Diffusion of Responsibility

The Idea of the psycology of a building and the psycology of my site got me thinking about my site analysis and later my folie design. How I aimed to instill a sense of responsibilty to the user and a certain degree of repremand for the current site condition. This made me think about responsibility and how much/ how little reposibility users will take on.




This led me to examine the psycological process associated with the break down of a social space which led me to the Diffusion of responsibility theory:

The Diffusion theory states that, bystander apathy is caused by a dilution of the individual's sense of responsibility in a larger group of people.

Diffusion of responsibility is a phenomenon which tends to occur in groups of people above a certain critical size when responsibility is not explicitly assigned. Diffusion of responsibility takes place, through action or inaction , when people allow events to occur which they would never allow if they were alone.

To a certain degree I think this is what happends to nature, the responsibility of sustainable design is diffused.

we have to activly direct that responsibility to all users.

The opposite of Diffusion of responsibility in society is what I aim to acheive for the Howard Smith wharf site.