The Circle of Environmental Knowledge and its Segmentation in Architecture Theory

Abstract

The section of the Russian theory of architecture, associated with the environmental paradigm, has been examined. Based on the fact of heterogeneity of this sphere of knowledge, noted by a number of researchers, the author tries to identify, and consider its topics and problematic, to trace the specifics of the environmental vision, the origins and causes of diversified theoretical settings. The existing differences in the interpretation of basic concepts ('environment', 'environmental design', 'environmental approach' etc.), attention to various theoretical and methodological bases and disciplines of environmental knowledge (philosophy, methodology, psychology of visual perception, environmental psychology, experimental aesthetics, art studies...), various treatment of sociocultural and professional problems (from compositional contextualism to participatory design from overcoming the functionalist reductionism to achieving ecological standards) allowed to identify and to explore seven segments of environmental knowledge. With the use of selfnames of some segments, they can be designated as "design of architectural environment", "user needs research", "socio-cultural research of urban environment", "research of design methodology", "visual perception studies", "environment-behavior studies" and "architectural and ecological studies". Applying the resources of Electronic library of Russia, the author analyzes "keywords", annotations, andlists of references of some 2500 papers, and in some cases, the full texts became the objects of terminological analysis.