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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?"
The x86 architecture makes me extremely pissed off.
It's stunning that someone could write an article like this and not be aware of Christopher Alexander's work on the subject. Highly recommend his book A Pattern Language.
If you're going to live in a city, find one with beautiful, functional buildings that respect human scale, that has sidewalks and bike lanes and parks and a nice chunk of water with public access.
This probably means you'll have to live in a city run by Democrats, but you'll adjust.
You are welcome on my lawn.
>> lot of architects choose to ignore them. Why is that?
Same reason software architects ignore principles: cost or time interferes with perfection. Why is this even a question?
>> says Ruth Dalton, who studies both architecture and cognitive science at Northumbria University
Ah...now I see. Not much real world experience here, I guess.
There are many forms of modern architecture. I tend to like things from the Art Deco period and find some late Victorian Gothic very brutal just like 1960's urban/functional boxes. The latter are largely being torn down now but plenty still exist.
The beauty of many buildings is 'in the eye of the beholder'.
There are some excellent architechs around today but... some are awful.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
I'm still going to use Dho-Nha geometry as an inspiration for interior decoration.
To add to my previous post, a building is more than just the Architecture.
The furnishing/fixtures and fitting can make or break a building.
Rennie Mackintosh understood this perfectly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
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.
The imperative to design something unique and individual tends to override [other] considerations. That could be about to change.
No it won't.
My wife and I once debated spending some money on some furniture versus some exterior work on the front of our house. My argument was for the furniture -- sure, the exterior work would make the house much more attractive. But I only see that side when I go in and out the front of the house. I have to sit on the furniture in the house every day.
So why spend the money and make myself miserable with my old furniture just so the neighbors have a fancy facade to look at?
I wonder how often that idea comes up. I've seen amazing buildings on the outside and been totally nonplussed with the interiors. I've been in some buildings that were fugly as hell on the outside, but awesome on the inside.
This probably means you'll have to live in a city run by Democrats, but you'll adjust.
Here is an complete list of states where the biggest city is not run by Democrats:
1. Oklahoma
a city run by Democrats
But you can't get a building permit.
Have gnu, will travel.
> "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?"
For the same reason anything gets fragmented and unusable. Differentiation. The often vain attempt of a designer (or company) to make something different for the sole purpose of making it easily identifiable as belonging to said designer (or company). To such thinking, standardization is the enemy, and usability is not a top priority.
This can be true for most any product design, not just architecture. When one wants to *be* the standard, one tends to avoid following existing standards where possible.
A good (and often funny) book to read on this subject is "From Bauhaus to Our House" by Tom Wolfe. Although one could argue with some of his points, the observation that Modern Architecture (now superceded by the arguably more livable Postmodern Architecture) tended to do things badly -- like narrow halls, flat roofs (which tended to collapse in snowy climates) tightly cordoned "proletariat" floor plans, acrophobia-inducing floor-to-ceiling windows in skyscrapers, and other attempts at doing something different for the sake of difference, were dead on target.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This probably means you'll have to live in a city run by Democrats
You mean like Detroit?
Quips aside, pretty much every big(ish) city in US is run by Democrats these days... you have to go to rural areas to find non-Dems.
But please be aware that some of the nicest and most iconic features in our major cities were built decades or centuries ago when the cities weren't completely saturated with Democrat voters.
Of course many of the most beautiful structures in the world were made eons ago when Democrats or even liberalism didn't exist. Hagia Sophia anyone?
The common ground between a physiologist, psychologist, and feng shui expert would be sunlight. I've felt it most as I entered a tiny bathroom in the middle of a dingy building, and all of a sudden I felt great. I looked everywhere for what could explain my mood change and finally realized the light above me was from a small solar tube. It happened a 2nd time in a different building and I've been wondering ever since why they're not everywhere, if the architecture doesn't design it in to begin with.
a city run by Democrats
But you can't get a building permit.
No shit, cities are already built, you can't just build more. You need to talk to the city and work out your plans with them. Your building has to fit into their plans for traffic, pedestrians, water, sewer, electricity, parking, etc. In the big city you have to work with your neighbors, not ignore them.
"We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us," says the brilliant leader whose nation was immediately thereafter infested with brutalist architecture, ushering in an era of unprecedented globalist collectivism and disregard for civil rights and traditional culture.
Imagine your favorite street in town didn't exist. Could it be built today if the construction had to follow your local rules?
