Compensatory Response Families

Bryant Park, New York (my photo)

Once again, my weekend obligations preclude me from dedicating time to an original blog post. Thankfully, sharing an excerpt from Bill Kleinsasser’s self-published textbook SYNTHESIS remains a reliable alternative, one I’m always happy to exercise when I’ve got too much on my plate.

With characteristic pithiness in the following excerpt from the 1981 edition of SYNTHESIS, Bill catalogued some of the negative traits found among impoverished built environments and specified corresponding design strategies we can employ to avoid the shortcomings of such places and spaces. He referred to these strategies as compensatory response families. I have linked other posts from my SYNTHESIS series that expand upon each of these families; check them out if you haven’t done so previously.

Compensatory Response Families

Dilemma: Missing essentials (needed facilities and relationships among facilities are simply not present).

• Response: Inclusive analysis of “life space” requirements (identification of needed facilities, needed groupings, critical distances, needed density or facilities, many scales).

Dilemma: Lack of choice (the feeling that we have little or no opportunity to realize, use, and enjoy diversity and variation in the built-environment).

• Response: Consolidation of facilities (density), attention to spatial variation for its own sake, establishment of changeability (for future adjusting).

Dilemma: Lack of openness (the feeling that a place offers little opportunity for spontaneous, innovative use.

• Response: Establishment of “precise-generality,” “undesignated-ness,” diversity.

Dilemma: Fear and confusion about what we are getting into (as brought on by overwhelming size of buildings, disorientation, too-sudden changes, too much at once, etc.).

• Response: Attention to considerations of scale (viewpoints of users, character of surroundings, user’s previous experience), establishment of previews and transitions, establishment of appropriate organizational structure.

Dilemma: Lack of control over the places we use (little or no chance to imprint, change, adjust, choose).

• Response: Establishment of imprintable and changeable parts, establishment of appropriate spatial variety.

Dilemma: Loneliness (the feeling that we cannot make adequate contact with others, the feeling that a place is uninviting).

• Response: Establishment of supports for interaction.

Dilemma: Unwanted exposure (the feeling that we are unable to withdraw when we wish to do so . . . or that the places we may withdraw to are unsatisfactory).

• Response: Establishment of supports for retreat and withdrawal.

Dilemma: Disconnection from other experience (the feeling of unreality).

• Response: Establishment of physical and historical continuity (making places a part of what exists rather than separated from).

Dilemma: Lack of sensory stimulation and richness (the feeling that our surroundings are bleak, boring, sterile, impersonal).

• Response: Establishment of appropriate complexity, imprintability/changeability, multi-functioning parts, many levels of meaning.

Dilemma: The feeling that a built place (or the built environment generally) is not the best we can do . . . not inspiring.

• Response: Eloquence in regard to realization of all the above responses. Poetic impact.

WK / 1977