The Meaning of the Built Environment: A Nonverbal Communication Approach

by Amos Rapoport

"Rapoport is concerned with the meanings which buildings, their contents, and their inhabitants convey, and the conclusions which can be drawn therefrom for procedures of architectural design to satisfy the people who will ultimately live in these buildings. . . . A challenging book on a subject that has had insufficient attention in the past." — Man and Environment

"Fills a significant it introduces the notion of environmental meaning so clearly that no reader will doubt the basic premise that the environment holds meaning as part of a cultural system of symbols, and influences our actions and our determinations of social order." — Design Book Review

"This is the second edition of a book first published in 1982. . . . Enthusiastic and inquiring as the reader is brought into the writer's thought processes." — Progress in Human Geography (England)

"It has merits not to be found in any other book in this much-discussed and little understood subject, to it is short, it is simple, and it is useful. It is even, in parts, entertaining....a book which will help architects to do their job better." — Architecture Australia
 

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction

253 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Zirvita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amos Rapoport brought into the study of architecture the rejection of purely formal studies, going instead into the realm of non-verbal patterns of communication. It surpasses deterministic views that favour differences in built spaces of particular groups as the result of space and environmental constraints, or scholarly views that see space as a purely specific cultural product.
The aim is to find how the built environment is ladden with and is able to transmit the non-verbal meaning present in every society/group/culture. Besides, space is seen as an independent variable during the process of creation of that meaning, exerting considerable influence on how humans behave around it.

[Sarah Al-Mutlaq · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looks Wooooow