History and Precedent in Environmental Design History and Precedent in Environmental Design Amos Rapoport University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, Wisconsin Plenum Press • New York and London Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Rapoport, Amos. History and precedent in environmental design / Amos Rapoport. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ). Includes indexes. ISBN-13: 978-0-306-43445-7 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4613-0571-2 001: 10.1007/978-1-4613-0571-2 1. Environmental engineering - History. 2. City planning - History. 3. Streets-Design and construction-History. I. Title. TA170.R37 1990 90-7271 CIP Drawings and photographs, unless indicated otherwise, were prepared by the author. © 1990 Plenum Press, New York Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1990 A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher "For many anti scientists objectivity is not so much impossible as reprehensible." -John Passmore, Science and Its Critics, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, .1978, p. 91. "With its deconstructionists in literary criticism, its ordinary language and other philosophers, and its novelists, our age may one day come to be known in intellectual history for its role in the advancement of techniques to prove that reality doesn't exist." -Joseph Epstein, "The sunshine girls," Commentary, Vol. 77, No.6, June 1984, p. 67. Preface This book is about a new and different way of approaching and studying the history of the built environment and the use of historical precedents in design. However, although what I am proposing is new for what is currently called architectural history, both my approach and even my conclusions are not that new in other fields, as I discovered when I attempted to find supporting evidence. * In fact, of all the disciplines dealing with various aspects of the study of the past, architectural history seems to have changed least in the ways I am advocating. There is currently a revival of interest in the history of architecture and urban form; a similar interest applies to theory, vernacular design, and culture-environment relations. After years of neglect, the study of history and the use of historical precedent are again becoming important. However, that interest has not led to new approaches to the subject, nor have its bases been examined. This I try to do. In so doing, I discuss a more rigorous and, I would argue, a more valid way of looking at historical data and hence of using such data in a theory of the built environment and as precedent in environmental design. Underlying this is my view of Environment-Behavior Studies CEBS) as an emerging theory rather than as data to help design based on current "theory." Although this will be the subject of another book, a summary statement of this position may be useful. Since EBS began as a new discipline, I have tried to see it as a basis for developing a new theory of design. In so doing I have differed in several important respects from most of the work in that field. From the beginning I have stressed the need to develop theory even at the level of EBS itself, and I have thus emphasized synthesis and scholarship rather than application and "relevance." In the majority view, EBS is seen as a more or less "scientific" way of helping designers through programming, evaluation, or providing a data base. My own minority view is that EBS can go conSiderably beyond that: It can become the basis for the development of a new kind of theory of design­ one based on a science rather than an art metaphor (Rapoport 1983b, 1986e). That is, it can replace traditional approaches. Note that I do not say architectural theory because ·"New" is somewhat of a misnomer even in my own case. I proposed a course on architectural history at Berkeley in 1964 which is, in outline, essentially the argument of this book. vii viii PREFACE this new theory needs to deal with all designed environments, using the term design most broadly as any purposeful change to the face of the earth-a matter of great importance in this book. One consequence is that even "natural" landscapes are now effectively designed: Nearly all landscapes are cultural landscapes. This is a very differ­ ent, and much more fundamental, kind of endeavor in which one tries to apply our growing knowledge about humans to an understanding of built environments and ultimately to the design of better environments. In developing theories, generalization is of great importance. However, I have long argued that valid generalizations about people and environments can only be made if based on the broadest possible evidence. I have thus insisted that this evidence must include the full range of what has been built: preliterate, vernacular, popular, and spontaneous (squatter) environments as well as the more familiar high-style settings; one must also include the relationships among these different environments; all cultures, so that the evidence must be cross-cultural; and the full time span of built environments so that the evidence must, therefore, be historical. Moreover, I have pOinted out that the latter means not just the last few centuries in Europe and the United States, or even the 5,000 years of traditional architectural history, but rather a period of close to 2 million years all over the globe. Only in these ways can one be certain of being able to trace patterns and regularities as well as detect Significant differences and hence make valid generalizations. In working at this emerging grand synthesis, I have tended not to engage in empirical work but in the scholarly analysis and synthesis of work already in existence in a wide variety of disciplines as well as the actual environments themselves-or descriptions of them. In that respect, the characteristics of my work seem close to those that are generally accepted as broadly describing the humanities. As I understand it, the subject of the humanities at its broadest is the product of all human culture wherever or whenever created. Each new interpreter builds on the work of those who have preceded him or her, and this enterprise needs to be not only historical but interdisciplinary and multicultural as well. This is the way EBS should proceed, while taking a more ex­ plicitly "scientific" approach. As environment-behavior studies have developed, they have tended to diverge from what could be termed· mainstream design theory. This divergence seemingly has become even more marked during the past few years with the development of so-called postmodemism and its successors. * One of the characteristics of these is a revived interest in historicism. Yet, paradoxically, it is preCisely this unlikely, and apparently completely contradictory, development that, I believe, may provide an opportunity for some relationship between mainstream design "theory" and EBS-based design theory. This is not only an example of the critical importance in scholarship of establishing commonalities among apparently unrelated areas. It also provides a possibility of providing a valid base for addressing some of the very real criticisms of design raised by postmodernist critics that, however, they have not re­ solved successfully. This potential link is the interest in history shared by architectural "theorists" and designers and also central to my approach to EBS to be discussed in this book. I believe ·"Fashions" in architecture seem to change as rapidly as in dress; the half-life of current architecture is very short. Moreover, these changes are rather superficial and "cosmetic." PREFACE ix that taking an EBS approach will provide both the rigor and the data that current interest in history lacks. * The central question being addressed is clearly the relation among past, present, and future-in this case the possible lessons of history for environmental design theory and how these lessons might be learned. Four broad positions are possible on this, as also in looking at vernacular design or other cultures. Such material can be ignored; it can be rejected as irrelevant; it can be copied directly; or one can learn from it by deriving lessons through the application of various models, concepts, and principles to the material in question. My suggestion is that some of the models, concepts, and principles that have been developed in EBS will help provide valid lessons when based on the great body of environmental evidence that we possess. This is the purpose of this book: to develop more rigorous ways of deriving lessons from historical precedents for the purpose of generalizing more validly about human and humane environments, thus leading to a new theory of deSign. It had been my original intention to write a single book about both because they are so intimately linked. However, as both projects, particularly the one on theory, grew, this became impossible. Thus the subject of this new theory will be the topic of another book to follow this one. Consequently, the argument about history will have to stand on its own. I hope that the argument here proposed is sufficiently self-contained to do so. I also hope that the connection to theory will be clear-at least implicitly. In addition to general questions, I have also been working over the past few years on some more specific studies that try to identify the lessons that the past (in the broad sense described) can have for design theory. These include studies about vernacular design, about appropriate ways of designing for Third World countries (seen as a paradigm for design generally), about the origins of buildings and settlements, and lessons from traditional environments for energy efficiency.