ABSTRACT
The science of studying the effects of environment on behavior is known variously as environmental psychology, man-environment relations (MER) or environment/behavior studies (EBS). It was based on the 1950s research findings of B. F. Skinner and other early behavioral psychologists. Environmental psychology was a growth industry for architectural academics in the 1960s and 1970s. Some schools even switched their program names from “architecture” to “environmental design.” UC Berkley was a leader in that regard. There was the promise of architectural research becoming a legitimate social science – or at the very least providing scientific credibility to architectural decision making. The project of MER was to improve the behavior of the participant in the environment in an act of architectural determinism. The effort was doomed, as it was based on a simplistic model of our relationship to our environment. The stimulus/response causal relationship that was assumed was naïve. It turned out that the human species is not as easy to condition as Pavlov’s dogs. Behaviorism was the precursor to functionalism in psychology, just as MER was the scientific side of functionalism in architecture. Even though remnants of MER still exist through groups such as the US-based Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), they are a fringe group with little audience other than themselves. However, with reawakened twenty-first-century interest in building performance, concern for the effective and efficient human use of space may resurrect the study of behavior and environment. It is to be hoped that this time around the effort will be better integrated into the culture of architectural production. The promise of a responsive architecture that is capable of adapting to changing environmental and human needs may spur on a renewed interest in the relationship between behavior and environment. In the future architecture won’t try to change behavior, but rather be changed by behavior.
