Environmental Design Evaluation

As the nature of the field of environment-behavior relations is interdis- ciplinary, the collaboration of three persons of diverse professional backgrounds in writing this book is therefore not surprising. This col- laboration started in 1972 with the offering of a graduate seminar "e;Envi- ronment, Behavior, and Design Evaluation"e; at the University of Massa- chusetts. Several research projects dealing with design evaluation which have been conducted at the University are also included as case studies in this book (Chapter III): the ELEMR study and the Visitor Center study. Two of the authors have worked as part of the instructional team in the seminar, and all of the authors have participated in varying degrees in the ELEMR Project. The authors' backgrounds in design, psychology, and landscape architecture suggest, by example, that professionals with diverse backgrounds but a common interest in environment-behavior problems can indeed learn to communicate and to collaborate. Since design evaluation is a new field and very little specific litera- ture on the subject exists to date, we hope this book fills a current need.