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Abstract

The words of Winston Churchill, spoken in 1943, provide the philosophical basis for this study of the social implications of the built environment: “We shape our buildings and afterward our buildings shape us.” Using the work of ecological psychologists, sociologists, and organizational design theorists, this paper explores the reciprocal relationship between buildings and the organizations that create and occupy them. Although no comprehensive theory of the social implications of building design has been developed, these theorists provide concepts that are useful for understanding the organizational processes of shaping and being shaped by the built environment. Insights from the modernist, symbolic-interpretive, and postmodernist perspectives are applied to the experience of design and construction of a medical center in the creation of the Center for Advanced Healing.

Keywords

Tertiary care hospital culture and the built environment

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Buildings and Organizations: The Shaping and the Shaped

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