Introduction
Questions underlying the course: Is architecture autonomous art or cultural construction? Can architecture be viewed as a discipline? Is it a scientific or humanistic field? Is there knowledge in architecture? What is the nature of that knowledge? What are the processes by which it is generated and applied?

Genesis and Development of The Person-Environment Field
Principal milestones: The Design Methods school. Environmental design research. Environmental psychology. Human ecology. Cultural criticism and philosophy.

Environmental Design Approaches
Design as information processing. Design as inquiry. Design for human activities. Pre- and post-occupancy evaluations. The feed-forward assumption. Bridging-the-gap metaphors. Functional and relational typologies.

Environmental Psychological Approaches
Trait, interactional, organismic, and transactional world-views. Positivistic and phenomenological perspectives. Scientific versus humanistic approaches. Contextual analysis. Research and social change. Processes of person-environment transactions (Cognition, personality, emotion, attitude, territoriality, privacy, crowding, environmental stress).

Human, Social, and Behavioral Ecology Approaches
Biological ecology and the principle of ecological equilibrium. The shift to openness in ecological systems. Intersections of scientific ecology and environmental policy. The concept of sustainable growth. Organizations, small groups, and behavior settings.

Cultural and Philosophical Approaches
Semiotic world-views. The concepts of sign and text. Architectural works as undercoded texts. Pragmatics and poetics in architecture. Consciousness as mediating element between people and environments. Dwelling, building, and being. Designers' intention and public's interpretation. The ethical function of architecture.

Theory, Research, and Practice
Integration and fragmentation in environment-behavior studies. "Bridging the gap" as a metaphor of separation between designer and researcher. Reliability, validity, and risk. Applicability issues.

Conclusion
Lessons learned. Directions for further exploration.