example, HowardsGarden

Cities of To-morrow(1902), through Le CorbusiersVille ContemporaineandLa Ville

radieuse, to the Smithsons Streets in the sky, there has been a long-standing thread of

recognition that the way people live their lives is directly linked to the designed

environments in which they live. Whether the explicit intention to influence behaviour

drives the design processarchitectural determinism (Broady, 1966: see future blog

post POSIWID and determinism)or whether the behaviour consequences of design

decisions are only revealed and considered as part of a post-occupancy evaluation (e.g.

Zeisel, 2006) or by social scientists or psychologists studying the impact of a

development, there are links between the design of the built environment and our

behaviour, both individually and socially.

Where there is an explicit intention to influence behaviour, the intended behaviours

could relate (for example) to directing people for strategic reasons, or providing a

particular experience, or for health and safety reasons, but they are often focused on

influencingsocial interaction. Hillier et al (1987, p.233) find that spatial layout in itself

generates a field of probabilistic encounter, with structural properties that vary with thesyntax of the layout. Ittelson et al (1974, p.358) suggest that All buildings imply at least

some form of social activity stemming from both their intended function and the random

encounters they may generate. The arrangement of partitions, rooms, doors, windows,

and hallways serves to encourage or hinder communication and, to this extent, affects

social interaction. This can occur at any number of levels and the designer is clearly in


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control to the degree that he plans the contact points and lanes of access where people

come together. He might also, although with perhaps less assurance, decide on the

desirability of such contact.

Designers often aspire to do more than simply create buildings that are new, functional

and attractivethey promise that a new environment will change behaviours and

attitudes (Marmot, 2002, p.252). Where architects expressly announce their intentions

and ability to influence behaviour, such as in Danish firm 3XNs exhibition and

bookMind Your Behaviour(3XN, 2010), the behaviours intended and techniques used

can range from broad, high-level aspirational strategies such as communal areas

creating the potential for involvement, interactionand knowledge sharing in a

workplace (3XN, 2010) to specific tactics, such as Frank Lloyd Wrights occasional use

of very confining corridors for people to walk along so that when they entered an open

space the openness and light would enhance their experience (Ittelson et al, 1974,p.346). An appreciation of both broad strategies and specific tactics is valuable: from

the perspective of a designer whose agency may only extend to redesign of certain

elements of a space, product or interface, it is the specific tactical techniques which are

likely to be the most immediately applicable, but the broader guiding strategies can help

set the vision in the first place. For example, the conditions for city diversity outlined by

Jacobs (1961)broad strategies for understanding aspects of urban behaviourhave

influenced generations of urbanists.

Following the influence of Christopher Alexander (Alexander et al, 1975, 1977;

Alexander, 1979), such strategies and tactics may be expressed architecturally in terms

of patterns, which describe a problem which occurs over and over again in our

environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way

that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way

twice (Alexander et al, 1977). The concept of patterns, and Alexander et als A Pattern

Language (1977) will be examined in detail in a future thesis extract, for their form,

philosophy and impact, but, as an example, it is worth drawing out a few of the patterns

which actually address directly influencing behaviour architecturally (Table 1). Among

others, Frederick (2007) and Day (2002) both also outline a range of architecturalpatterns, some with similarities to Alexander et als, including some specifically relating

to influencing behaviour.


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Two examples of pattern 53? Chepstow, Monmouthshire (restored 1524) and Philips High Tech

Campus, Eindhoven (c.2000)

Table 1. Summaries of a few of Alexander et alspatterns (1977) which specifically address

influencing behaviour, simplified into endsand means.

