Of course, and there's a lot to like about Alexander's approach. Though while designers may lean heavily one way at first, maybe they could also sample the pers

Of course, and there's a lot to like about Alexander's approach. Though while designers may lean heavily one way at first, maybe they could also sample the perspective of the actual thousands of people who will occupy the space before construction starts? Priors are just that: priors. They are meant to be updated to posteriors, whether by an individual, or whether by thousands of people. Sometimes the update will be minimal no matter what sub-population you sample, which is a good sign something is actually deep and inescapable, but sometimes it will be rather large because even thousands of people can share a few specific characteristics not so prevalent in a random general population sample where the prior came from and which absolutely affect what feels habitable to them. e.g. Active college students, so also mostly young, mostly unmarried, freshly liberated from the parental household.. And of course the main activities of the building and its rooms, like sleep vs work, should be considered more strongly before applying a general pattern. I don't mean to assert that form should always follow function, though, or that architects don't already consider inescapable tradeoffs, which by their nature some people won't like the decisions because they would have traded differently all else equal. On a tangent, I was reminded of a funny architecture crime. CS students at MIT got a wacky Gehry building (the Stata Center) while the architects have and keep a very normal and tasteful building (the Rogers Building). Gehry was even sued at some point because the building had functional issues. That goes back to the point about windows: frequently it's actually not enough to just block a window. They change the environment more than just letting in light or not, they affect things like temperature (sometimes for the better! Ability to open one for a breeze or window AC is a blessing in many rooms), humidity, structural soundness, and ease of mold growth. When you have a window or two in the bedroom that you block out, it still affects where you can place things because of those other concerns.