Architecture is a constant presence in the study of human interaction-acting as both the ground on which human social behavior is performed and a means of shaping subjectivity itself. Proxemics was an attempt to visualize and instrumentalize these dynamics, appealing to both the social sciences and the emerging field of environmental design. Founded by anthropologist Edward T. Hall and taking shape between the departments of architecture and anthropology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, proxemics developed amidst cold war political tensions and intense social and civil unrest. Proxemics and the Architecture of Social Interaction presents selections from Hall's extensive archive of visual materials alongside a critical analysis that traces transformations in the fields of design and science. Together these materials illuminate a moment in American history when new spatial practices arose to challenge the environmental conditions of cultural, political, and racial identity.

How new conceptions of human-environment interaction became central to design theories and practices in the 1970s At the end of the 1960s, new models of responsiveness between humans and their environments had a profound impact on theories and practices in architecture, design, art, technology, media, and the sciences. The resulting initiatives-design philosophies, art installations, architectural projects, exhibitions, publications, and symposia-sought to bring together insights from biology, systems theory, psychology, and anthropology with modernist legacies of total design. In The Responsive Environment, Larry D. Busbea takes up this concept of environment as an object and method of design at the height of its aesthetic, technical, and discursive elaboration. Exploring emerging paradigms of environmental perception, patterning, and control as developed by Gregory Bateson, Edward T. Hall, Wolf Hilbertz, Gyoergy Kepes, Marshall McLuhan, Nicholas Negroponte, Paolo Soleri, and others, he shows how living space itself was reimagined as a domain capable of modification through input from its newly sensitized inhabitants. The Responsive Environment intercuts the development of new ideas about environmental awareness with case studies of specific architecture and design projects for responsive environments. Throughout, Busbea connects these theories and practices to the contemporary obsession with "smart" things: responsive technologies, intelligent environments, biomimetic materials, and digital atmospherics.

How new conceptions of human-environment interaction became central to design theories and practices in the 1970s At the end of the 1960s, new models of responsiveness between humans and their environments had a profound impact on theories and practices in architecture, design, art, technology, media, and the sciences. The resulting initiatives-design philosophies, art installations, architectural projects, exhibitions, publications, and symposia-sought to bring together insights from biology, systems theory, psychology, and anthropology with modernist legacies of total design. In The Responsive Environment, Larry D. Busbea takes up this concept of environment as an object and method of design at the height of its aesthetic, technical, and discursive elaboration. Exploring emerging paradigms of environmental perception, patterning, and control as developed by Gregory Bateson, Edward T. Hall, Wolf Hilbertz, Gyoergy Kepes, Marshall McLuhan, Nicholas Negroponte, Paolo Soleri, and others, he shows how living space itself was reimagined as a domain capable of modification through input from its newly sensitized inhabitants. The Responsive Environment intercuts the development of new ideas about environmental awareness with case studies of specific architecture and design projects for responsive environments. Throughout, Busbea connects these theories and practices to the contemporary obsession with "smart" things: responsive technologies, intelligent environments, biomimetic materials, and digital atmospherics.