Design Awareness

The book argues that design professionals must cede primary responsibility for environmental decisions to users. David Alpaugh's review in The School Review notes that Sommer's earlier work in environmental psychology and spatial behavior is 'amended here to allow for involvement of the user in the design process and to reject the deterministic tendencies implied by unitary studies in proxemics and personal space' . Where Personal Space documented how people defend territory and regulate interaction, Design Awareness prescribes a normative role: users should actively shape environments rather than merely occupy or resist them. Sommer proposes a 'far more modest role' for designers, one that 'would defer to the user the major responsibility for dealing with the environment' .

Alpaugh's review distinguishes two categories. The first is 'People's Art'—impromptu personal expression including junk sculpture, graffiti, and 'guerrilla graphics,' ranging from small visual play to 'enormous murals on the blank walls of buildings in dense urban areas' . Sommer sees these as evidence of 'an inevitable and necessary state of dynamic tension between free expression and social order.' The second type, which Alpaugh calls 'more significant,' is direct user input into problem-solving processes, exemplified by the Berkeley People's Park of 1969, where residents transformed a neglected lot into a functioning park . This second type implies a problem orientation rather than mere expression.

A Progressive Architecture review identified 'The New Evaluator Cookbook' as one of the book's most important chapters, noting it 'tells how to go about a building evaluation' . Sommer's rationale is explicit: 'This is a cookbook rather than a theory of food preference—designers are often advised to go back and evaluate their work, but no one tells them how it is done.' The chapter provides sample question types, evaluation forms, and 'helpful hints and warnings concerning pitfalls.' The reviewer credited Sommer as 'one of the first to provide a selection of mechanisms and methods for building evaluations,' and praised the approach as 'honest, matter-of-fact and pragmatic' that 'eliminated the mystique' .

Sommer devotes the better part of a chapter to the 1969 Berkeley People's Park, where 'a large and diverse group of community residents took over a neglected lot and in a matter of days transformed it into a vital, living, used neighborhood park' . The community had recognized two problems: the need for a park and the empty land's blight on the neighborhood. Alpaugh notes that 'the tragic consequences of that action are well documented by Sommer, but the design significance of People's Park and of other similar efforts since then is made clear.' Sommer draws the lesson that 'the traditional standards of design are not necessarily the ones that matter,' but rather 'excitement, spontaneity, flexibility and participation' .

Sommer identifies 'habituation and adaptation to incrementally worsening conditions' as a major factor producing a kind of numbness toward environmental problems . The book's mission is to propose 'measures and methods for wakening an awareness of the environment.' Sommer's strategy centers on 'environmental workshops' and learning through action: 'Developing awareness is not simply a matter of studying facts and figures but rather of stripping the blinders from one's eyes and finding an active mode of perceiving the environment.' Alpaugh notes that cognitive knowledge alone is insufficient: Sommer starts with 'small concrete problems, especially with children,' treating awareness as a practical skill acquired through problem-solving rather than passive observation .

A Progressive Architecture review called Sommer's contributions important, noting he 'accurately sensed the immediate need for a volume of this type and provided it: a cookbook outlining ways and means instead of another compendium of research findings' . The reviewer hoped the book would create 'transformations within the design and environmental research fields... leading to the ultimate goal of providing better habitations for people.' A Journal of Popular Culture review described it as a 'highly readable little book' likely to surprise those who think of architecture as 'a peculiarly elitist blend of aesthetics and big business,' noting that architectural students had spearheaded an ideological change comparable to shifts in planning and social work .