Slashdot Mirror
The Hidden Ways That Architecture Affects How You Feel (bbc.com)
"We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us," mused Winston Churchill in 1943 while considering the repair of the bomb-ravaged House of Commons. From a report: More than 70 years on, he would doubtless be pleased to learn that neuroscientists and psychologists have found plenty of evidence to back him up. We now know, for example, that buildings and cities can affect our mood and well-being, and that specialised cells in the hippocampal region of our brains are attuned to the geometry and arrangement of the spaces we inhabit. Yet urban architects have often paid scant attention to the potential cognitive effects of their creations on a city's inhabitants. The imperative to design something unique and individual tends to override considerations of how it might shape the behaviours of those who will live with it. That could be about to change. "There are some really good [evidence-based] guidelines out there" on how to design user-friendly buildings, says Ruth Dalton, who studies both architecture and cognitive science at Northumbria University in Newcastle. "A lot of architects choose to ignore them. Why is that?"
Not sure if we needed studies to figure this out, but:
One of Ellard's most consistent findings is that people are strongly affected by building facades. If the facade is complex and interesting, it affects people in a positive way; negatively if it is simple and monotonous. For example, when he walked a group of subjects past the long, smoked-glass frontage of a Whole Foods store in Lower Manhattan, their arousal and mood states took a dive
I could've told them this, for free. Here in southern Calif, there are strip malls built in the (prosperous) 90's in faux Mediterranean style, with complex gables, fake man-made (but realistic-looking) stonework on the facade, red clay barrel tiles on the roof, curvy wrought-iron railings. I love going to these, makes me feel good to be there.
As opposed to the strip malls built in the lame 70's... usually with a plain monotonous stucco exterior, all square everything, flat roofs coated with a grey tar-like substance, straight unadorned industrial-looking railings. I believe they call this "modern" style. I dislike going to these places.
Unfortunately, complex interesting-looking buildings cost more to make than the "modern" style buildings.
It's actually Miss Mash that does.
specialised cells in the hippocampal region of our brains are attuned to the geometry and arrangement of the spaces we inhabit
Mindless retarded rubbish. Idiots trying to sound "quite educated." These buffoons are "smart" enough to look up things on Wikipedia showing that certain portions of the brain are active or certain cells respond but have NO IDEA WHAT THIS ACTUALLY MEANS. And it sounds all "sciencey" which is PERFECT if you're trying to do a feel-good smug NPR program. Put a beat to it. Zoom in on the "scientists" "adjusting" their oscilloscopes after the short-haired masculine chick with the journalism degree demands that they mess around with it for the camera shot. This does not work for true objective nerds.