3 ms·
One thing I've noticed by people watching, both in real life and digitally, is that even if there's a lot of things to do, people won't stick around if the buil
by Tanoc 3y ago
One thing I've noticed by people watching, both in real life and digitally, is that even if there's a lot of things to do, people won't stick around if the buildings around them are blah and flat. You could have an amazing square with all sorts of little fried food carts and comfortable benches or a digital square with lots of minigames and events, but people won't go there if they're surrounded by modernist and post-modernist architecture comprised of flat glass and concrete surfaces, no matter how planar or curved the overall forms actually are. Such buildings have a "This is a place of function, not humanity" aura that people unconsciously pick up on.
- trimistermota 3y agoBut this aura is also a lot of social conditioning. People pick up on this aura because people have been taught that ornament is art based architecture and modern designs are function based architecture.
- DrScientist 3y agoI think you are wrong - I think it's much more fundamental than that - boring environments stress and depress people [1][2]. The flip side of why people find a walk in nature lifts their mood. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/oct/19/demand-interestingness-thomas-heatherwick-rails-against-boring-buildings https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/oct/19/demand-... [2] https://www.thecut.com/2016/04/the-psychological-cost-of-boring-buildings.html https://www.thecut.com/2016/04/the-psychological-cost-of-bor...
- hospitalJail 3y ago[flagged]
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoAccording to Christopher Alexander et al. in A Pattern Language, it's about edges: you want buildings to have a non-zero-width "edge" to them that creates an additional zone that is (a) not the building (b) not the open space beyond it. APL has several nice examples of this.
- btbuildem 3y agoC.A. talks about centers -- edges are one of the aspects that help create centers, but there are many others. Repetition is one of the tools that help emphasize and create centers. Look at the building in the first photo in the article -- how much repetition there is in terms of shapes, architectural "molecules".