Choice Architecture: A New Approach to Behavior, Design, and Wellness

***WINNER OF A NAUTILUS 2018 SILVER MEDAL BOOK AWARD***

From Vitruvius in the 1st century BCE on, there has been an attempt to understand how architecture works, especially in its poetic aspect but also in its basic functions. Design can encourage us to walk, to experience community, to imagine new ways of being, and can affect countless other choices we make that shape our health and happiness.

Using the ideas of rational choice theory and behavioral economics, Choice Architecture shows how behavior, design, and wellness are deeply interconnected. As active agents, we choose our responses to the architectural meanings we encounter based on our perception of our individual contexts. The book offers a way to approach the design of spaces for human flourishing and explains in rich detail how the potential of the built environment to influence our well-being can be realized.

Avani Parikh is an architect planner with a consulting practice in healthcare architecture. She was co-chair of the AIANY Health Facilities Committee and has also served on various nonprofit and government committees in New York and Mumbai, formulating an innovative Transfer of Development Rights proposal for Bombay’s Development Plan. She has written about and taught modern architecture, city planning, and the history and theory of healthcare design.

Prashant Parikh was a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University. Now an independent scholar, he is a pioneer in the application of game theory to communication and meaning, and the author of three books on philosophical and linguistic semantics including Language and Equilibrium.