Designing the Method
(excerpted from the introduction) There is a growing realization of the need for new strategies to solve increasingly complex problems in the built environment. Rapid urbanization, accompanied by changes in goals, values, and technology, have resulted in changes in people’s environmental needs and aspirations in such areas as education, housing, health , transportation, and recreation. In attempting to reconcile rapid growth, it has become apparent that solutions to architectural and planning problems, whether buildings, city blocks, or communities, should not be viewed as isolated physical objects; rather, they should be perceived as integral parts of an environmental system, with economic, social, and political ramifications. Viewing the built environment as a set of interrelated systems which provide for man’s needs, it is evident that a change in one subsystem might modify elements of another subsystem, with unpredictable consequences. Nevertheless, the importance of considering this broader context is necessary when one subscribes to the view which integrates the built environment with other systems.
Contributors: Christopher Jones, Edward Matchett, Anthony Blake, John Wood, Don Grant, Arthur Chapman, L.A.E. Breto-Fiores, Hanno Weber, Michael Pyatok, Henry Sanoff, George Barbour, David Tester, Bodil Vaupel