Exploring the Built Environment
Using ideas and tools from psychology, economics, market research, management, and human experience...

Steps to Understanding the Built Environment

                                                                                                                                ... and doing something about it.

As with so many things, our built environment is complex. So many factors... and they form a complex web of interactions.

For those aspiring to improve human welfare, this offers insights and methods into how to explore and intervene in the built environment from different perspectives - not just from the traditional viewpoints of architects and planners, but using the tools of other disciplines, economists, mathematicians, psychologists, historians, and perhaps even the marketing man.  

One approach is to work to understand people better - after all, the built environment exists to serve their complex needs, not just for basic shelter, but to address what are the fascinating aspects of just being human.

If you want a free download of our most recent book CLICK HERE, or to purchase a physical book, go to the bookshop page.

Understanding architecture is a complex and sometimes curious activity, in part because the subject involves, many different disciplines: physics, structural and mechanical engineering, management, geotechnics, security systems, energy management, economics... One of the most complex, and fascinating, is the way buildings interact with people: their builders, their owners, their users - and the people who create them.

We seek to explore some of those areas through serious applied research, and provide some guidance to all those people who are involved with buildings and other forms of urban environment, so that we may all benefit from better built environments.

What might be strange to some people who have become used to traditional ways of looking at architecture, is that these explorations try to be evidence-based and, to the extent possible, quantitative. We use the tools of mathematics, management, market research, psychology, and other disciplines to assist practitioners and policy-makers to make better decisions about the environments in which we live.

In keeping with this objective, numerous books and articles have been created, including most recently a book that explores the complex relationships between people and the visual aspects of buildings and urban spaces...

Other sites of interest include:

• The Right Angle Journal A publication we are affiliated with.
• Link to colour images from the book 'Understanding Ugly'
• Cambridge Architectural Research  A well-established British built environment 'think tank' and consultancy with which we work.
• Ontario Association of Land Economists