A Review of Environmental Symbology: Origins and Contributions Toward a Theoretical Framework Lindsay Tan, M.F.A., Kansas State University ABSTRACT Environmental symbology (ES) is the study of symbolic meaning within the human environment including personal, sociocultural, and mythic contexts of understanding. This emerging discipline is part of the web of environment and behavior research, with roots in several fields including semiotics, symbolic anthropology, and psychoanalysis. Symbolic meaning enriches human space with personal and sociocultural value; it communicates attitudes and beliefs, integrates with other sign systems in communication, and regulates social behaviors. Yet, to date, none of the existing literature has acknowledged the full scope of ES and contemporary research into ES remains limited. To understand how ES can contribute to the body of knowledge in interior design, it is necessary to present how this realm of research is both collaborative and additive with other fields. This review explores the theoretical framework of ES research and highlights some of the major contributions from other disciplines. It then explains the role of the environmental symbologist in serving the body of knowledge of interior design through cataloging symbolic artifacts and motifs. Further, the work describes the present author’s development of a symbolic typology utilizing Jung’s model of archetypes and explains several of the symbolic motifs identified therein. An improved understanding of the symbolic meaning of space can benefit our understanding of the psychological needs of its inhabitants. This review offers an introduction in how and why the environmental symbologist gives primacy to the exploration of the human–environment relationship through the study of the personal, sociocultural, and mythic meanings of space. Introduction Environmental symbology (ES) refers to the study of symbolic meaning within the human environment including personal, sociocultural, and mythic con- texts of understanding. Consider this view into a typical home through the lens of an environmental symbologist. Outside the window it’s snowing again; inside the heater has just kicked on. A woman sits at the dining room table, her laptop surrounded by books and articles. She promised her husband she would move everything before he got home from work. Why does he care if the dining room table is clear, when they will eat on trays in front of the TV, anyway? On the table sits Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food (2008) in which he proposes it is not simply whether we eat dinner that matters, but also what we eat and how we eat it. Beneath Pollan’s book is Spirit & Place by architect and theorist Christopher Day (2002), who offers a similarly provocative challenge that it is not simply whether we have a roof over our head that matters, but also what we build and how we live in it. ‘‘Buildings, spaces between them, journeys amongst and through them—these are the frame for daily life. Different frames make different lives, influence how we think, feel, behave—how we are’’ (Day, 2002, p. 5). Environmental symbology, the study of the symbolic meaning of space, examines these frames and how they shape, and are shaped by, their human inhabitants (Clark, 2008a). There are reasons why this woman needs to clear the dining room table  Copyright 2011, Interior Design Educators Council, Journal of Interior Design 39 Journal of Interior Design 36(2), 39–49