For our purpose, then culture may be said to be about a group of people who have a set of values and beliefs which embody ideals, and are transmitted to members of the group through culturation. These lead to a world view—the characteristic way of looking at the world and, in the case of design, of shaping the world. The world is shaped by applying rules which lead to systematic and consistent choices (to be discussed below) whether in creating a life-style, a building style, a landscape, or a settlement.
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One can also ask what culture do, as opposed to what they are. One view implicit in the above is that cultures or their constituents may be as properties of populations, i.e. the distinctive means by which such populations maintain their identity and relate to their environment. Another view is of culture as a control mechanism for everything humans do. A third is to look at culture as that structure which gives meaning to particulars. By considering the views of culture discussed here, and asking how they relate to built form, some insights might be gained.
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2.In addition, however and whatever culture is or does, one can question the utility of that concept in trying to understand built form and how it is used. It can be suggested that “culture” is both too global and too abstract to be useful. It is often helpful, as I have argued since the mid-70s, to clarify excessively abstract and broad concepts by “dismanting” them and then studying the components of culture. In response to “culture” being to global, I have proposed a sequence from culture, through world view, values, images\schemata, lifestyle to activity systems, suggesting that the last two offer a useful starting point. Note that activities comprise the activities themselves, how they are carried out, how grouped into systems and their meaning. The latter three aspects, are increasingly variable with culture and account for the extraordinary variety of environments created for many fewer activities. In response to the concept being too abstract, it is possible to make it more operational by discovering the social manifestations of culture which are potentially observable, such as family and kinship groups, family structures, institutions, social relationships, status and other roles, rituals, food habits and many others. These can be studied and can be related to the built environment, influencing the latter and being influences by it. Starting with these more specific, more concrete expressions of culture offers another way of relating it to built form.
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I have also distinguished between the core of a culture and its periphery, particularly in conditions of rapid culture change. What I mean by that is that certain elements (peripheral) are given up not only willingly but eagerly for new ones, but that others (core) are retained until the bitter end. What these are need to be discovered.
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In any case, these and other successive definitions, clarifications, reconceptualizations and “dismantlings” of the concept of culture enable us, at least in principle, both to understand and analyze cultural aspects of environment-behavior relationships and to “design for culture.” Clearly, much more work is needed.