Title End Means


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30 Activity nodesTo createconcentrations of people ina community

Facilities must be grouped densely rounnodeswith all pedestrian movement in nodes

53 Main gatewaysTo influence inhabitants of a part of atown to identify it as a distinct entity

Mark every boundary in the city which h

building cluster, a neighborhood, a precinpaths cross theboundary

68 Connected playTo supportthe formation ofspontaneous play groupsfor children

Lay out common land, paths, gardens anare connected by a swath of land that doeconnected play space for the children in t

139 Farmhouse kitchen

To help allthe members of thefamilyto accept, fully, the fact thattaking care of themselves by cookingis

as much a part of life as taking care ofthemselves by eating

Make the kitchen bigger than usual, big place it near the center of the commons, nMake it large enough to hold a good table

counters and stove and sink around the edcomfortable room

151 Small meeting rooms

To encourage smaller group meetings,which encourage people to contributeand make their point of view heard

Make at least 70 per cent of all meeting them in the most public parts of the build

Layout of physical elements

Practically, most architectural patterns for influencing behaviour involve, in one way or

another, the physical arrangement of building elementsinside or outsideor a change

in material properties. In each case, there is the possibility of changing peoples

perceptions of what behaviour is possible or appropriate, and the possibility of actually

forcing some behaviour to occur or not occur (see future article Affordances,

constraints and choice architecture). These are not independent alternatives: the

perception that some behaviour is possible or impossible can be a result of learning the

hard way in the past.


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Barrier on the London Underground (Baker Street, from memory), preventing people running

down stairs directly onto the track. Most stairs dontopen straight onto the platform like this.

The physical arrangement of elements can be broken down into different aspects of

positioning and layoutputting elements in particular places to encourage or

discourage peoples interaction with them, putting them in peoples way to prevent

access to somewhere, putting them either side of people to channel or direct them in a

particular way (e.g. staggered pedestrian crossings which aim to direct pedestrians toface oncoming traffic; Department for Transport, 1995), hiding them to remove the

perception that they are there, splitting elements up or combining them so that they can

be used by different numbers of people at once, or angling them so that some actions

are easier than others (termed slanty design by Beale (2007), both physically and in

metaphorical application in interfaces). Urbanists such as Whyte (1980) have

catalogued, in colourful, intricate detail the effects that the layouts and features of built

environments have on peoples behaviourwhy some areas become popular, others

not so, with whom, and why, with recommendations for how to improve things, in

contrast to work such as Goffman (1963) which focuses on the social contexts of public

behaviour in urban environments.

The layouts of shops, hotels, casinos and theme parks, especially larger developments

where there is scope to plan more ambitiously, can also make use of multiple aspects of

positioning and layout to influence and control shoppers pathsStenebo (2010)


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discusses IKEAs carefully planned (and continually refined) fairyland of adventures

which routes visitors through the store; Shearing and Stenning (1984) examine how

Disney World embeds [c]ontrol strategies in both environmental features and structural

relations, many to do with positioning of physical features; while Underhill (1999, 2004),

formerly one of Whytes students, describes how his company, Envirosell, uses

observation approach to understand and redesign shopping behaviour across a wide

range of store types and shopping malls themselves, much of which comes down to

intelligently repositioning elements such as mirrors, basket stacks, signage and seating.

Poundstone (2010) cites a study by Sorensen Associates which used active RFID tags

fitted to shopping trolleys to determine that US shoppers taking an anticlockwise route

around supermarkets spend on average $2.00 more per trip; the suggestion is that

stores with the entrance on the right will be more likely to prompt this anticlockwise

movement.

Changes in material properties can involve drawing attention to particular behaviour

(e.g. rumble strips on a road to encourage drivers to slow down: Harvey, 1992), or

making it more or less comfortable to do an activity (e.g., as Katyal (2002, p.1043)

notes, fast food restaurants use hard chairs that quickly grow uncomfortable so that

customers rapidly turn over). The application of some of these physical positioning and

layout and material property ideas to a particular social issue is described in the blog

postTowardsa Design with Intent method v.0.1from 2008.
http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2008/01/05/towards-a-design-with-intent-method-v01/http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2008/01/05/towards-a-design-with-intent-method-v01/http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2008/01/05/towards-a-design-with-intent-method-v01/http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2008/01/05/towards-a-design-with-intent-method-v01/http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2008/01/05/towards-a-design-with-intent-method-v01/http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2008/01/05/towards-a-design-with-intent-method-v01/


