Environmental & Architectural
Phenomenology Newsletter
Selected Articles (Book Review)
Rachel Kaplan, Stephen Kaplan, and Robert L. Ryan, 1998. With People in Mind: Design and Management of Everyday Nature. Washington, D. C.: Island Press.
Written by two psychologists and a landscape architect, this book is an innovative effort to apply psychological research on the human experience of nature to environmental design. By "nature," the authors do not refer to wilderness or environments entirely natural. Rather, the concern is much broader and involves:
the everyday, often unspectacular, natural environment that is, or ideally would be, near by. This includes parks and open spaces, street trees, vacant lots, and backyard gardens, as well as fields and forests. Included are places that range from tiny to quite large, from visible through the window to more distant, from carefully managed to relatively neglected (p. 1).
Intriguingly, most of the research findings from which the authors draw their design and policy recommendations is quantitative, yet their model for presenting these recommendations is intuitive and qualitative-viz., architect Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language (Oxford University Press, 1977). Thus, the core of People in Mind is 45 patterns that the authors "consider particularly important in the context of a people-oriented approach to the design and management of natural environments" (pp. 3-4). Format-wise, each pattern is numbered and titled, then justified and illustrated in 2-4 pages of text, drawings, and photographs that include design suggestions and examples. To give the reader a sense of a typical pattern, a portion of "Enhancing familiarity" (pp. 35-36) is presented in the box on the next page.
In organizing their 45 patterns, the authors break their discussion into three major sections. The first set of patterns highlights design and policy means for making natural environments that appeal to people and allow them to feel safe and "in place." A major focus of these patterns relates to ease of orientation and the possibility of getting lost. For example, the first pattern on way-finding, "Regions," states that "coherent regions are helpful in way-finding" (p. 51), while the pattern, "Orientation for the new visitor," says that "key decision points need to be easily identified" (p. 57).
The second group of patterns involves environmental elements like entrances, vistas, trees and water-all of which are said to support central human needs like locomotion, stimulation, and a sense of well being. For example, the chapter on "Views and Vistas" incorporates four patterns: (1) "Enough to look at," which says that "a vista is more engrossing if it has extent;" (2) "Guiding the eye"-"a captivating view provides information about where to look;" (3) "More than meets the eye"-"A vista engages the imagination;" and (4) "Think view"-"Consider opportunities for providing views" (pp. 101-08).
The last group of patterns focuses on user participation in the planning and design process. A central question is how the different strengths and concerns of experts and laypeople can be balanced and become the basis for practical design and policy decisions. For example, "The art of inviting feedback" states that "the format for getting feedback has to be friendly and appropriate" (p. 134), while "Opportunities for participation" says that "permitting local involvement needs to be an ongoing part of management" (p. 137).
For some readers, many of the guidelines in this book will seem obvious and without the need of the copious list of supporting empirical studies provided in the bibliography. On the other hand, the frequent failure of landscape architects and other designers to invest ordinary places with a sense of nature indicates the value that such simple conclusions might have, both for professionals and the lay public.
The main emphasis of People in Mind is the human dimension of the person-nature relationship, thus the authors emphasize that their concern is "designing and managing natural areas in ways that benefit the tranquility, the reasonableness, and the effectiveness of the people who come in contact with them" (p. x). In this sense, the 45 patterns are extremely broad and, eventually, need extension and amplification, especially in regard to variations in geography, natural region, and specific site. One concern is that the type of natural environment the authors emphasize as ideal seems to be a North American temperate landscape with plenty of trees, views, and water features. Can the authors' patterns be translated to other locales and cultures and, if so, what sorts of specific landscape features and design qualities would be needed?
In this regard, one thinks of landscape architect Sherry Dorward's Design for Mountain Communities (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990-see EAP, winter 1991), which also draws on the "pattern language" format but uses essential qualities of mountainous environments themselves to derive experiential possibilities and constraints for design and policy. At some point, there is a need to balance the human environmental needs highlighted in People in Mind with the particular ways that specific environmental, regional, and geographic qualities of a place support or stymie those needs.
People in Mind is an excellent start for thinking about and making natural places in the everyday world. In this sense, the book is important as a primer for beginning design students, and perhaps, more so, as a book that public leaders and concerned laypeople should be introduced to when planners, designers, and policy makers seek to improve communities and places. On the other hand, the guidelines of the book are only a beginning and need, especially, amplification as they can be applied to the specific landscape, region, culture, and people that face change.
-- David Seamon