Abstract: The meanings invested by people in any given environment?natural or built, large scale or intimate?play a crucial role in determining attitudes toward the place and eventual commitment and goals of action. The ?location task? described in this article enables its users to explore their ?desired? spatial organization of a place: a room, a school, a neighborhood, a park. Using their individual, social, and organizational goals and values, they attempt to develop in the spatial configuration of the place a hierarchically embedded system.