Occupying Architecture: Between the Architect and the User

Rating:
Summary: Interesting foray into architects vs. client vs. user
Review: I found this book in a small bookshop in Cambridge, England, and was immediately intrigued as an architecture student whose design philosophy is based in a user-needs-come-first approach. Hill's selection of authors, including one of his own writings, is just as varied as the authors' individual response to the challenge of "write about architecture and the user."

Each article varies in its dissection of the profession as practice and application. Katerina Ruedi, for example, presents her resume, then dissects it in terms of cultural, educational, and social context. Lesley Naa Norle Lokko discusses architecture and a sense of place from a cultural and racial point of view, the cultural aspects of imagery, territory, and "response-ability" as a creative source and outlet. Hill's own article indirectly jabs at the heart of New Urbanism, as this book came out in 1998, by making the distinction between "community" and "society"; one is physical, while the other is truly a product of commonalities or/of conflict. Muf Art and Architecture records the comments of the locals in one British neighborhood and uses these to compare and contrast the spatial and civic aspects of the surroundings.

Overall, Hill's book encourages the reader to consider the client as a different faction than the user, and to own up to the differences between those of us getting the degrees and those having to tolerate our actions upon the built environment. It was not, as I'd expected, an environmental-behavior text, but rather an analysis of social forces at-large that are at work in our surroundings. I also recommend Andrew Ross' book on "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property Values in Celebration FL" for anecdotal relation to Hill's article.