ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the term terroir, generally used in the culinary arts, as applicable to the way in which buildings respond to a region’s particular environmental factors such as seasons, solar orientation, soil content, water sources, prevailing winds, and adjacent architectures. It explores architecture’s relationship to compass points, solar orientation, water, earth, and sustainability. It further considers vernacular architectural traditions as well as combined social, economic, and environmental pressures. Finally it provides a set of tools for reading and designing sites that references Kevin Lynch’s five operative terms of paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks, concepts of phenomenology, and Stan Allen’s concept of field conditions.
