BEHAVIORAL SETTINGS

Behavioral settings are purely physical characteristics of spaces, the objects they contain and the envelopes that define them, there is something far more important to us than that. But in general our relationship is not directly with spaces or buildings that matters most to us, but our relationships with other people.

What others think and expect of us is one of the most central of the influences that govern the way we lead our lives. It is our reputation and our association with others that we feel most strongly about. So it is the way space facilitates and inhibits these relationships with which we will be mostly concerned. Places have synomorphy when there is congruence between people’s actions and the physical and social setting

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There are several great forces at work here, and perhaps the most important are those of

• Privacy
• Community

It is how space enables these two appropriately that forms many of the basic components of the language we shall explore. These two appear in almost every building and space we inhabit in some form or other.

Other great forces are those of

• Ritual
• Display
• Surveillance

Some spaces exist almost solely to allow us to act out social rituals, as in a church. Others serve to display, not just objects as in an art gallery, but also ourselves in our society. Some spaces need to permit the supervision of some of us by others. This is most obviously so in a prison, but also more subtly in a hospital or a library. Space that facilitates display may not be good at providing for privacy. Space that is public domain may need to be recognizably different to space that is private domain. We rely upon space to create places appropriate to certain kinds of behaviour and to tell us what they are.