BEHAVIORAL ARCHITECTURE:
Design as if People Mattered
Clovis Heimsath received the
bachelor’s and master’s degrees from
Yale University. A member of the
American Institute of Architects, he
founded Clovis Heimsath Associates to
provide comprehensive design
services, from graphics and interiors
for individual clients
planning and
to
systems development at the
community-planning level.
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CLOVIS HEIMSATH
Clovis Heimsath Associates
AS AN ARCHITECT who has spent
most of his careerpracticing in Houston
and the surrounding area, I am proud of
the vigorous, productive business cli-
mate of the metropolis. For many, this
economic good health is evidenced by
such architectural monuments as the
new Hyatt Regency, Penzoil Place, and
the Galleria. To some extent, I share
the enthusiasm of those who visit Hous-
ton and view these inanimate paeans to
our technology, but as an architect, I
must also wonder how well these
facilities serve people.
Take, for example, the Galleria. The
complex relates hotel and commercial
functions, but it is separated from
Houston by a sea of parking. This ar-
rangement is not atypical or peculiar to
Houston. We have become so accus-
tomed to viewing construction only in
terms of buildings that we forget the
people who use them. The typical hos-
pitality facility is a closed environment
set apart from the city in every way; it
effectively isolates the visitor from the
town.
40
This isolation is only one symptom
of the failure to design buildings &dquo;in-
side out&dquo;
-
with consideration first for
the people who use them. Another of
my favorite examples is an escalator in
the Galleria: it transports users down
one level to the parking area. Weighing
the costs of escalators against the ben-
efits derived in this particular in-
stance, there is no social or functional
justification for this escalator- except
as a symbol of extravagance.
In the following paragraphs, I wish
to suggest how the hospitality industry
can, in the design of its buildings, avoid
this and like extravagances. My thesis
is that behavioral architecture can pro-
vide the guidance necessary to make
buildings of all kinds, but especially
hospitality facilities, better suited to the
needs of their users.
What is Behavioral Architecture?
Behavioral architecture requires
sophisticated insights that did not come
from architects; they came from a new
breed of behavioral psychologists who
looked over into
field, briefly at
our
first, and then intently as they
more
discerned that we were constructing
buildings without knowledge of people
-
with assumptions about people that
were naive, or totally false, or, in
some cases, downright destructive. So
behavioral psychologists came en
masse into our field not soon
-
enough, but probably at the right time,
since architecture had not been in such
flux since the beginning of the modern
movement.
Behavioral psychologists demon-
strated to architects that we did not
know about roles, repetitive roles that
define the activities of people. So ar-
chitects began reading and thinking
about roles. Today those of us practic-
ing behavioral architecture begin every
assignment by determining the roles
performed in the building. My own
hypothesis, argued in several publica-
tions,’ is that all human activity places
humans in a service-served relation-
ship. If this theory is valid, it casts
on human interaction.
significant light
For example, let us suppose a superior
calls in his associate. It is not too dif-
ficult to fit this situation to our
paradigm because we can define ser-
vice and served to include the ebb and
flow of conversations, one party lead-
ing with an idea and the second re-
sponding in a smooth shift of roles. The
service-served concept, while fuzzy in
some situations (like the family) and
slightly clouded in a business situation,
is crystal clear when it comes to buying
goods, eating, sleeping, getting the
room made up, and checking out. In
a hotel, the served person is the guest;
the service persons are any of a num-
ber of service subgroups, all working
together to make the service program
work smoothly.
Activities
Defining roles is only the com-
mencement of the behavioral adven-
For example, see: Clovis Heimsath, Behavioral
1
Architecture: Toward an Accountable Design Process
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977).
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ture that ends with turning buildings
inside-out. From roles we must ad-
vance to a consideration of activities.
Behavioralists have categorized all
that we do into prototypical activities
-
the rituals we have been performing The architect must tune into the
for thousands of years: eating, sleep- choreography of human
ing, providing shelter and creature activities - the ritualswe have
comforts, sex, nurturing our young. been performing for thousands
However we draw up the list, we must of years: eating, sleeping,
admit two facts: ( 1 ) every man and providing shelter and creature
woman must live these rituals to sur-
comforts ...
vive ; and (2) there are none we have
failed to discover, for at least in the
commonplace, life pattern is thor-
our
oughly defined. For the architect, the
important aspect of this commonplace
ritual of activities is that it is double-
faced. If my proposition holds, in each
activity there is a definable performer
of service and a person served. Each
activity, therefore, must have a subset
of at least two activity patterns, one for
each participant. More important, these
activities must be performed simul-
taneously and the architect must
-
tune into this choreography. The place
where this ritual is performed will
either make the task of serving and
being served easier or it will constrain
the participants. Here, then, is the first
role of architecture. Note how far down
in the hierarchy it is found: first come
people, then service and served roles,
then activities and the patterns required
by activities, and finally the environ-
ment.
Programming
If the above seems a whirlwind tour
of behavior, let us see if we can treat
programming with the same dispatch.
In the process of building we establish a
pattern of decision making that is
reversible only with extreme difficulty
and at tremendous cost. We have all
heard the story of the woman who ar-
rives at the construction site of her new
home after it is framed, finds it &dquo;all
wrong,&dquo; and moves the windows
around. Multiply the impact of this
story a thousandfold and you have the
anxiety each architect experiences at
the prospect of going back. The ar-
41
 The Waterwood National Country Club, designed
by the author, is part of a larger development lo-
cated in Lake Livingston, Texas. The club’s ex-
terior and interiors are shown on these and subse-
quent pages.

