Explanatory stories of human perception and behavior in buildings

Abstract

This paper is motivated by a perceived disconnect between standards and guidelines for supporting building design and operation professionals on the one hand and contemporary fundamental research findings in pertinent human sciences. In other words, the plethora of recent highly detailed studies do not appear to have been crystalized into versatile explanatory theories accessible to practice-oriented professionals in the building delivery process. In fact, to locate instances of high-level and intuitively comprehensible explanatory models of human perception and behavior, one may need to revert back to intellectual traditions originated as far back as in late nineteenth century. A review of a number of such explanatory models suggests that they display, despite their differences in levels of detail and degrees of sophistication, a few recurrent motifs. To revisit these models is rewarding not only from the historical point of view. Their conceptual transparency has arguably the potential to inspire the development of a new generation of accessible high-level explanatory theories of human perception and behavior.