Measure of People and Space Interactions in the Built Environment Towards Responsive Development

Abstract

This is a book that took me completely by surprise for two main reasons; first it concerns a subject matter that is not for the casual reader because it is complex and intangible, and secondly and more importantly it is by a group of Nigerian doctorate holders who graduated less than 5 years ago. In the Nigerian context this is extremely unusual and unprecedented. Every year I suspect hundreds if not thousands of Nigerians are awarded doctorate degrees from home and abroad which end up in library shelves and whatever knowledge these contain are lost to Nigeria and Nigerians. While some of these works never get disseminated because the researchers may not consider them much to write home about, others never get to see the light of day because the researchers simply never inculcated the academic spirit. Yet many of these works are extremely good and contain insights that could lead to breakthroughs in many fields. In addition, they could serve as inspiration for many researchers old and new. It is in this light that this book deserves praise and admiration. Here is a group that is thinking out of the box, that have started publishing their research works even before the ink on their doctorates is dry. The focus of the book is, ‘people and space interactions in different settings’. Each of the seven chapters of the book touches on one aspect or the other of this vast field. The book deals with cultural landscapes, sustainable housing settings, the environment and human response, spatial epidemiology, neighbourhood and health, and the subjectivity-objectivity continuum in man environment research. From the foregoing, it is obvious that various disciplines are touched and those to benefit from the work include, but not restricted to scholars of geography, anthropology, sociology, urban planning, architecture, and above all environment-behaviour studies. What is unique about the work is not the number of disciplines touched upon nor the numerous subject matters but what unites these diverse issues besides the focus on human relationship and response to the environment, and that is most of the authors are architects. The reason is simple; architects at least in Nigeria if not in Africa tend to downplay the academic aspects of architecture and over-emphasise the practical aspect of design. The end result is that architecture in Nigeria lacks theoretical depth and consequently, it tends towards an architecture without élan vital or panache. Thus, the book should be a demonstration of the possibility of uniting theory and practice in the profession of architecture. Furthermore, it is a first step toward focusing on an architecture for the people at least, if not by them or of them; how it is read, how it is interpreted and how meaning can be made out of a subject matter that can be complex and even complicated. In conclusion, one would like to state that the form and hence the orientation of the people and space interactions may differ but the underlying structure and hence the function remain valid for all the cases here. All one needs is the ability to see beyond the form and the orientation of the different approaches to the importance of the structure and the universals which could lead to the basis for drawing meanings in comparisons. A. A. Muhammad-Oumar Bayero University, Kano KANO