Architectural and environmental psychology developed within the German-speaking world in the 1970s.Preiser, W.F.E. (1972a). Umweltpsychologie: Eine Neue Disziplin. Deutschlandfunk, August 24.Preiser, W.F.E. (1972b). Umweltpsychologie: Plädoyer für eine neue Disziplin. Umwelt, 6, December/January, 25-28.b In 1972, W.F.E. Preiser stated: “What is of special interest to environmental psychologists are the rules by which person-environment relationships are determined and adjustments to changing environmental conditions are enabled within cultural realms. Designers of environments, in particular architects and city planners, need measurements on how the variables they have manipulated affect users.” Early concepts revolved around the psychosocial roles of public and private space, interpersonal conflict, quality of living, and noise pollution. Later concepts explore the relationship between built environments and climate change.

Beginnings of architectural psychology within the German-speaking world

One of the first comprehensive overviews of work in environmental psychology is Lenelis Kruse-Graumann’s dissertation (1974), which was supervised by Carl-Friedrich Graumann.Kruse, L. (1974). Räumliche Umwelt. Die Phänomenologie des räumlichen Verhaltens als Beitrag zu einer psychologischen Umwelttheorie. Berlin: de Gruyter. Around the same time, Ernst-Dieter Lantermann published his dissertation ["Solidarity and Living"].Lantermann, E.-D. (1974). Solidarität und Wohnen. Darmstadt: Steinkopff. Pioneering insights were also generated by seminars in which psychologists and architects worked together and provided impulses for further research. In 1986, architects Peter Jockusch and Lenelis Kruse-Graumann taught together at the University of Kassel. In 1985, 1986 and 1987, continued education seminars were held at the University of Tübingen entitled "Living in built environments. Psychological aspects of architectural design." These seminars were led by Gerhard Kaminski and his departmental colleagues as well as the architect Klaus Brendle. As early as 1970, Kaminski received an invitation to cooperate with architects of the (SFB) 63 (Research Area 63), the research area for higher education buildings at the University of Stuttgart. In 1974, Kaminski worked with architects from SFB 64 on plane load-bearing structures and the fundamentals of design.Kaminski, G. (1975). Psychologie und Bauen - Einführung in den Problemkreis aus der Sicht des Psychologen. In J. Joedicke (Hrsg.), Architekturpsychologische Forschung. Psychologie und Bauen (S. 6-30). Stuttgart: Krämer. These early projects contributed to the establishment of environmental psychology in Germany.

Environmental psychology’s position among neighboring disciplines

Carl-Friedrich Graumann of the University of Heidelberg started a DFG () program entitled "Psychological Ecology", which led to a "city-psychological" project. Gerhard Kaminski and Lenelis Kruse-Graumann, by founding a disciplinary group for Environmental Psychology within the German Society for Psychology () in 1994, achieved a disciplinary space for ecological psychology (and, therewith, also for architectural psychology) within academia. Researcher Rotraut Walden has conducted international academic research in the field as an active participant in symposia for International Building Performance Evaluation (IBPE) and at congresses hosted by the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) and the International Association of People-Environment Studies (IAPS). Her book Schools for the Future (2009) features contributions by members of the EDRA.Walden, R. (Ed.) (2009). Schools for the Future. Design proposals from Architectural Psychology. Göttingen: Hogrefe & Huber Publishers. With contributions by Simone Borrelbach, Jeffery A. Lackney, Henry Sanoff, Rotraut Walden, Kaname Yanagisawa. Foreword by Henry Sanoff and comments by Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Peter Hübner. Translation by Thorbjoern Mann. The 2004 IAPS meeting in Vienna propagated architectural psychology and building evaluation for EU-candidate countries in Eastern Europe, in which western evaluation methods play an important role in designs for innovations within emerging economies.Martens, B. & Keul, A.G. (Eds.). (2005). Designing Social Innovations. Planning, Building, Evaluating. Proceedings of the 18th IAPS Conference. Cambridge, MA.: Hogrefe & Huber.

The concepts of ‘private space’ and ‘neighborhoods’

One of the first professorial dissertations () dealing with architectural psychology by Lenelis Kruse-Graumann was published in 1980.Kruse, L. (1980). Privatheit als Problem und Gegenstand der Psychologie. Bern: Huber. Volker Linneweber completed a professorial dissertation in 1991 entitled "" ["Interpersonal conflicts in daily life. Disputes between neighbors – disturbances and adverse effects within private living spaces"]. In it, ‘living’ is defined as both an individual and interpersonal occurrence and involves concepts of design and use of private space as well as socio-psychological processes: normative expectations, demands, hopes, social influences and conflicts.Linneweber, V. (1991). Interpersonale Konflikte im Alltag. Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Nachbarn – Störungen und Beeinträchtigungen im privaten Wohnbereich. Unveröffentl. Habilitationsschrift an der Universität Saarbrücken.

