Re: "Stephen Eric Van Hoose" <vanhos who-is-at rpi.edu>

Peter Smagorinsky (psmagorinsky who-is-at ou.edu)
Fri, 24 Oct 1997 12:00:21

This seems like a good opportunity to refer to MCA, Vol. 4, No. 3, and the
symposium on Sarason's work on the creation of settings. This symposium
was my introduction to Sarason and this facet of activity theory (if that's
how he grounds himself). As I understand it, he's talking primarily about
the creation of behavioral or social settings, although some that he refers
to (the United Nations, forced busing) have physical housing. Here are
some salient features of created settings, as reviewed in the symposium:

1. Any one behavior setting is inevitably interconnected with other
behavior settings, a fact that those who create a setting rarely recognize
or take seriously. That is, the creating of a setting inevitably, always,
impacts on and is impacted upon by existing settings. And so the creating
of a setting such as forced busing did not take into account the disruption
of other established communities and institutions.

2. The creation of settings has as one of its major variables the
phenomenology of power.

3. The planning of settings rarely foresees disruptions--all those pot
holes that doom the creation of settings, large or small. Settings
inevitably become other than what their planners envision. Planners rarely
adopt the "what if" stance--they rarely seriously and systematically list
and think through the predicatoable problems that might arise.

I've worked in school facilities where all came into play (one Chicago-area
h.s. hired a California architect to design an expansion, which included
open-air walkways that required kids to walk outdoors during brutal winter
weather--these were eventually enclosed in a later redesign).

I'm wondering: Did Sarason attend to physical aspects of setting in his
detailed writing on the topic? How do his views on the creation of
settings affect the discussion of architecture that recurs here
occasionally, and how is it tied to social issues regarding activity?

If you didn't get a chance to read the symposium I suggest taking a look--I
only got to it this week and am glad I did.

Peter

At 04:50 PM 10/24/97 +0200, you wrote:
>
>So, let me ask a couple of questions back: your project is a design
>project, are you envisioning some kind of ideal architecture for the
>education of the future (starting from scratch, utopia of the late 90s,
>which might be interesting) or are you envisioning a re-design project
>(adapting something existing for the needs of today and tomorrow, which
>sounds to me both more interesting and more difficult)?
>
>Eva
>