Human Dimension & Interior Space: A Source Book of Design Reference Standards

by Julius Panero & Martin Zelnik

Human Dimension & Interior A Source Book of Design Reference Standards

Genres: Design, Architecture, Interior Design, Reference, Woodwork, Nonfiction, Art

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Annlanding]

My best reference!

[Kyttee]

This book is a tool for anyone in the Arts & Design business. It gives references from "how many head high my character should be?" to "how large a kitchen counter should measure?". This book can be used as a reference when needed and definitely should be part of the bookshelf.

[Lilly]

i definitely did not read this whole book cover to cover but like i have read enough of it for Communication Design to simultaneously get all the answers i needed and become even more lost and confused. Totally absolutely did not have a breakdown over this book.

[Jennifer Linsky]

Very dry, but then... it *is* a textbook!

[Heloise Plante]

A must-read for anyone interested in interior design or architecture. It sets basic guidelines and rules to make any space; residential or commercial, as comfortable and ergonomic as possible.

[Lloyd Earickson]

You will be forgiven if your first thought on seeing what book I decided to review this week was something along the lines of "oh dear, he's finally cracked," especially if that thought was enough to convince you to click on the post and visit the site. Yes, I realize that of all the odd and apparently off-topic books I've reviewed here on the site - everything from The Self-Taught Programmer to Meditations with Cows - this might be a new maximum. Despite that, or maybe because of it, I think this might be the most generally applicable and universally useful books I've reviewed.

It's not that this was a major page turner (as you may have guessed from the title). It is mostly a collection of data tables of anthropometric measurements, with some descriptions of how to use them and the considerations that should go into certain spaces, activities, and products. I cannot say that I got through long days during the week I read it by looking forward to reading about the anthropometric design considerations for the typical home bathroom when I got home at the end of the day. It was everything you're probably thinking right now: dry, with little prose, a lot of diagrams, and a lot of information that seems pretty irrelevant to most of us in the course of our everyday lives. It is also a book that I see myself referencing on a regular basis long into the future.

While this is not the sort of book that lends itself to being read straight through, as it were, it is the sort of book that makes a very useful reference for all kinds of tasks, and not just if you happen to be an architect, engineer, or interior designer. Around the house, I could identify at least a half dozen places where you might be able to make small changes, informed by this book, that will make your daily life a little better. Things like how much space to leave per person at a dining table so that there is room to eat comfortably and serve the food, or how to hang pictures so that they are the most visually accessible, or even how to arrange your furniture to make a room feel more livable, all based on anthropometric considerations. If you're arranging just for you and your family, you could use the book to learn what measurements to take, and then gather the data for yourself, rather than using the percentile figures provided.

My original reason for picking up this book was very specific: I wanted to know what measurements to consider when designing a workbench that I plan to build in the near future. Yes, long before I wanted to be an astronautical engineer, and even before I started dabbling in writing, I wanted to be a carpenter, and have my own little shop building custom furniture for people. While I no longer have much of an interest in trying to make a living off of the activity, I still enjoying the craft, and have some thought that I may eventually build some custom furniture for my own home. After all, I don't have enough hobbies. If you're wondering how I went from hand-made furniture to billion dollar spacecraft, well...I guess a satellite is just a fancy metal cabinet in space?

There are, admittedly, parts of this book that I don't think I will ever use, like the considerations for designing healthcare spaces, or the dimensional concerns pertaining to rubber ducks in hot tubs. The authors are also a little over-excited about their chosen topic, including an epilogue in which they essentially argue that incorporating anthropometric considerations into interior design will save lives and solve all of the world's problems (I'm exaggerating slightly, but only slightly). I certainly cannot argue that this book is not dry, and if you read before bed, like I do, you will have little difficulty falling asleep while you're reading it. That's not why you should read this book. If you live or work with physical objects, which I think almost all of us do, this book will be a useful reference to you, and I highly recommend it.

[Brenda Chiquito]

Indispensable para familiarizarse con las necesidades ergonómicas antes de generar espacios.

[Koen Crolla]

From the way this book is talked about in various online woodworking communities (on whose recommendations I bought it), I expected this to be a pocket book of tables of figures and maybe some diagrams, like those little books of rafter tables American carpenters had before smartphones. It is, in fact, a physically very substantial book on anthropometrics in general, and while most of it does indeed consist of tables of figures and diagrams giving an impression of how to make use of them in the design of furniture and interior spaces, the remainder is almost entirely repeated admonitions not to use those the way the book's proponents invariably use them: the tables are just there to show you how which data to gather and don't reflect universally meaningful sizes (because body sizes vary considerably geographically and have varied immensely over the course of the 20th century, and because the vast majority of the data comes from the US military's measurements of its (mostly teen-aged) soldiers, which are not likely to be representative of your target audience), and the diagrams are mostly just academic examples naïvely mapping data to dimensions rather than designs tested in the real world (for walkways, for example, a problem acknowledged in the text but not addressed in the diagrams is that moving people sway and take up more space than their static width).
As a work of anthropometry, it feels rudimentary; more of a ``hey, be aware it is possible to do this'' than a real treatment of how to do anything beyond the mere act of measuring. It feels, actually, like the sort of book written when a field is in its infancy, and one which helps define that field. That's how Human Dimension and Interior Space positions itself, and how many people talk about it now. That's a lie, though: it was published in 1979, decades after ergonomics became a buzzword and even longer after the US military defined most of the conventions treated in order to store and ship its wetware more efficiently.

Their protests aside, the widespread misuse of this book is an inevitable consequence of the authors' attempts at inflating its relevancy—the subtitle is ``A Source Book of Design Reference Standards'', after all, and the diagrams are so excessive in their desperation to show how many ways there are to apply the gathered metrics that they do end up looking like comprehensive and authoritative Standards. I don't think it needs to continue.
If you want to know how high to make your chair seat, just measure an existing chair.

[Zachary Tremblay]

This was a fun textbook which had lots of figures to reference, stated lots of straight facts about how to plan your designs using proportionate pieces, from floors to chairs to tables and counters, and also doorways and lights. Lots to ponder here, as we consider in which ways we will create space for ourselves and others.

[Robin Stih]

Must have for interior design students. Great reference book for school, and after.

[John]

Neat book. A product of the high-tech idealism of the 70s.

[Shaun Deane]

What a resource!

[Alejandra Salomón]

neta sólo lo voy a registrar para ponerle 5 estrellas de todas las veces q me ha tirado un paro

[Fifa]

OMG.. this is my love/hate book. Can't live without it and hate it to death at the same time. Fortunately I might not need this book this time *hurray* But nevertheless it help me through alot my salad days so I keep it in the bookshelf.

[Mega]

Ini adalah buku WAJIB kudu punya dan kudu kepake...
Panduan pasti deh buat interior designer...
All your questions bout human dimension will be answered...
It's a MUST......

[Jalu Wardhana]

Orang tua saya arsitek, saya interior designer dan teman-teman komunitas interior designer, dan semua pakai buku ini. Semua tentang dimensi manusia...memanusiakan manusia!

[Myles Blackwood]

this book was wonderful in helping me figure out the best methods for designing a space that fit human sizes, and plan for it accordingly.

[Angelia Fransisca Rusli]

This book helps me. A LOT.

As an interior designer, this is my bible.

[Cerulean]

A certain must in any designers library.

[RMN]

เป็นหนังสือที่ designer ทุกคนควรต้องมี!!

[Rabeah]

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[Melina]

Great reference when designing furniture and / scaling designs for the human form. An essential reference for any designer.

[Alienda Sophia]

having this book is a must ...

[Arif]

i need this book for my task