In the USA, we are no longer allowed to build nice things like we used to. I love some of the old streets in Europe but we can't build them here due to required street widths, setbacks, floor area ratios, parking requirements, height limits, and so on. We've legislated beauty away, unless your vision of beauty involves a lot of asphalt and empty space.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
You're describing central planning. We are gradually becoming more and more communist.
If only that were true. You really only need to talk to your neighbors to get zoning variances approved.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I clicked your link. The guy in the yellow jacket in the image at the middle of the article scares the shit out of me.
https://static1.squarespace.co...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
This probably means you'll have to live in a city run by Democrats, but you'll adjust.
Here is an complete list of states where the biggest city is not run by Democrats:
1. Oklahoma
You forgot one... but it's really a district, not a state....
Washington, DC
PS: Yes, I know the mayor is a democrat...
Fun fact: All the cities that the highest crime in the nation have also been run by Democrats for decades.
(p.s. I'm NOT saying vote Republican.)
Chicago had a 100% gun ban till recently. They still had record levels... of gun crime. So much for the gun control argument. (Kind of funny how liberals hate prohibition of drugs... but forget the same rules apply to guns. Ban guns and people bring them in... from places where guns aren't banned. Stunning.)
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.
Bullshit.
Academic institutions worldwide are engaged in the study of urban design and working with counterparts in public and private sectors to apply what they've learned. This has been going on since forever.
There are also philosophical schools that have observed these phenomena.
Its neat that neuroscience is being incorporated, but to suggest that they are breaking new ground or answering questions that nobody else thought to ask is a crock.
Give three examples, please.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Open spaces feel like glass ceilings. Closed spaces are reserved for people with potential to succeed. So being in an open office space means that you're never going to move up.
You must be kidding. Democrats and progressives are in love with futurism, modernism, brutalist architecture, and the dregs of the WPA: grandiose architecture that makes people feel insignificant, lost, and out of place. Democrats and progressives are also in love with urbanization and run pretty much all big cities in the US.
If you want "to live in a city with beautiful, functional buildings that respect human scale, that has sidewalks and bike lanes and parks and a nice chunk of water with public access" pick a small-to-mid-size, sleepy American town. That's why they are popular. That's also why people there tend to vote Republican.
And then you still can't get a building permit.
Have gnu, will travel.
You're right, Kowloon was truly the optimal urban development.
=Smidge=
It sounds like your argument is that if you want to live in a beautiful city, don't live in a city.
You've never been to Chicago, have you? And do you even know what "brutalist architecture" is, or did you see the word "brutal" in it and assume it was brutal?
I can believe you vote Republican. I assume you believe the buildings with your current President's name splashed on them are examples of beautiful architecture.
You are welcome on my lawn.
lands squarely in eyesore territory.
I'm thinking something more like this. The (un-)design is quite pleasing and yet it breaks so many ordinances in my own city that we would not be allowed to build it.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Chicago had a 100% gun ban till recently. They still had record levels... of gun crime. So much for the gun control argument. (Kind of funny how liberals hate prohibition of drugs... but forget the same rules apply to guns. Ban guns and people bring them in... from places where guns aren't banned. Stunning.)
That's like saying "Arizona has strict immigration laws, yet it has high levels of illegal immigration".
Immigration, gun control, homelessness, etc. are federal-level issues. But that doesn't mean that local and state governments shouldn't do what they can do to try to fix things as much as they can, when they don't see eye-to-eye with the federal government.
... from other architects.
All other uses of the building are secondary. If architect awards factored in occupant approval, then buildings would be more useful.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Give three examples, please.
Um... you do realize Democratic party as we know it only came into existence in the 1850's? Before that it was known as Democratic-Republicans (yeah hard to believe Dems and Rs used to be the same party) but the anti-slavery faction of the party split off from the group with the name "Republican" in the mid 1850's. So anything built before 1850 would not have been made by "Democrats".
Example would be, i dunno, the White House? The US Capitol building? Rotunda at University of Virginia? Lot of famous buildings that are old.
Central Park in NYC was built just before the Civil War. I dunno what the political makeup of NYC at that time was, but since NY was a free state I would tend to think they were Republican, they certainly voted for Lincoln.
Griffith Park in LA was built in the 1890's, most likely not by Democrats since the city didn't turn progressive or Democrat until well into the 20th century. Los Angeles Times for example was a heavily Republican newspaper at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui
Get up!
