The purpose of this paper is to introduce a systematic method for deriving criteria that allow a professional designer to create a home environment that empowers the health, well-being and life goals of its inhabitants. The current version of that process is attached at the end of this document.

The first portion of this paper discusses the history of the development of this process and its application. The second portion is a paper that should be considered speculative rather than scientific and speaks to the theory that informs that process.

I am working to understand how to describe the behavior of, and map, the various complex interactive systems - psychological, social, and environmental - that inspire the criteria from which human beings construct their built environments. These questions all exist on the cusp of physics and psychology, on the divide between the material world and the mind, where perception meets environment, and as a result much of the discussion in this paper is related to that interface.

The claim is made herein that this process allows comparatively more accurate assessment and prediction of human responses to the built environment, and comparatively more accurate assessment of the behavior of family and social behavior relating to their intimate environment, and therefore more accurate and effective criteria for designing intimate environments for human beings.

A holistic view of those environmental relationships is proposed herein that underlies the development of the aforementioned systematic architectural programming process. However, it has only been vindicated by anecdotal research in non-controlled circumstances. One purpose of this paper is to inspire further and more capable assessment by qualified researchers.

I direct the reader towards research and theory that might offer some basis for speculations about the nature of the Intimate Environment. I give examples of various organisms, social structures, and artifacts that offer clues to how living things - including human beings - interact with their intimate environments to form interdependent relationships. I assert that features of those relationships are consistent with what is known of physical law - specific the property known as entropy and the property of homeostasis - in a similar manner to that first proposed by Erwin Schrödinger. I also assert that similar relationship structures appear in both biological and non-living systems.

I point to structures in nature that suggest how these relationships might have evolved and speculate about how a systems view might lead to general systemic laws governing biological organisms and their relationships with the environment. I suggest that observing patterns and forms that emerge naturally at certain thresholds in living individuals and social systems, patterns that appear in similar but simpler forms in non-living systems, might inform valid theory.

I suggest that some properties these biological patterns and forms take are systemic in natural selection and other evolutionary processes. I address the incremental nature of how such structures - at all levels - typically change over time. I point to recent findings that offer clues to how these relationships are embedded in brain function and expressed in human behavior, both within the individual and in society.

I propose that the profoundly social nature of human beings, the brain's capacity for creating cognitive models of the social and physical environment, and the interface between somatic and other sensory perception and the environment are all intimately related in specific ways that constrain human behavior and define self.

I assert that these evolving models occur as an unconscious emotional and cognitive landscape - or context - in the mind that strongly influences how individuals, couples, family groups, political and cultural systems - all of which are highly enmeshed with one another - perceive and respond to their intimate environments.

I point out that individuals are often unaware how profoundly this interactive process molds their perception and drives their physiological responses, which in turn guides actions, reactions, unconscious social goals, and other psychological concerns.

I speculate on this endemic human "blind spot", and how it might be explained by a general principle of natural systems. I discuss the corresponding value of self-consciousness and identify as a mechanism for directing the individual towards societal specialization and inherited temperament, and how it might function as a mechanism within a societal fractal dissipative structure.

I assert that many aspects of the built environment are unconsciously designed to fulfill deep-seated historic unconscious and reactive goals in individuals and social systems. Further, that these suites of attractions, aversions and other conscious and unconscious associations are nested in genotypes, phenotypes, the psychology of individuals, populations, language, culture, and the built environment.

I note that these same associations, attractions and aversions are embedded in the genetics, epigenetics, neural and synaptic structure of the nervous system of every organism at some level. I suggest that these same systemic properties in higher organisms are stimulated by hormones and neurotransmitters and other neural mechanisms, and are the physical building blocks of the individual self and society.

As they are physical, I suggest that these mechanisms exhibit a property similar to inertia. I suggest that this property limits the pace of biological and developmental change, societal evolution, and therefore the pace by which art and architecture can respond.

I assert that these embedded "design criteria," though often adaptive when they emerge, are systemic and change incrementally over broad spans of time, and at different rates in individuals and cultures, and as a result can lead to built environments that are not fitting or supportive to the more plastic psychology and technologies of individuals and social systems.

I assert that this endemic lack of alignment and responsiveness between individuals and the built environment can exacerbate stress, diminish personal and public health, and in extreme cases even lead to social disorder and general environmental degradation.

I argue that architecture should properly be preoccupied with creating fitting intimate environments for human beings, environments that are "alive," that empower constructive relationships between human beings, and that are tailored to the ecology of the natural and social ecosystems in which they exist.

Finally, I discuss the nature of a specific systematic process I have created and employed that is informed by this view. I suggest areas of research that might prove fruitful, and offer anecdotal evidence of its effectiveness with the hope that qualified researchers will consider investigating that claim in order to establish empirical basis for it.

Download pdf file of the bibliography from The Intimate Environment