Apartment Design Choices

Cunningham (1977) found that American university students preferred apartment designs in which the major portion of open space was located in the upper right corner of the unit. The experience of reading and writing English from left to right was hypothesized as establishing a scanning pattern leading to a preference for such right-oriented designs. Students whose mother tongue was Hebrew (a language written from right to left) were compared to a group of native English speakers to test if the Hebrew group would prefer left-oriented apartments. Cunningham's data was not replicated, nor were any major relationships with hand/eye dominance, past and present residential history, or language background seen to relate to design choices. Several methodological difficulties were mentioned along with alternative strategies.