1st Edition
Making Places for People 12 Questions Every Designer Should Ask
** Honorable Mention at the 2019 ERDA Great Places Awards **
Making Places for People explores twelve social questions in environmental design. Authors Christie Johnson Coffin and Jenny Young bring perspectives from practice and teaching to challenge assumptions about how places meet human needs. The book reveals deeper complexities in addressing basic questions, such as: What is the story of this place? What logic orders it? How big is it? How sustainable is it? Providing an overview of a growing body of knowledge about people and places, Making Places for People stimulates curiosity and further discussion. The authors argue that critical understanding of the relationships between people and their built environments can inspire designs that better contribute to health, human performance, and social equity—bringing meaning and delight to people’s lives.
Biography
Christie Johnson Coffin practices architecture in the Western United States and internationally in Taiwan, India, and Nicaragua, with a focus on social design for health-care and research laboratory buildings. Her university teaching includes the University of California, Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Polytechnic University, and the University of Oregon. She is the co-author of Changing Hospital Environments for Children.
Jenny Young teaches design and human factors in design. Her research on small town development focuses on the roles public buildings play in town stability and vitality. Her architectural practice includes consulting on schools, libraries, clinics, and designing residential projects. She is Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon.
'Creating environments that enable a diverse cross-section of people to thrive requires attention to human psychological and behavioral processes and physical needs. By expounding on twelve key design-focused questions, Making Places for People weaves a narrative of environmental design theory and techniques to enrich human experience, while referencing important works of architecture and planning from around the world. The book provides a framework for understanding how well designed built form can support healthy communities and foster human well-being.' - Dr. Lynne M. Dearborn, AIA, Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
'A great many architecture books present lavishly illustrated cases of completed projects without explaining in text what questions the projects addressed or how particular human needs were fulfilled. Christie Coffin and Jenny Young take a very different, welcome approach. In reply to a series of key questions they pose about people and architecture, in easily readable text with a few evocative images, they tell the stories of diverse places and projects that will inspire students, professionals and clients to discover their own answers.' - Karen A. Franck, Professor, New Jersey Institute of Technology and author of Design through Dialogue and Architecture from the Inside Out
'The jury was impressed by the book’s use of case studies to wisely illustrate the book’s thesis. They found the examples easy to understand and made a great addition to your explanations. Deliberations noted your book offers a fresh and exciting perspective to design practice and the application of design principles. Jury members agreed it makes a great addition to a design library.' - Mallika Bose, Coordinator, 2018 Great Places Awards, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Penn State
'In summary, I highly recommend Making Places for People, not only to colleagues who teach in the field of placemaking. The book will be valuable and relevant also to researchers and professionals.' - Gert-Jan HOSPERS, Radboud University & University of Twente