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Often combining positioning and material properties, the effect of different seating types

and layouts on behaviour comprises a significant area of study in itself, with, for

example, work by Steinzor (1950), Hearn (1957), Sommer (1969) and Koneya (1976)

helping to establish patterns of likely interaction between people occurring with

arrangements of chairs around tables, and overall room layouts in classrooms and

mental hospitals. Sommers design intervention in the dayroom of an elderly ladies

ward at a state hospital in Canadaby reducing the number of couches around the

walls and adding tables and chairs in the centre of the room, with flowers and

magazinesled to major increases in the amount of conversation and interaction

between residents.


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Osmond (1959) introduced the termssociofugalandsociopetalto describe spaces whichdrive people apart and together, respectively; Sommer (1969, 1974) notes that airports

are often among the most sociofugal spaces, largely because of the fixed, single-

direction seating and sterile decor: Many other buildings such as mental hospitals

and jails, also discourage contact between people, but none does this as effectively as

the airport In practice the long corridors and the cold, bare waiting areas of the typical

airport are more sociofugal than the isolation wing of the state penitentiary. (Sommer,

1974: p.72). Halls concept of proxemics (e.g. Hall, 1966) provides a treatment of

personal space, its effects on behaviour, and its significance in different physical spaces

as well as in different cultures. The different distance zones identified by Hall

intimate, personal, social and publichave implications for the design process: If one

looks at human beings in the way that the early slave traders did, conceiving of their

space requirements simply in terms of the limits of the body, one pays very little

attention to the effects of crowding. If, however, one sees man surrounded by a series

of invisible bubbles which have measurable dimensions, architecture can be seen in a

new light. It is then possible to conceive that people can be cramped by the spaces in

which they have to live and work. They may find themselves forced into behavior,

relationships or emotional outlets that are overly stressful (Hall, 1966, p.129).


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Emergence, desire lines and predicting behaviour

All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong.

Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, 1994, p. 178.

I builtskyscrapers for people to live in there and now they messed them up

disgusting.

ErnGoldfinger, commenting on tabloid reports of violent crime in the Trellick

Tower, above (quoted in Open University, 2001)

InHow Buildings Learn, Stewart Brand (1994) contrasts Low Road architecture

designed to permit adaptation by users, with visionary High Road architectural plans

which seek to define at the design stage the future behaviour and lifestyles of buildings

users. High Road plans often fail in this sense, unable to anticipate future needs or

usage patterns (as Ittelson et al (1974, p. 357) put it, we are all living in the relics of the

past), while Low Road architecture can cope with changing requirements, appropriation

(Salovaara, 2008) and emergent behaviour. The stereotype of architect as a High

Road plannerperhaps living in the penthouse at the top of the tower block he hasdesignedresonates in both fact (e.g. Ern Goldfingers comment quoted above) and

fiction (e.g. Anthony Royal in J.G. BallardsHigh Rise(1975).*

The parallels of the the High/Low Road approaches with the design and use of other

systemsin particular software, but perhaps also economic and political systems in

generalare evident throughout Brands book, although never explicitly stated as such;


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there are also parallels in planning at a level above that of buildings themselves, such

as the clash in New York (Flint, 2009) between the bottom-up approach to urbanism

favoured by Jacobs (1961) and the top-down approach of Robert Moses. While it will

unfortunately not be considered in detail in this thesis, the emerging power of ubiquitous

computing, when integrated intelligently into physical spacecity as operating system

(Gittins, 2007)could permit a kind of Low Road read/writeurbanism (Greenfield &

Shepard, 2007) in which the city users themselves are able to augment and alter the

meanings, affordances and even fabrics of their surroundings.

