The Nature and Art of Workmanship by David Pye, The Arts and Crafts Movement by Gillian Naylor (review)

Books 371 tions as a private or public “landmark”, that is, its properties as amuss becomz relevant’. The arguments for richness and complexity in architectural space are supported by research (by Rapoport and Kantor, for instance) that indicates that humans prefer complex environments to simpleones. The author notes too that experiments with rats show that an increase in brain weight and intellectual capacity result from enriched environments. Theexistentialspaceof Norberg-Schulzis derived from the work of Piageton the origination of spatial concepts in the development of the child. Piaget shows how these individual concepts are based on social experiences. Norberg-Schulz implies, then, the ‘cultural dimension’ of man’s spatial concepts that is Hall’s ‘HiddenDimension’. Arrived at from differentpoints of view, the ideas developed by these two authors complement each other and often are congruent. Whereas NorbergSchulz , a professor of architecture, provides a generalized humanistic analysis of space, Hall, an anthropologist, provides a more specific program. Hall’s treatment of the perception of space is in purely physiological terms: immediate receptors (skin and muscles) and distance receptors (nose, ears and eyes). Since we are generally accustomed to think in terms of the visual perception of space, the elaboration of these other senses is significant. In another chapter, Hall insiststhat man stillcarries his animal heritage and so relates the spacing distances and territoriality in animals to the way the human animal distinguishes intimate, personal, social and public distances. His researches indicate that, although all culturesseemto differentiatethese unconscious spaces, the actual distances vary considerably, so that in personal distance an Arab, for example, ‘finds it essential to stay inside the olfactory zone. ...’ Sinceman is surrounded by this series of invisible bubbles, Hall insists that more architects and planners be aware that cramped livingand working spaces can force man into behavior, relationships or emotional outlets that are overly stressful and, therefore one can infer, at least anti-social. In largerpublic spaceand city planning,he shows how use is related to a country’s ‘life style’, contrasting such major conceptual differences as Western man’s path-orientation with the Japanese intersection-orientation (Norberg-Schultz would callitnode-oriented)wherebythesenodesarenamed but streetsare not. But Hall’s major anxiety is the lack of awareness of the effects of ethnic/cultural differences and urban/rural differences in view of the increasing patterns of emigration and urbanization. There is urgent need to provide a variety of spaces to meet varying life styles-something our homogenized planning and building practices do not allow for. Norberg-Schulz writes that ‘man’s existence is dependent upon the establishmentof a meaningful and coherent environmental image. . . . The task of the architect is to help man to find an existential foothold by concretizing his images and dreams’. Hall is much more specific,‘demanding’an environment that will ‘maintaina healthy density, a healthy interaction rate, a proper amount of involvement, and a continuing sense of ethnic identification’. Unlessthese conditionsare met, he predictsan everincreasing stress and strain in urban man. Stress experiments with animals based on inappropriate space and overcrowding result in what Hall calls a ‘populationsink’. ‘The animal studies’, he says, ‘teach us that crowding per se is neither good nor bad, but rather that over-stimulation and disruptions of social relationshipsas a consequence of overlappingpersonaldistancesleadto population collapse.’ One important study ‘demonstratesnot only that a wide variety of animalsarestressed from overcrowdingbut they suffer from exactlythe same diseases as man: high blood pressure, circulatory diseases, and heart disease, even when fed a low-fat diet’. Hallisworried, and rightly so, that thereexiststhe dangerous possibility of humans creating the conditionsof a population sink. His concern is very real, although I suspect that he believes optimistically that we have the time in which to make the requiredchanges. But the danger is closer:consider the preliminary disclosures from the ‘Doomsday Report’ prepared by the Club of Rome. The Club, a group of some 50 of the world’s scientists, addressed itself to the current trends in scientific, cultural and economicareas, beginning with man’s use of energy. Their prediction (based on a large number of inputs and computer analysis) is that in continuingpresentpracticeswe will havecompletely used up all sources of fossil fuel in the 1980s. The magnitudeof theeffectsof thiscondition(evengiven the...