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> Another VR study, published this year, concluded that most people feel better in rooms with curved edges and rounded contours than in sharp-edged rectangular

by 21 9y ago

> Another VR study, published this year, concluded that most people feel better in rooms with curved edges and rounded contours than in sharp-edged rectangular rooms – though (tellingly perhaps) the design students among the participants preferred the opposite. I always wondered why rooms tend to be rectangular pretty much all over the world. Googling for that suggests that it's a price thing, but I'm not convinced, since expensive homes still seem to prefer rectangular rooms. Even contemporary buildings, with extremely weird and non-uniform facades, still tend to be grid-based on the inside. I would be really interested if this preference study was also done in the real world, not just in VR. Another related universal thing, why do we sleep with the head towards the wall (as opposed to the center of the room). Googling suggests a deep security measure, since the wall prevents attacks from behind you, which are the hardest to defend against. Feng-shui deals with these kind of issues, if you move beyond the superstitious layer (have a turtle for money, ...) By reading feng-shui books I learned to get a bit more intune with my inner feelings (the chi/qi), so now, if I sit in a room with no apparent exit, or with a cluttered path to the exit, I can pin point the insecurity feelings emanating from my subconscious.

Kalium 9y ago
If I were to speculate, I would guess that it's a usage-of-volume thing. It's easy to make effective use of volume with grids, but not always as easy with other shapes. Architecture is, at some level, a packing problem. Packing problems tend to favor lines and corners over organic curves.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  It's the building structure too, they're easier to design and construct using a repeating structural module. Each column supports the same area, each area has the same design loads, and you get a bunch of identical columns in a line. And then you need to arrange rooms and corridors around those columns, and it's much more convenient to not have random columns dropping through the middle of most rooms. So you align your walls on the column grid, and now you have a bunch of straight walls and 90 degree angles. To some degree it goes the other way (I need my rooms to be X by Y, design column grid to match), and you still do rectangular rooms because you know that way you can push your column gridlines into the walls. And it's not perfectly consistent, your central corridor might fall in an off-module grid width. But one way or another most modern buildings are on a grid like that.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tpeo 9y ago
When you're trying to put furniture in the room, trying to fit something with a rectangular base in a room with a rectangular plan is much easier than any other similar problem while minimizing the likelihood of having any wasted space. Plus, it's also much easier to change the configuration of the room, or to transfer one piece of furniture from one room to another. So even if people weren't just lazy about how to fit perfectly pentagonal furniture in their houses, so long as they were trying and testing new shapes, furniture would probably evolutionarily converge to something squareish.
- drsopp 9y ago
  No, I don't agree. Where did you get this idea? Did you see Antoni Gaudí's organic arcitecture in Barcelona? I find them so soothing. I think our rectangular inclinations stems mostly from what we can afford.
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
Rooms are rectangular because human brains find it simpler to map, I think. The order and structure involved means you can treat things much more interchangeably - for instance, the available directions for travel don't change as you move around in a rectangular grid, and rooms are all the same shape. The only reasonable alternative is a regular hexagonal tiling, and that means having more neighboring rooms, which gives its own problems.
xyzzyz 9y ago
Other commenters replied to you pointing out the difficulty of packing things in non-grid based space, but they are only a manifestations of the fundamental reason, which is cost: it is much cheaper to build straight walls, and the furniture for straight walls can be mass made, which also makes it much cheaper. Furniture for non-straight spaces usually needs to be custom made.
d-sc 9y ago
I work for an apartment development company. To build round walls would be prohibitively expensive and impractical. Every part of your pipeline from building materials to tools to furniture is designed for linear-walled rooms.
- nieksand 9y ago
  Furniture is definitely an issue. When I was in Singapore in the early 90s, I remember my family looking at a rental unit in the Draycott towers. It was super cool looking, but lack of places for furniture to go is what nixed it. For the curious... exterior and interior: https://www.singaporeexpats.com/singapore-property-pictures/properties/draycott-tower/01draycott-tower.jpg https://www.singaporeexpats.com/singapore-property-pictures/... http://draycott.weebly.com/uploads/1/7/5/5/1755412/3811624.jpg?600x424 http://draycott.weebly.com/uploads/1/7/5/5/1755412/3811624.j...
- serhei 9y ago
  Variations on octagonal rooms could be a good approximation. For example, bay windows are practically a way to achieve a similar effect, without departing from a rectangle structure too much.
silvestrov 9y ago
One aspect of living in very old buildings in Europe (buildings more than 150 years old) is that no corner is 90°, no ceiling is completely flat, no door is standard size. This makes for very cosy flats which are very much liked and in demand. It also makes for very good acoustics, unlike modern flat and hard walls/ceilings. And yet people in charge here still build "modern" buildings, even when we have known for the past 50 years that this kind of building never make people feel part of a community, which is so important for society.
- delegate 9y ago
  I guess it's a lot cheaper to build square angles, then 'organic' shapes. Just a guess, though.
  - Doxin 9y ago
    You don't need "organic shapes" to build a house with non 90-degree angles. Just make sure to steal your carpenter's square and his level before he starts.
jdonaldson 9y ago
Think of all the things that are flat and straight... boards, wires, pipes, furniture, etc. It's easy to fit flat to flat. If things are curved, you need to match angles and curves everywhere using flat shapes.
theoh 9y ago
Best article I know about the rectangularity issue is this, by Philip Steadman: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/13217/1/13217.pdf http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/13217/1/13217.pdf