A desire path or cowpath is forming across this grass area in the John Crank memorial garden,

Brunel University

One emergent behaviour-related concept arising from architecture and planning which

has also found application in human-computer interaction is the idea of desire lines,

desire paths or cowpaths. The usual current use of the term (often attributed, although

apparently in error, to BachelardsThe Poetics of Space(1964)) is to describe paths worn

by pedestrians across spaces such as parks, between buildings or to avoid obstaclesthe foot-worn paths that sometimes appear in a landscape over time (Mathes, 2004)

and which become self-reinforcing as subsequent generations of pedestrians follow

what becomes an obvious path. Throgmorton & Eckstein (2000) also discuss Chicago

transportation engineers use of desire lines to describe maps of straight-line origin-to-

destination journeys across the city, in the process revealing assumptions about the


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publics desire to undertake these journeys. In either sense, desire lines (along with

use-marks (Burns, 2007)) could perhaps, using economic terminology, be seen as a

form of revealed user preference (Beshears et al, 2008) or at least revealed choice, with

a substantial normative quality.

As such, there is potential for observing the formation of desire lines and then codifying

them in order to provide paths that users actually need, rather than what is assumed

they will need. As Myhill (2004) puts it, [a]n optimal way to design pathways in

accordance with natural human behaviour, is to not design them at all. Simply plant

grass seed and let the erosion inform you about where the paths need to be. Stories

abound of university campuses being constructed without any pathways to them. Myhill

goes on to suggest that companies which apply this idea in the design of goods and

services, designing systems to permit desire lines to emerge and then paying attention

to them, will succeed in a process of Normanian Natural Selection (after Don Normanswork).

whereasthis one has been pavedafter pedestrians wore a definite path.In human-computer interaction, this principle has become known as Pave the

cowpathslook where the paths are already being formed by behavior and then

formalize them, rather than creating some kind of idealized path structure that ignores

history and tradition and human nature and geometry and ergonomics and common

sense (Crumlish & Malone, 2009, p.17). Particularly with websites, analytics software


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can take the place of the worn grass, and in the process reveal extra data such as

demographic information about users, and more about their actual desires or intention

in engaging in the process (e.g. Google is a database of intentions, according to

Battelle (2003)). This allows clustering of behaviour paths and even investigation of

users mental models of site structure. The counter-argument is that blindly paving

cowpaths can enshrine inefficient behaviours in the longer-term, locking users and

organisations into particular ways of doing things which were never optimal in the first

place (Arace, 2006)form freezing function, to paraphrase Stewart Brand (1994,

p.157).

From the point of view of influencing behaviour rather than simply reflecting it, the

principle of paving the cowpaths could be applied strategically: identify the desire lines

and paths of particular usersperhaps a group which is already performing the desiredbehaviourand then, by formalising this, making it easier or more salient or in some

way obviously normative, encourage other users to follow suit.

*It is worth differentiating, though, between a visionary approach which considers human

behaviour and sets out to change it, and the approach attributed to some other treatments of the

visionaryarchitectpersonality, in which human behaviour is simply ignored or relegated as

being secondary to the vision of the building itself. In fiction, AynRandsHoward Roark (in The

Fountainhead, 1943) is perhaps an archetype; Sommersarchitect who learnsto look at

buildings without people in themquoted above is perhaps based on real instances of this

approach.


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The ticket hall of Stratford City railway station, London, with Westfield logo and the Olympic

AthletesVillage under construction in the background, March 2010

The politics of architecture, power and control

I was aware that I could be watched from aboveand that it was possible to

go much higherto become one of the watchersbut I didnt see how it could

be done. The architecture embodied a political message: There are people

higher than you, and they can watch you, follow youand, theoretically, you

can join them, become one of them. Unfortunately you dont know how.Geoff Manaugh, The BLDG BLOG Book (2009, p.17)

Architecture can serve as a regulatory force (Shah and Kesan, 2007) and has been

used to influence and control public behaviour through embodying power in a number of

ways. Direct use of architecture to change the economic or demographic make-up of

areas ranges from policies of shopping centres and Business Improvement Districts to

shift the social class of visitors to an area* (Minton, 2009), to Depression-era

Tennessee Valley Authoritys mandate to revitalise impoverished areas through

massive development programmes (Culvahouse, 2007), to government-driven use of

settlements to occupy or colonise territories. In this latter context, Segal and Weizman

(2003, p. 19), referring to Israel, comment that [i]n an environment where architecture

and planning are systematically instrumentalized planning decisions do not often

follow criteria of economic sustainability, ecology or efficiency of services, but are rather

employed to serve strategic and political agendas.