Much grading was required to achieve a twofold purpose in the design of the Water-
wood National Country Club: an attractive, sweeping entranceway and, on the building’s
back side, the elevation required for a view of the links and the tennis courts.
Facing page, top: The clubhouse deck, on the second level, offers a splendid view of all
activities.
Bottom: A view, from the golf course, of the cabanas, located a short distance from the club
and connected by a series of carefully planned footpaths.

42

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Downloaded from cqx.sagepub.com at Mount Royal University on June 10, 2015

When the natural
behavioral patterns that
make life meaningful in smaller
communities have their
resurgence, the hospitality
industry should be at the
forefront.
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chitect cannot go back. The process of
design is hierarchical, and behavioral
input is useful only in the beginning.
Programming suggests that the ar-
chitect be included in pre-design man-
agement decisions usually made by the
owners. Like zero-based budgeting,
programming needs a base line. To my
mind, the only one with any justifica-
tion is the very fundamental &dquo;build or
no-build&dquo; alternative. If the owner and
architect must justify each element of
the building against not building that
element, a valid framework for deci-
sion making is created. Is there a health
club in the hotel? If so, why? Why not
leave it out entirely? Alternatively,
why not make it a primary component
of the property’s design? The impor-
tance of programming against a no-
build base line is that you return to a
valid alternative point. Frequently,
there is a health club in the program and
the architect is involved only in the
decision regarding its size. Program-
ming is not yet recognized by American
Institute of Architects (AIA) docu-
ments as a separate function, but if
buildings are to fit the behavioral needs
of their users, programming not
owners’ whims - must provide the
impetus.
How do these various concepts
roles, simultaneous activities, and
programming promise to affect the
-
hospitality industry? In the following
sections, I will suggest some near-
future developments, discuss some ex-
amples of the application of behavioral
architecture, and cite some instances
where its use might have forestalled
some design failures. Finally, a brief
case study of behavioral architecture,
the Waterwood National Country Club
and Cabanas, is presented.
Integrating Hotels
with Their Environments
Behavioral architecture derives from
the perception that we live by repetitive
roles. But the implications of this in-
teraction of roles will vary, depending
in part on whether we perform this
choreographed activity with those we
44
know as family or neighbor, or we per-
form our life pattern with strangers. In a
small town, one eats, works, and plays
with those he knows; in a hotel, these
social activities are performed with
strangers. The hotel environment,
then, simulates the home and the social
fabric of a community by providing its
services to the out-of-town visitor.
If one gives even minimal assent to
this view of a hotel’s function, he must
also conclude that the architecture of
today’s sterile obelisks is, at best, off
the mark. When the natural behavioral
patterns that make life meaningful in
smaller-scale communities have their
resurgence in this country, the hospital-
ity industry should be at the forefront.
Already we see more people moving to
small towns and a surprising return to
neighborhood viability in many Ameri-
can cities. If the hospitality field is to
get behind this trend, it must think of
the hotel in terms of whole town or
a
neighborhood, not merely as a closed
environment.
It is not easy to come by examples
of this synergy, but when one does, a
lasting impression results. La Posada
-
Motor Hotel is situated on the Rio
Grande in Laredo, Texas. As part of a
recent expansion, the property’s own-
-
ersalso participated in the redevelop-
ment of a nearby square. In the even-
ing, a guest strolls from the hotel’s
courtyard to the adjacent square and
across the international bridge to the
squares and activities on the Mexican
side. Of course, few hospitality proj-
ects can be integrated into two cul-
tures, and my example is admittedly a
carefully drawn one. It does not require
extreme instances, however, to per-
ceive how the environments of numer-
ous hospitality projects fail to simulate
the social fabric required of a hotel.
Consider Washington’s L’Enfant
Plaza, another complex that, like the
Galleria, combines commercial and
lodging facilities. After the buying pub-
lic departs in the early evening, the area