Actually, it was 1828. And the Democratic Party is the oldest voter-based political party in the world.
And the Republican Party as we know it didn't come into existence until 1858 (I would say 1960 is more like it), so you don't get to pretend that they had anything to do with the White House, The US Capital Building, or the Rotunda at UofV.
And you would be completely wrong. The mayor of New York when Central Park was built was Fernando Wood, a Democrat.
Wrong again. The land for Griffith Park was donated in the 1890s, but the iconic buildings (Greek Theater, Griffith Observatory, etc) were built during the term of Mayor John C. Porter, a Democrat.
But I'll give you a chance to keep playing: Can you name three iconic, beautiful, human-scale urban buildings that were built by Republicans?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Ugly raw concrete blocks; a variant of modernism. Explicitly designed not to appeal to human comfort or scale.
Not everybody is as ignorant or bigoted as you. So, the answer to your questions and assumptions is "no, no, and no".
No, I'm merely saying that you should avoid living in a big city (the minimum population for a "city" in the US is 2500); and that experience with big cities pretty much disproves your notion that Democrats produce livable, human-scale, comfortable environments.
Ah yes... a world where we all live in medieval towns turned lake-resorts with no more than 5-6000 inhabitants.
With all the modern and future technologies and standards of living still available.
That would be quite pleasing.
I think that's basically how they live on Star Trek. Speaking of communism and all that...
All we need is a post-scarcity economy with matter-replicators and warp-capable spaceships.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If you want to see brutalist architecture in the US, you have to go to Houston. You won't see brutalism in Chicago or any of the civilized cities.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Umm... "As we know it"... both parties don't look anything like what they looked pre-Nixon.
And the obligatory xkcd link.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I know, let's ask our friendly javascript programmers and web designers.
There's even a website: http://chicagobrutalism.com/
But nowhere did I claim that brutalism was the only architectural sin of progressives.
Geez, talking to you is like talking to someone with late stage Alzheimers.
Wouldn't a post-oil world look similar to a pre-oil world?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
There's also a website that says the Earth is 6000 years old.
http://creation.com/
The buildings on the site you linked to are all quite beautiful. One is even a Corbusier
Here's what brutalism looks like:
http://www.houstonpress.com/ne...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Republican Party as we know it didn't come into existence until 1858 (I would say 1960 is more like it), so you don't get to pretend that they had anything to do with the White House, The US Capital Building, or the Rotunda at UofV.
You have a serious misunderstanding there bro. I never said White House, etc. were built by Republicans, I simply said they were not built by Democrats because the Democratic Party didn't exist back then.
You are parsing text that reads "not Democrat" and automatically substituting it with "Republican".
Let me summarize this thread for you, in clear words so you don't get confused:
THREAD STARTER: Nice buildings are only built in Democrat-run cities.
ME: Like Detroit? No, many nice things were built before Democrats even existed.
YOU: Name three.
ME: Anything built before 1850's, that's when the "Democratic-Republican" party broke up into two and became "Democrats" and another one called "Republicans". Such as white house, capitol, etc.
YOU: Republicans didn't build the white house!
Whether you consider them "beautiful" is irrelevant; they are examples of brutalist architecture. You obviously like "brutalist architecture", which was my point to begin with: people like you like buildings like that. People like you also tend to like futurism, modernism, and the crap that the WPA created, and which you also find all over big cities in the US. What those buildings tend not to be are buildings at a "human scale".
Generally speaking, your suggestion that you can pick a livable city based on political parties in power is just utterly stupid.
I didn't know! But the fact that you do explains a lot! It's obviously where you learned how to reason and use empirical data!
This pigs me off every day.
So many businesses have at the entrance:
A set of two doors symmetrical left and right and forwards/backwards, both have pull handles either side, one of the two doors will invariably be locked (Why?) and the other has a 50/50 chance that you can't actually pull the door, you can only push it or the opposite, you can push it but not pull it. FML.
So you end up needing both hands and the quickest method is to pull one door whilst pushing the other door and if that doesn't work then you reverse what each hand just did.
Fucking shiity design everywhere because some lazy idiot architect can't pick a functional fucking door and because some idiot manager hasn't told the lazy staff that they should be unlocking both doors not just one.
Irony: the architects offices having these same bad doors.
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