topics: |  design | architecture | spatial | history |

A fascinating book - as much about what it means to be a human, as it is
about what it means to design a building or an architectural space. 

How space is designed to communicate

 
The entrance to this simple house shows a gradation of space from the fully
public domain of the street and pavement (not visible) through the
semi-public space in the foreground and the semi-private space behind the
gate to the fully private space that lies beyond the closed door. [p.12]

Space has to communicate this ‘right of ownership’ clearly so that we can all
behave in an ordered and orderly manner without constantly upsetting each
other

Spaces must make tradeoffs - between a sense of identity and security,
vs. stimulation.  

McDonald’s, e.g. is an attempt to make a global place. A secure behavioural  
setting which as far as possible tries to present and trigger identical
behaviour all over the world [p.26]


 
How Samuel Morse devised his famous code. He noticed that the trays in
which a printer kept letters were not all the same size, so he counted the
numbers of each letter in the tray and used the simplest codes for those
letters most frequently found in English text. The diagram shows the
approximate size of the trays he found for each letter in a printer’s
office.


---blurb

Lawson views architectural and urban spaces as psychological, social and
partly cultural phenomena. They accommodate, separate, structure, facilitate,
heighten and even celebrate human spatial behaviour.