Teaching Design with People in Mind

Teaching Design with People in Mind:
Social Factors at the College of Environmental Design, 1960s-1990

Exhibit Curators: Raymond Lifchez, Caitlin DeClercq, Ayda Melika

The Social Factors program, an innovative curriculum developed in the College of Environmental Design in the 1960s, introduced social science methods to teach the design of buildings and environments more responsive to human needs. Previous curricula and teaching focused on the aesthetic and technical aspects of architecture and landscape architecture.

This exhibit highlights the innovative approaches to design education that allowed students to translate socio-cultural values into physical forms. Social Factors faculty and students articulated a series of techniques to understand and define user needs, coordinate the contributions of practitioners from various allied disciplines to create integrated designs, and finally, evaluate the fit between people and the places they inhabit. Four aspects of the social factors curriculum will be explored:

• Rethinking studios: teaching architecture as a social art
• Ethnography and environment: teaching a sociological perspective of design
• Learning in the field: user needs in landscape architecture
• Community design centers: engagement beyond the classroom
  

While highlighting the fertile years of the Social Factors program in the 1960s-1980s, the exhibit also conveys its long-term impact on scholars, designers, and students at (and beyond) Berkeley today.

Curators: Raymond Lifchez, Caitlin DeClercq, Ayda Melika
Exhibit Team: Chris Marino, Cailin Trimble, Jason Miller, Miguel Nieto
Sponsor: Environmental Design Archives
March 1, 2016 to May 27, 2016
Hours: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/environmental-design-library