is all but deserted; the lights on the
surrounding buildings serve only to
light the way for cleaning crews. It is
not necessary to compare the guest
at La Posada to one venturing
strolling
out from L’Enfant Plaza to understand
how little the latter serves the social
needs of its users.
Like all theories of design, the tenets
of behavioral architecture are readily
applied on a global scale, but more dif-
ficult to implement when making indi-
vidual design decisions. Like all peo-
ple, architects experience difficulty
breaking through their traditional ways
of viewing the world, but behavioral
architecture in particular requires that
practitioners penetrate beyond appear-
ances. Programming the hotel must
start at the beginning -
first identify-
ing activities, and then proceeding to
roles, patterns, and finally, a definition
of the appropriate environment.
The bottom-line reason for a hotel’s
existence is to provide a place to spend
the night, so sleeping is the foremost
activity. Note that, even here, a differ-
ence in perceptions might arise. Some
might argue, for example, that selected
hotels are convention facilities first,
with sleeping accommodations an an-
cillary feature. In general, however,
most will agree that sleeping is an
appropriate starting point for our
investigation. If the activity is sleeping,
the guest’s is, as already indicated, the
served role. The service roles are nu-
merous, including check-in, room ser-
vice, maid service, and occasional re-
pairs.
The best way to represent the interre-
lated functions of each role player is to
diagram patterns of use. To do so, the
architect plots the served individual
leaving his car, entering the lobby,
checking in, and proceeding to his
room, perhaps with the aid of a bellhop.
The circuit of the bellhop must corres-
pond to the time frame of the served
client, but other patterns are not con-
temporaneous. The maid, for example,
is typically on a separate time circuit,
and the design requirements of this ser-
vice role will be different from that
of a simultaneous service role. By this
slow process of accretion, the architect
gains a mind’s-eye view of the users’
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needs, and if his design abilities are
adequate to the task, he succeeds in
meeting these needs.
Experience and Presupposing
How does the architect learn how to
define the roles and subsequent patterns
Many buildings are constructed
for his buildings? Ideally, it is through
without consideration of the
experience. In my own case, I can attest role patterns of the service staff.
to the efficacy of this approach. For two
In one club, it was impossible
years, my family and I operated a res-
taurant one that opened only one
-
for the service staff to serve a
night each week. Yet in just a few hours private party while operating
of front-line experience I learned more the dining room.
than I did in several assignments that
included the design of food and bever-
age facilities. My experience was so
revealing that I was not even chagrined
to learn, while designing renovations
to the Burning Tree Country Club in
Greenwich, Connecticut, that it is pos-
sible to construct a building without
giving consideration to the role patterns
of the service staff. Absent from the
programming phase of the club -
modern building only a few years old
-
was the most rudimentary simultane-
ous-use diagram. As a result, it was im-
possible for the staff to serve a private
party while operating the dining room
for patrons ordering # la carte items.
Am I recommending that architects
must be church-goers if they are to
design churches, students and teachers
to understand schools, and patients to
know intimately how a hospital works?
The response is a categorical (and some
would say obdurate) yes. But as a prac-
tical matter, I recognize that few de-
siderata are met in full. In lieu of hard
data, the architect must work by sym-
bol, developing a mental image of
the building he is designing: he must
presuppose.
Let me give a brief example of how
the architect should presuppose. It is a
commonplace observation that cocktail
lounges serve a social function that
probably overshadows the service of
providing alcoholic beverages. If pa-
trons welcome the opportunity to
mingle at the bar as much as they do the
convenience of imbibing the product,
why not extend the same concept to the
45
 Facing page, top: Various
ceiling heights help divide large
spaces into a number of small seating
groups. Below, another of Heimsath’s
designs - the Exxon Lodge - is part
of The Vlloodlands, a planned com-
munity 25 miles north of Houston.
Stucco was used as an exterior finish
to reflect the changing shadows of the
surrounding trees.

