ABSTRACT
Evolution. It is the first and last word in this book. This chapter, providing an overview, emphasizes the book’s theme that humans are of nature and an artifact of evolution. The better designers and planners understand how our perception and behavior reflect our evolutionary trajectory, the better they can design for people, creating environments that promote health and well-being. Outlining key hidden behaviors, Chapter 2 discusses thigmotaxis, our wall-hugging trait. Chapter 3, Patterns Matter, explores the primacy of vision for our species, and how we arrive in the world hardwired to look for one principal arrangement: the face. The importance of symmetry and how our responses to sharp versus curving shapes remain largely preset by evolution are reviewed in Chapter 4, Shapes Carry Weight. While previously discussed traits we share with other life, no other creature has the one discussed in Chapter 5, Storytelling is Key: our narrative ability, which always comes into play, even in our experience of architecture. Chapter 6, Nature is our Context, brings us back to our beginnings, reflecting on our perennial need to engage and stay connected with nature. Chapter 7, on Biometrics, reviews tools that let us see our hidden predispositions at work. And lastly, Chapter 8, The Twenty-First-Century Paradigm Shift, reveals how new understanding of how humans function reframes the history of how modern architecture, post-WWI, came about.