Psychology of living

Antje Flade’s book ["Living from a psychological perspective"] specifically deals with living environment. It was first published in 1987 and a new edition was released in 2006.Flade, A. (2006). Wohnen psychologisch betrachtet (2. überarb. Aufl.). Bern: Huber. The book not only interested colleagues within her discipline but also people within the fields of architecture and the housing industry. Antje Flade is considered to be an expert in the psychology of living and in mobility research within the German-speaking world. Works devoted to quality of living also include ["Psychology of apartment and housing development construction"] published in 1993 by Hans-Joachim Harloff of Technische Universität BerlinHarloff, H.J. (Hrsg.) (1993). Psychologie des Wohnungs- und Siedlungsbaus. Psychologie im Dienste von Architektur und Stadtplanung. Göttingen: Verlag für Angewandte Psychologie, Verlagsgruppe Hogrefe. and the dissertation ["Lively living"] by Rotraut Walden.Walden, R. (1993). Lebendiges Wohnen: Entwicklung psychologischer Leitlinien zur Wohnqualität. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

Environmental psychology and the psychology of constructed environments

A pioneering book on environmental psychology was published in 1976 by Gerhard Kaminski.Kaminski, G. (1976). (Hrsg.), Umweltpsychologie. Perspektiven - Probleme - Praxis. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Roger G. Barker published an important collection on the behavior-setting approach in 1986, which was edited by Kaminski.Kaminski, G. (Hrsg.) (1986). Ordnung und Variabilität im Alltagsgeschehen. Das Behavior Setting-Konzept in den Verhaltens- und Sozialwissenschaften. Göttingen: Hogrefe. The handbook ["Ecological Psychology"] published by Lenelis Kruse-Graumann, Carl-Friedrich Graumann and Ernst-Dieter Lantermann in 1990 and 1996 covers, among other things, several topics related to architectural psychology that helped establish the discipline.Kruse, L., Graumann, C.-F. & Lantermann, E.D. (1996). Ökologische Psychologie. Zur Einführung. In L. Kruse, C.-F. Graumann & E.-D. Lantermann (Hrsg.), Ökologische Psychologie (S. 1-13). München: Psychologie Verlags Union. It deals, for example, with the concepts of ‘appropriation’ (Graumann), ‘behavior-setting analysis’ (Kaminski), ‘person-environment congruence’ (Fuhrer) and ‘control and loss of control’ (Fischer and Stephan). Additional subjects include ‘children and environment’ (Flade), ‘school learning environments’ (Linneweber), ‘museums’ (Klein), ‘working environments’ (Schmale), ‘office environments’ (Schaible-Rapp), ‘therapeutic environments’ (Welter), ‘the sick and disabled’ (Day) and ‘nursing homes’ (Saup). In 1993, Winfried Saup published a comprehensive work on aging and environment.Saup, W. (1993). Alter und Umwelt. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Dieckmann, Flade, Schuemer, Ströhlein and Walden popularized many architecture-psychological studies in Germany by citing them in the book ["Psychology and built environments"] (1998).Dieckmann, F., Flade, A., Schuemer, R., Ströhlein, G. & Walden, R. (1998). Psychologie und gebaute Umwelt. Konzepte, Methoden, Anwendungsbeispiele. Darmstadt: Institut Wohnen und Umwelt. They also describe basic theoretical principles and methods that have provided German researchers with a knowledge base and framework for further research. Jürgen Hellbrück and Manfred Fischer brought together many architecture-psychological topics in their comprehensive book ["Environmental psychology"] (1999).Hellbrück, J. & Fischer, M. (1999). Umweltpsychologie. Ein Lehrbuch. Göttingen: Hogrefe. It describes psychic-material and spatial-social environments, living, surroundings and cities.

Noise, sound pollution and contributions on acoustics

In 1999 August Schick, Maria Klatte and Markus Meis presented conclusions on research related to classroom acoustics, which have been significant for the construction of schools.Schick, A., Klatte, M. & Meis, M. (1999). Die Lärmbelastung von Lehrern und Schülern - ein Forschungsstandsbericht. Z. für Lärmbekämpfung, 46, 77-87. Hearing and noise researcher Schick led nine symposia on the psychology of acoustics at the University of Oldenburg in which he brought together scholars from different fields to form an interdisciplinary research group that is still working productively in Oldenburg to this day.Schick, A. et al. (1981-2003). Contributions to Psychological Acoustics II-IX. Results of the Oldenburg Symposia on Psychological Acoustics. Oldenburg (all symposia on CD ROM). While their research has not necessarily received wide reception within the field of environmental psychology, it is of significance to the international community of psycho-acoustic researchers, such as those affiliated with the Inter-Noise conference, the International Congress on Noise Control Engineering, and the German Society for Acoustics. August Schick helped found all of these organizations. For twenty years (1985-2005), Schick and Rainer Guski were involved in the research group [Interdisciplinary sound effect research] at the Federal Environmental Agency in Berlin. Rainer Guski has been devoted to the protection of resident populations from street and air-traffic noise since the 1970s.Guski, R. (1987). Lärm. Wirkungen unerwünschter Geräusche. Bern: Huber.Guski, R. (2004). How to forecast community annoyance in planning noisy facilities? Noise & Health, 6, 59 -64. His work establishes the connection between outdoor noise and noise pollution, and he consults politicians on setting noise-level limits for communities. Current research on office acoustics is being conducted by Sabine Schlittmeier and Jürgen Hellbrück at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt.Schlittmeier, S. J., Hellbrück, J., Thaden, R. & Vorländer, M. (forthcoming). The impact of background speech varying in intelligibility: Effects on cognitive performance and perceived disturbance. Ergonomics. The effects of acoustics on work performance and feeling of well-being as well as different methods for controlling acoustics are of particular interest to architects, building and room acousticians and interior architects and designers.

Current efforts in environmental psychology – and their relationship to climate protection