To clarify the concept of the culture responsiveness of built environments, consider a series of questions about it:
a. Why Culturally Responsive? That environments should be culturally responsive is , of course, a normative statement. Yet one can ask whether, and why, this quality is necessary, since it is not a self-evident objective. The modern Movement, for one, rejected this view implicitly by emphasizing “universality” and ignoring context and cultural specificity. Others have questioned this position explicitly saying, in effect, “let them adapt.” Of course, “cultural responsiveness” is still a minority position in architecture.
Before normative statements can be made one needs understanding of the problem: explanatory theory. One must understand what a thing is supposed to do, and why, before one proceeds with implementing it and before one can judge whether it dose it well. The validity of objectives must be evaluated before one evaluates whether objectives have been achieved. Clearly we cannot go into this here, so let me just say that there is a good deal of inescapable evidence for an intimate relationship between culture and built form and accept it as a valid goal for the purpose of this discussion. (In fact a lot of my work is specifically in support of this position, hence I certainly support it.)
While this is mainly a research question, both in general terms and in any given case, it is also partly an ethical and a value question, in two senses. First, there is an implicit (or explicit) commitment to pluralism and the importance and value of helping a variety of cultures and groups to survive. Secondly, there is an imperative to set objectives on the basis of the best available knowledge, research and user’s needs and wants.
The possible importance of the environment in this connection is also an open and researchable question. At the theoretical, explanatory level it has to do with issues of critically, the question of environmental determinism, culture core, the potential role of environments in the preservation of specific components of culture and many other issues such as the relative importance of built form vis-à-vis other aspects of culture. All these I have discussed at length elsewhere and they cannot be elaborated here. It is, in fact, becoming possible to specify the conditions under which culturally responsive environments may become important to the very survival of cultures and those circumstances where they are less important. One can also to specify which features or elements of the environment can be expected to be important in any given case and why environment can be expected to be important in any given case. This essential since even those believe in this position do not always succeed because the problem, requirements and means have not been fully understood. One must also remember that while “culture” is a very broad concept, the built environment is a small subset of it and architecture an even smaller one. They are not equals. Thus many other subsystems of culture are equally, and frequently even more, important. Moreover environmental design is embedded in culture rather than being a separate and equal element.