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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
I really enjoyed James Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere where he talks about the disaster of post-war suburban planning and "undoing the damage of modernism."
If you can spare 22 minutes, see his TED talk How bad architecture wrecked cities.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
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.
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
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!
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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