CONCLUSION
There are many other important issues which have not even been mentioned. This is clearly a vast topic which cannot be developed further here. Those interested will have to turn to the literature. But some of the implications of what I have been saying need to be traced.
Architects are very different to other people. There is evidence that architects’ values, lifestyles and preferences are different to most users’. There are also many different groups of users. The result is that a large variety of different types of environments need to be designed which are, to designers, counterintuitive and unlikely a priori. Their very unfamiliarity and incongruence with what designers like may take them appear disordered or chaotic. They are not---their order is merely one designers do not like, do not understand or that is incongruous for them.
Let me make two deliberately provocative statements which follow from the notion of designing for various users’ culture. The first is that the ultimate expression of a culturally responsive environment may be a designed environment which we do not like or even hate!! The second is the assertion that some of the best new environments today are to be found among the spontaneous settlements in developing countries: some of the worst are designed by architects. A profoundly important and disturbing question follows: how can people who may often be illiterate and who possess minimal resources and power often design so much better than professional designers?
Cultural responsiveness can be seen in terms of the individual designers or design; it can also be part of the general theories, objectives, values, reward systems, education, etc., of the profession.
It is what we could term the public professional aspects which are critical. There can be responsive design, open-endedness, good design and so forth on the part of enlightened individuals, but these will remain isolated instances without corresponding changes at the public, institutional level.