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Vale (2008) discusses Pierre Charles LEnfants 1791 layout of Washington, DC, often

seen as physically reifying the separation of powers principle contained in the US

Constitution, by separating the buildings housing the branches of government, although

Vale notes that LEnfant does not explicitly mention this as his intention. Along perhaps

similar lines, Stewart Brand (1994, p.3) mentions Churchills 1943 request that the

bomb-damaged Parliament be rebuilt exactly as it was before It was to the good, he

insisted, that the [House of Commons] Chamber was too small to seat all the members

(so great occasions were standing-room occasions), and that its shape forced members

to sit on either one side or the other, unambiguously of one party or the other. Indeed,

Churchills crossing the floor in 1904 (and again in the 1920s) perhaps relied on the

physical layout of the chamber for its impact. Ittelson et al (1974, p.139) also note that

[t]he eight months of deliberations in 1969, preceding the Paris Peace Talks, were

largely centered on the issue of the shape of the table to be used in the negotiations.

Internal building layouts are analysed for their power implications by Dovey (2008),

who uses a system of space syntax analysis developed by Hillier and Hanson (1984)

to examine diverse buildings such as Albert Speers Berlin Chancellery, the Forbidden

City of Beijing, and the Metro Centre shopping mall in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. One

recurring pattern in political buildings is the intentional use of something similar to what

Alexander et al (1977, p.610), in a different context, call intimacy of gradienta

diplomatic promenade (Dovey, 2008, p. 65) selectively revealing a sequence of

anterooms to visitors, their permitted progress through the structure (the deepest level

being the president or monarchs private study) calculated both to reflect their status

and instil the requisite level of awe. Nicoletta (2003) looks at the use of architecture to

exert social control in Shaker dwelling houses, e.g. the use of separate entrances and

staircases for men and women, and the lack of routes through the house which did not

result in observation by other members of the family.

City layouts have been used strategically to try to prevent disorder and make it easier to

put down. Baron Georges-Eugne Haussmanns militaristically planned Paris(Hatherley, 2008, p. 11), remodelled for Louis Napolon (later Napolon III) after 1848,

had [t]he true goal ofsecur[ing] the city against civil war. He wanted to make the

erection of barricades in Paris impossible for all time Widening the streets is designed

to make the erection of barricades impossible, and new streets are to furnish the

shortest route between the barracks and the workers districts. (Benjamin, 1935/1999,

p. 12). The Haussmann project also involved the planning of straight avenues as a


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method of crowd control (artillery could fire down them at barricaded masses)

(Rykwert, 2000, p.91). Scott (1998, p.59) likens the logic behind the reconstruction of

Paris to the process of transforming old-growth forests into scientific forests designed

for unitary fiscal managementpart of which involves, as Scott emphasies throughout

his book Seeing Like a State, the idea of making a space (and the people in it) legibleto

whoever is in power by removing or simplifying inconsistencies, anomalies and local

practices to tame potentially dangerousceintures sauvages. Legibility affords

measurement and standardisation, and these (fromDomesday Bookto the

standardisation of surnames, to biometric IDs) afford modelling, regulation and control.

