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Publications in Scientific Journals:

A. Mahdavi:
"Explanatory stories of human perception and behavior in buildings";
Building and Environment, 168 (2020).



English abstract:
This paper is motivated by a perceived disconnect between standards and guidelines for supporting building
design and operation professionals on the one hand and contemporary fundamental research findings in pertinent
human sciences. In other words, the plethora of recent highly detailed studies do not appear to have been
crystalized into versatile explanatory theories accessible to practice-oriented professionals in the building delivery
process. In fact, to locate instances of high-level and intuitively comprehensible explanatory models of
human perception and behavior, one may need to revert back to intellectual traditions originated as far back as
in late nineteenth century. A review of a number of such explanatory models suggests that they display, despite
their differences in levels of detail and degrees of sophistication, a few recurrent motifs. To revisit these models is
rewarding not only from the historical point of view. Their conceptual transparency has arguably the potential to
inspire the development of a new generation of accessible high-level explanatory theories of human perception
and behavior.

German abstract:
(no german abstract)
This paper is motivated by a perceived disconnect between standards and guidelines for supporting building
design and operation professionals on the one hand and contemporary fundamental research findings in pertinent
human sciences. In other words, the plethora of recent highly detailed studies do not appear to have been
crystalized into versatile explanatory theories accessible to practice-oriented professionals in the building delivery
process. In fact, to locate instances of high-level and intuitively comprehensible explanatory models of
human perception and behavior, one may need to revert back to intellectual traditions originated as far back as
in late nineteenth century. A review of a number of such explanatory models suggests that they display, despite
their differences in levels of detail and degrees of sophistication, a few recurrent motifs. To revisit these models is
rewarding not only from the historical point of view. Their conceptual transparency has arguably the potential to
inspire the development of a new generation of accessible high-level explanatory theories of human perception
and behavior.

Keywords:
Explnatory theories, human perception, human behavior, indoor environment


"Official" electronic version of the publication (accessed through its Digital Object Identifier - DOI)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2019.106498

Electronic version of the publication:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360132319307103?via%3Dihub


Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.