Designing for designers - Jack L. Nasar

This book uses the approach of the seminal work The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch, by showing the importance of talking to people and gauging their shared mental images of places. That work transformed the way many design professionals and social scientists dealt with form. It complemented the "art" approach to design, in which users would be expected to move their chair to satisfy a designer's ego, with a social science approach that tried to gauge user reactions. This book brings attention to using the same approach for interiors and school buildings. The book discusses the findings for fifteen schools of design. The systematic user evaluations of the aesthetics, function, and technology reveal strengths to encourage in future designs, and weaknesses to avoid. Some of the findings on the design and process extend to all kinds of buildings on campus and elsewhere. Thus, although the book offers specific guidelines for future schools of design, it also offers guidelines with broader application to interiors for educational buildings and other building types, such as how to plan offices and gathering places to build community. This book should make readers more aware of problems in architectural interiors and of ways to make interiors work better for the building occupants.Features-- Brings a unique perspective to this important building type-- Applies a user-based and scientific approach to evaluate the interior design of fifteen schools of design-- Many of the findings for these interiors extend to all kinds of spaces on campus and elsewhere-- Offers guidelines for designs of the future