ARCH 678Q - Social and Behavioral Factors in Architecture and Urban Design

In the studio, history classes, and technology courses, students are exposed to a number of aspects that must be considered in designing buildings, neighborhoods, and cities. These aspects, however, necessarily emphasize syntactical considerations that are of interest mostly to other designers and critics—principles, rules, accepted procedures, and so on.

This course, on the other hand, emphasizes aspects that are more likely to be of interest to the general public—the individuals, groups, organizations, and households who actually are the users of the buildings we design. The course exposes students to a number of approaches, ideas, and methods that aim to uncover knowledge relevant to understanding how people interact with the built environment.

The course consists of three distinct phases. During the first seven weeks, lectures, readings, and discussions seek to develop familiarity with a variety of perspectives, research methods and skills that are a prerequisite for research. The six weeks that follow are devoted to research projects that involve the analysis and evaluation of a built environment. In the final week, students engage in summarizing the research experience and examining its implications.

Student are expected to report orally on the critical analysis of assigned readings and to provide a written outline of this analysis for class distribution. The research projects are collaborative exercises executed by small groups of students. Individual students are also required to write a final paper in which they describe and evaluate the experience of the course.

Professor Guido Francescato's publications include Residential Environments: Choice, Satisfaction and Behavior, (Westport, Connecticut - London: Bergin & Garvey, 2002), "Residential Satisfaction," in the Encyclopedia of Housing (Monterey, CA: Sage, 1998), Residents' Satisfaction in HUD-Assisted Housing: Design and Management Factors (Washington: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1979), chapters in edited books, and journal articles. He has presented numerous papers at professional conferences. He is a Fellow of the Society for Human Ecology and a reviewer for the journal Environment and Behavior.