Architecture from the Inside Out

Today, with all the information architecture students are expected to absorb and the myriad aspects of design they are directed to consider, technological and stylistic qualities of buildings tend to receive prime attention. What should be central to the endeavour of students and practitioners -- the needs, activities and experiences of people -- is often neglected. Architecture from the Inside Out returns these concerns to their rightful place: as generators of design decisions. To meet this objective the book presents design not as a pro-ject, imposing preconceived ideas upon a situation but as a pro-cess, evolving from within: from the desires and activities of people, from site and context and from a dialogue between architect and client. This approach, recognizing current tendencies toward abstraction and objectification in architecture and architecture education, addresses the objective and the subjective, the body and the mind, sight and touch, the practical and the symbolic, as intertwined. Architecture curricula are usually divided into distinct and separate domains: design studio, architectural history, technology and, possibly, courses in human behaviour or human factors. The opportunity to discover how these domains of knowledge are interdependent is prevented by the structuring of knowledge. Students are expected to integrate these different domains themselves in their design projects. Architecture from the Inside Out will aid architecture students in that effort by exploring the interdependencies among space, matter, human activity and experience and suggesting how design can enhance these connections. It seeks to integrate what is so often kept separate. Teachers' experience in assigning Architecture Inside Out shows that students appreciate both the orientation and the examples it provides. Since 2000, when Architecture Inside Out was published, the need for such a book has only grown stronger. The increasing reliance on the computer, in school and in offices, can make design projects even more abstract, more disembodied and more distant from actual human experiences of spaces, textures and things. At the same time however, the increasing number of design-build programs and community design problems in architecture schools bring students face to face with real clients and actual conditions and materials; these situations require students' understanding of the topics Architecture from Within addresses. Similarly, the growing imperative to design green buildings requires greater consideration of use, materials and site and of design as a process. Architecture from the Inside Out will include recent, illustrated cases of buildings and other designed settings that do address the body, movement, human experiences of space and texture and everyday needs. These may well include work by Freecell, Denise Ho, Billie Tsien and Todd Williams, Walter Hood, Herzog and de Meuron and OMA. These projects and several recent or upcoming books indicate a growing interest in materiality and in giving primary attention to human needs and experience and patterns of movement. A second edition of Architecture Inside Out will be able to recognize, and to celebrate, these trends.