About meaning/quality of place in the built environment : a return to reason

It is the opinion of this writer that the success or failure of a "place" or space as defined by architectural or urban design terms is linked not only to its physical boundaries and the reality of its elements and their material composition, but also to the divergent meanings and the associations that they invoke within the observer. It is further my opinion that in the past, in a time when the "individual" was more directly involved, better able and more willing to take part in affecting the shaping of our environment, through the craft of building, the quality of "meaning" of which I speak was achieved as a natural by-product of this process. Because of this integration the meaning and quality of a place was better perceived "commonly" or generally by the larger public audience. The users felt more directly connected to the environment in which they lived. As the "individual" was removed from the process of creation and construction his absence was perceivable in the product of those activities, our built environment. As a result our spaces and places for living, our architecture, became more and more removed from the collective experience, more barren, less related to, or grounded in, the human experience and the human functions they were to support. The results were that the places we live in, work in, play in, were perceived as, and thereby often became, alienating and cold. The fact is, that while in many cases our newly constructed physical boundaries or objects, their functions, and their activities were still as the old, the places did not work nor do they work today. They work neither at all, or, as well as one might expect if evaluating only their physical elements. It is the intention of this thesis to attempt to analyze and describe the process, the ways in which meaning can be designed into or added to the environment and its architecture through acquiring an understanding of the process by which it occurs, or has occurred, naturally. I wish to study how this process can be integrated into our current practices of design and construction, and determine when, where, and how our current practices should be changed to accommodate what I see as an imperative to re-introduce "meaning" into our built environment.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1981

Author dc:creator

• Reed, Ronald Thomas

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Julian Beinart.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/69256

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/69256