Culture-Meaning-Architecture Critical Reflections on the Work of Amos Rapoport

This title was first published in 2000: This collection of essays provides an excellent integrated source for the latest thinking in multiple disciplines on the issue of culture and its relationship with built form and hence, human environmental experience. Whether one is primarily interested in how culture-built environment inquiry affects: theoretical issues, research approaches, research findings, practical applications, or has implications for teaching, this book provides an engaging dialogue in regard to each of these perspectives. As important, the book’s introduction provides a conceptual framework for integrating the various contributions in a meaningful and systemic fashion. Contributors come from disciplines including anthropology, architecture, human ecology, psychology and urban planning.

Contents: Introduction. Theoretical Inquiry: On the importance of theory; Amos Rapoport: scholar, conscience and citizen of the environment and behaviour field; House form and culture: what have we learnt in thirty years?; The new functionalism and architectural theory. Architectural Education: Studious questions; Amos Rapoport: modernism’s apologist?; The architect as artist or scientist?: a modest proposal for the architect-as-cultivator; Studious questions, studio responses. Architectural Anthropology: Culture and built form - a reconsideration; Journey of self-discovery: from complexity to street encounters and beyond; Culture, politics, and the plaza: an ethnographic approach to the study of urban public spaces in Latin America; Mnemonic meanings of the American capitol; The cultural revolution in architecture.