by 21 9y ago

Kalium 9y ago

If I were to speculate, I would guess that it's a usage-of-volume thing. It's easy to make effective use of volume with grids, but not always as easy with other shapes. Architecture is, at some level, a packing problem. Packing problems tend to favor lines and corners over organic curves.

wlesieutre 9y ago
It's the building structure too, they're easier to design and construct using a repeating structural module. Each column supports the same area, each area has the same design loads, and you get a bunch of identical columns in a line. And then you need to arrange rooms and corridors around those columns, and it's much more convenient to not have random columns dropping through the middle of most rooms. So you align your walls on the column grid, and now you have a bunch of straight walls and 90 degree angles. To some degree it goes the other way (I need my rooms to be X by Y, design column grid to match), and you still do rectangular rooms because you know that way you can push your column gridlines into the walls. And it's not perfectly consistent, your central corridor might fall in an off-module grid width. But one way or another most modern buildings are on a grid like that.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tpeo 9y ago

When you're trying to put furniture in the room, trying to fit something with a rectangular base in a room with a rectangular plan is much easier than any other similar problem while minimizing the likelihood of having any wasted space. Plus, it's also much easier to change the configuration of the room, or to transfer one piece of furniture from one room to another. So even if people weren't just lazy about how to fit perfectly pentagonal furniture in their houses, so long as they were trying and testing new shapes, furniture would probably evolutionarily converge to something squareish.

drsopp 9y ago
No, I don't agree. Where did you get this idea? Did you see Antoni Gaudí's organic arcitecture in Barcelona? I find them so soothing. I think our rectangular inclinations stems mostly from what we can afford.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

Rooms are rectangular because human brains find it simpler to map, I think. The order and structure involved means you can treat things much more interchangeably - for instance, the available directions for travel don't change as you move around in a rectangular grid, and rooms are all the same shape. The only reasonable alternative is a regular hexagonal tiling, and that means having more neighboring rooms, which gives its own problems.

xyzzyz 9y ago

Other commenters replied to you pointing out the difficulty of packing things in non-grid based space, but they are only a manifestations of the fundamental reason, which is cost: it is much cheaper to build straight walls, and the furniture for straight walls can be mass made, which also makes it much cheaper. Furniture for non-straight spaces usually needs to be custom made.

d-sc 9y ago

I work for an apartment development company. To build round walls would be prohibitively expensive and impractical. Every part of your pipeline from building materials to tools to furniture is designed for linear-walled rooms.

nieksand 9y ago
Furniture is definitely an issue. When I was in Singapore in the early 90s, I remember my family looking at a rental unit in the Draycott towers. It was super cool looking, but lack of places for furniture to go is what nixed it. For the curious... exterior and interior: https://www.singaporeexpats.com/singapore-property-pictures/properties/draycott-tower/01draycott-tower.jpg https://www.singaporeexpats.com/singapore-property-pictures/... http://draycott.weebly.com/uploads/1/7/5/5/1755412/3811624.jpg?600x424 http://draycott.weebly.com/uploads/1/7/5/5/1755412/3811624.j...
serhei 9y ago
Variations on octagonal rooms could be a good approximation. For example, bay windows are practically a way to achieve a similar effect, without departing from a rectangle structure too much.

silvestrov 9y ago

One aspect of living in very old buildings in Europe (buildings more than 150 years old) is that no corner is 90°, no ceiling is completely flat, no door is standard size. This makes for very cosy flats which are very much liked and in demand. It also makes for very good acoustics, unlike modern flat and hard walls/ceilings. And yet people in charge here still build "modern" buildings, even when we have known for the past 50 years that this kind of building never make people feel part of a community, which is so important for society.

delegate 9y ago
I guess it's a lot cheaper to build square angles, then 'organic' shapes. Just a guess, though.
- Doxin 9y ago
  You don't need "organic shapes" to build a house with non 90-degree angles. Just make sure to steal your carpenter's square and his level before he starts.

jdonaldson 9y ago

Think of all the things that are flat and straight... boards, wires, pipes, furniture, etc. It's easy to fit flat to flat. If things are curved, you need to match angles and curves everywhere using flat shapes.

theoh 9y ago

Best article I know about the rectangularity issue is this, by Philip Steadman: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/13217/1/13217.pdf http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/13217/1/13217.pdf