We are now witnessing a renewal of the anthropological study of the perception and interpretation of landscape as social process, and how space is culturally construed, gendered, envisioned, and most decisively, physically built. While the subdiscipline of Environment-Behavior Studies covers the study of human behavior and the environment, including both the unbuilt and built, Architectural Anthropology focuses solely on human constructive or building behavior.

Architectural Anthropology appears as a complex, many-sided field. With the help of insights from architecture and other disciplines that have an impact on the field, the contributors to this study seek to develop new methods that can better serve to understand, describe, and represent the worldviews embodied in the different built environments of all societies.