Drawing on Hacking (1990), Scott (1998, p.92) suggests that it is but a small step from

a simplified description of society to a design and manipulation of society, with

improvement in mind. If one could reshape nature to design a more suitable forest, why

not reshape society to create a more suitable population?Returning to the specifics of architectural schemes, New York master builder Robert

Moses low parkway bridges on Long Island are often mentioned in a similar vein to

Haussmanns Paris (Caro, 1975; Winner, 1986). These had the effect of preventing

buses (and by implication poorer people, often minorities) using the parkways to visit

the Jones Beach State Parkanother of Moses projects. However, Joerges (1999)

questions details of the intentionality involved, suggesting that the story as presented by

Winner is more of a parable (Gillespie, 2007, p. 72) about the embodiment of politics in

artefactsan exhortation to recognise that specific features in the design or

arrangement of a device or system could provide a convenient means of establishing

patterns of power and authority in a given setting, (Winner, 1986)than a real example

of architecture being used intentionally to discriminate against certain groups (see also

the forthcoming blog post POSIWID and determinism). Nevertheless, Flint (2009, p.44)

suggests in his book on Jane Jacobs battles with Moses over New York planning, that,

at least in his earlier years, Moses strove to model himself after Baron Haussmann.

*Minton (2009, p.45) interviews a Business Improvement District manager in the UK who tells

her explicitly that Highmargins come with ABC1s, low margins with C2DEs. My job is tocreate an environment which will bring in moreABC1s.


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Pigearskate stoppers near City Hall, London

Disciplinary architecture and design against crime

Where the homeless are ejected from business and retail areas by such

measures as curved bus benches, window-ledge spikes and doorway sprinkler

systems, so skaters encounter rough-textured surfaces, spikes and bumps addedto handrails, blocks of concrete placed at the foot of banks, chains across

ditches and steps, and new, unridable surfaces such as gravel and sand.

Iain Borden, Skateboarding, Space and the City (2001, p.254)

Perhaps difficult to extract from the political dimension of architecture is the notion

of disciplinary architecture, covering everything from designed measures such as anti-

homeless park benches to prison design, via Jeremy BenthamsPanopticon(1787) and

Foucaults technologies of punishment (1977). Howell (2001) notes that this is often

framed as defending the general public against undesirable behaviour by othermembers of the publicin this particular case again, measures to make skateboarding

more difficult. Similar measures may be installed by members of the public to defend

their own properties: Flusty (1997, p. 48) classifies five species of interdictory

spacesspaces designed to intercept and repel or filter would-be users, many of

which occur frequently in residential contexts as well as public spaces: stealthyspace


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areas which have been deliberately concealed from general view;slipperyspace

spaces with no apparent means of approach; crustyspacespace that cannot be

accessed because of obstructions;pricklyspacespace which cannot be occupied

comfortably due to measures inhibiting walking, sitting or standing; and jitteryspace

space which is constantly under surveillance (or threatened surveillance). Some of the

ways of achieving these species of space will be familiar from other examples

discussed in this thesis, particularly prickly space.

Prikka strips,a popular brand of add-on DIY plastic spikes for your wall.

Design against crime has recently received significant attention in the UK via initiatives

such as the Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins (e.g.

Ekblom, 1997; Gamman & Pascoe, 2004; Gamman & Thorpe, 2007) whose work hasaddressed some high-profile areas such as bicycle theft and bag theft in restaurants

and bars (AHRC, 2008) through innovative product design interventions taking account

of the environmental contexts in which crimes occur. While the focus may be on better

products (as was a much earlier programme by the Design Council focusing on design

against vandalism (Sykes, 1979)), the parallel field of crime prevention through

environmental design (CPTED) has developed from the early 1970s to date, focusing

on redesigning architectural elements to discourage particular behaviours. In the UK,

compliance with an Association of Chief Police Officers CPTED initiative, Secured by

Designrun by ACPO Crime Prevention Initiatives Ltdhas, according to Minton

(2009, p.71), become a condition of planning permission for some large residential

developments, leading to the situation where new estates are required to be

surrounded by walls with sharp steel pins or broken glass on top of them, CCTV and

only one gate into the estate.
http://www.prikka-strip.com/http://www.prikka-strip.com/http://www.prikka-strip.com/


