Production vs. consumption

I just had a silly epiphany. I realized suddenly why the architectural literature almost never talks about how architecture is experienced or sold or consumed.

Of course, it's because architects by definition are primarily concerned with the production of buildings, not the consumption of them. Note to self: duh!

The architectural journals and books talk a little sometimes about how a particular built project can have an impact on society via local community building, or city planning, or whatnot, but still it's fairly consistent with the developer/designer/builder perspective. There are few descriptions of what it's like to actually experience, for example, a sustainable building; a few that I've found so far are personal memoirs of very specific events - not very good reference material - or psychological studies about environmental factors and their effects on behavior.

Even if an architect builds a home for himself and lived in it, he would continually be aware of the its supports, massing, form, space, etc, all the elements that went into the designing and planning of the structure. That's because architects, after all, are the producers. And this is also why all the sustainable architecture books are preoccupied with material, energy use, siting, and form, almost to the exclusion of occupant experience.

(This also goes very far to explaining why a lot of the Greatest Hits built works from history all sounded great in theory, when explained by the architect, but the occupant never quite gets it... sigh.)

Was this obvious to anyone else but me?? I feel silly now.