Overview

Inspired by the rise of environmental psychology and increasing support for behavioral research after the Second World War, new initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels looked to influence the human psyche through form, or elicit desired behaviors with environmental incentives, implementing what Joy Knoblauch calls “psychological functionalism.” Recruited by federal construction and research programs for institutional reform and expansion - which included hospitals, mental health centers, prisons, and public housing - architects theorized new ways to control behavior and make it more functional by exercising soft power, or power through persuasion, with their designs.

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9780822945734

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Reviews

Joy Knoblauch's detailed and carefully reasoned book on post-World War II federal construction programs takes a penetrating and critically important look at the relationship between design and psychology. At stake is not just the history of community hospitals, prisons, and housing projects, but the changing attitudes to expertise in the new world of psycho-bureaucracy. --Mark Jarzombek, author of The Psychologizing of Modernity: Art, Architecture, and History Joy Knoblauch connects psyche and form to examine a growing tendency to govern behavior through the environment. The result is an original contribution to the history of institutional architecture in postwar America with significant implications for our understanding of the power of architecture in an expanded field of government and expertise. --Kenny Cupers, University of Basel

Joy Knoblauch connects psyche and form to examine a growing tendency to govern behavior through the environment. The result is an original contribution to the history of institutional architecture in postwar America with significant implications for our understanding of the power of architecture in an expanded field of government and expertise. -Kenny Cupers, University of Basel Joy Knoblauch's detailed and carefully reasoned book on post-World War II federal construction programs takes a penetrating and critically important look at the relationship between design and psychology. At stake is not just the history of community hospitals, prisons, and housing projects, but the changing attitudes to expertise in the new world of psycho-bureaucracy. -Mark Jarzombek, author of The Psychologizing of Modernity: Art, Architecture, and History

Author Information

Joy Knoblauch is assistant professor of architecture at the University of Michigan in the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

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