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Crowe (2000) provides a practical guide to implementing CPTED with diagrams and

design directives for a wide variety of spaces, including schools and student

residences. Poyner (1983), in a guide which is effectively A Pattern Language for

CPTED, outlines 31 patterns addressing different types of crime in different settings

for example, 4.7 Access to rear of house: There should be no open access from the

front to the rear of a house. Access might be restricted to full-height locked gates,

addresses burglary and break-ins. Many of Poyners patterns make use of the principle

of natural surveillance, described in Oscar Newmans influential bookDefensible Space:

People and Design in the Violent City* (1972). Natural surveillance implies designing

spaces to afford surveillance opportunities for residents and their agents (Newman,

1972, p. 78)effectively, designing environments so that building users are able to

observe others activities when outside the home, and feel observed themselves (a

concept which, applied in the wider context of digital communications and social media,might be termedpeerveillance**). There should be parallels with Jacobs (1961) concept

of eyes on the streetalthough as Minton (2009) points out, implementing natural

surveillance via enclosed, gated communities where strangers will necessarily stand out

means that the residents can become isolated, targets even for burglars who know that

it is unlikely there will be any passers-by (or even passing police) to see their activities.

Katyal (2002) provides a comprehensive academic review of Architecture as Crime

Control, addressed to a legal and social policy-maker audience, but also interesting

because of a follow-up article taking the same approach to examine digital architecture

(see future article). One point to which Katyal repeatedly returns is the concept of

architectural solutions as entities which subtly reinforce or embody social norms

(desirable ones, from the point of view of law enforcement) rather than necessarily

enforce them: Even the best social codes are quite useless if it is impossible to observe

whether people comply with them. Architecture, by facilitating interaction and monitoring

by members of a community, permits social norms to have greater impact. In this way,

the power of architecture to influence social norms can even eclipse that of law, for law

faces obvious difficulties when it attempts to regulate social interaction directly (Katyal,

2002, p. 1075).

*Defensiblespacecovers restructur[ing]the physical layout of communities to allow

residents to control the areas around their homes.(Newman, 1996)

**The author used Peerveillancefor a pattern based on this concept in DwI v.1.0, at the time

(March 2010) finding only one previous use of the term, on Twitter, by Alex Halavais. As of May

2011, the tweet is no longer findable via either Twitter or Google searches.


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Impli cations for designers

Designed environments influencepeoplesbehaviour in a variety of ways, and

some have been designed expressly with this intention, often for political or

crime prevention reasonsThis can range from high-level visions of influencing wider social or

community behaviours, to very specific techniques applied to influence

particular behaviours in a particular context; the use of patterns facilitates re-

use of techniques wherever a similar problem recurs

Most patterns involve either the physical arrangement of building elements

positioning, angling, splitting up, hiding, etcor a change in material

properties, either to change peoples perceptions of what behaviour is possible

or appropriate, perhaps by reinforcing or embodying social norms, or to force

certain behaviour to occur or not occur

There are also patterns around aspects of surveillancedesigning layouts

which facilitate or prevent visibility of activity between groups of people

In practice, patterns may be applied in combination to create different kinds

of space with different effects on behaviour

There is potential for paving the cowpathsstrategically through design,

identifying the paths of particular usersperhaps a group which is already

performing the desired behaviourand then, by formalising this, making it

easier or more salient or in some way obviously normative, encourage other

users to follow suit

By affecting so completely the way in which people spend their lives, political

or police attempts to control behaviour through the design of environments can

be controversial

Some concepts related to influencing behaviour in the built environment may

be transposed to other designed systems and contexts


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References

3XN (2010)Mind Your Behaviour: How Architecture Shapes Behaviour. 3XN.

AHRC, (2008)Fighting crime through more effective design. Available

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Reminiscent of a scene fromBallardsSuper-Cannes, the Philips High Tech Campus also

includes this lake and boardwalk, perhaps affording breakout meetings and secret discussions

away from the earshot of office colleagues, although in full view of the surrounding buildings.