This page: While the building offers a

complex variety of spaces, its
structural system is simple,
consisting of an ordered pattern of
concrete columns supporting
prefabricated trusses.

46

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dining room? In other words, why not
provide a group of tables for strangers
-
an extension of the lounge concept,
but for dinner instead of drinks?
I do not pretend to know how work-
able my proposal is; it is introduced
here only to illustrate how the architect
must continue to penetrate the obvious,
to go beyond the traditional approach to
a design problem. This is the most im-
portant contribution of behavioral ar-
chitecture : it forces the practitioner to
shift from a conventional mode to a
research mode.
Behavioral Architecture:
A Hospitality-Industry Case Study
The Waterwood National Country
Club and Cabanas is part of a larger
development project, one that promises
eventually to emulate the new towns
found in England. Waterwood is not an
isolated resort community, but a part of
an exhaustive master plan developed
over a score of years. Fred Buxton As-
sociates, a firm specializing in land-
scape architecture, worked closely with
my firm throughout the project. As a
result, there is extensive use of land-
scape design to link facilities for
pedestrian use. I have often asked my-
self where the Fred Buxtons were in
Freeport or Miami Beach. In the plan-
Behavioral programming unremittingly questions
project, but the embarrassing questions come at
the beginning - in heated discussions over the
drafting table or amidst the clamor of a
public meeting - not at the end of
the project, in the quiet of
a banker’s conference
room as the developer
seeks refinancing.
ning of so many resorts, no one ever identifying all the variables required to
considered the path of the guest’s foot make the architecture reflect the needs
and eye (much less his nostrils) as he of users.
walks across service yards, past gar- The roof design at Waterwood de-
bage disposal areas, and staff parking veloped in response to another, more
lots to get from one hotel to the next. subtle dimension of behavior -
man’ss
There are many such behavioral pat- constant quest for symbols. We wanted
terns considered at Waterwood, but the to recall the spirit of the community
primary entrance is perhaps the best halls scattered throughout central
example of behavioral architecture. Texas, buildings that housed agricul-
The guest arriving at the two-story club tural societies or German singing clubs
enters at the second level, giving him years ago, and today are the center for
the best view of the links while permit- dances, community meetings, and
ting the locker rooms to be situated on weddings. Invariably, the roofs were of
the first floor, adjacent to the golf exposed wood frames and interlocked,
course and tennis courts. Surely, we joining different levels. Not only did
were not unique in developing this de- our design express the intent of Water-
sign, but we were different because we wood ; it also provided structural flexi-
presented the scheme to the client first bility and an opportunity to delineate
in behavioral terms, then in architec- separate activity areas using ceilings of
tural terms. various heights.
The sequence of arriving and enter-
...
ing was only a part of the behavioral
input contributing to the design of the In Summary
clubhouse. We also reasoned that
Throughout a project, the architect
guests would not only be participants in must operate simultaneously on the be-
the club’s activities, but spectators as havioral and the architectural level.
well. A structure covering 25,000 The owners must involve the architect
square feet and erected on a flat piece of from the commencement of the project
land promised to provide almost no so that behavioral decisions involving
vantage point to its occupants. Thus staffing, staging, and projected use
one more part of the behavioral logic
can be understood by the architect as
fell into place as we inched toward he designs the structure. Too often
the architect assumes behavior pat-
the terns that could have been changed;
with equal frequency, the owner ac-
cepts building patterns that could have
been changed. The time for conversa-
tion -
plenty of it and for visits to
-
successful environments is before the
design commences, perhaps before the
land is purchased.
The advantages to owners of pre-
supposing behavior in buildings
before their construction are substan-
tial. Behavioral programming unre-
mittingly questions the project,
but the embarrassing questions come
at the beginning -
in heated dis-
cussions over the drafting table or
amidst the clamor of a public meeting
-
not at the end of the project, in the
quiet of a banker’s conference room as
the developer seeks refinancing. ~
48
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