“Are you Architecture?”
“No, I am an Architect.”
Indeed, this converse is inevitable universally.
As a commoner, they may not know the extent of how impactful potential architecture bears. But definitely, all have felt the different vibes one gets within an office compared to a hospital? The compelled feeling to maintain silence and follow orders may collide, but the spaces addressing users are quite different. The bare minimum attention any build surrounding receives is when one needs to find a good backdrop for capturing themselves within their smartphones.
Space Planning that Impacts Lives | Behind Your Eyes
Architecture has evolved from the basic instinct of safeguarding to projecting a void for expression. The three-dimensional spaces draw a sense of boundary and thresholds to confine, direct or arrange a cavity for articulating publicness or personal moments.
Multisensory experience within a space evokes emotional resonance that gets conveniently overlooked by most. The health and well-being of occupants are directly affected by the built environment. City dwellers spend 95% of their lives accommodating indoors. The element of build fragments constantly exists in the background of all events aligning with living beings. The user unconsciously sensitizes to the embodied space, unaware of the atmospheric interaction with the surrounding environment. Space planning can boost or hinder human performance physically, socially, emotionally, and cognitively.
A school that has ample fresh air, sunlight with free-flowing architectural elements surrounded by green open spaces creates a positive impact on its students. The students can appear to be less stressed, interactive, and active throughout the day. The spatial setting contributes to the overall growth in the budding years of one’s childhood. If the same school has limited sunlight and artificial ventilation without any open spaces for children, occupying such an environment will impact negatively.
Understanding Impacts and Taking Notes
An architect may struggle to enjoy the sole experience that the spatial dimension offers, since years of examining surroundings with details puts one in an auto-pilot to gather the various rich elemental qualities that appears to be participating in the space-making canvas. Their observation goes beyond the tangible realms and tries to learn the biological, social, and cultural nuances. For a regular tourist or visitor, a space is a satisfaction level through personal feelings, perceptions, and experiences. To create an experience while practicing architecture, a designer compares the observation from the lens of subjectivity and objectivity to understand the connection of built form to their occupants. The profession thrives for continuous interpretation of the surroundings to obtain a world-view.
Activism in Education to Create Impact
While learning in architecture forces one to wonder if there exists any concrete teaching material in architecture at all, the field of architecture has a creative nature that prevents limiting the expanse of knowledge. Creativity is very fluid and subjective. A discipline seeking tangible outputs pressurizes the practitioners to romanticize first-hand experiences and develop diverse perceptions. The overall education spectrum is open-ended that proposes to get backed up with personal activism parallelly. The fusion of university education with professional practice while gaining a degree delivers a realistic environment detouring from imaginary fabrication.
The drift to digital evolution facilitated fluency in translating ideas and visions to the most naive individual effortlessly. Though, the practitioners feel pressured to remain updated with the technological aiding tools constantly. The adaptability addressed to the current pandemic situation through online education of the creative field has caused the lack of activism while learning. The lack of activism expanded to consultation networks worldwide can help to regain the openness of architectural education. The participatory approach expands the multisensory horizon of an individual. Following various viewpoints on a dedicated subject and discussing and criticizing it with the lens of subjectivity and objectivity replaces assumption with pragmatic thought processes.
Architectural Impact in Future | Behind Your Eyes
The remains of ancient civilizations are exhibits of broadcasting architecture that expresses how the community connected socially, politically, environmentally, and psychologically, explaining who they were. Architecture has tried to bring creativity by embracing human needs to sustain them over time and facilitate meaning to their life. The evolution of current architecture was in tandem with its past. The future aspiration needs assistance from the present scenario.
The technological advances may aspire to generate synthetic compromised experiences, but as humans, mind and soul would still long for a real multisensory experience. The future of architecture will demand a balance between intellectual interventions and the raw humanistic sense provoking qualities impacting the lives embodying these built environments. To channelize a positive impact, the exercise of perception and bringing activism to expand the horizon is quintessential.
As a facilitator of spaces, developing perception of space will provide one with the multisensory control points to create positively or negatively impactful architecture. Envision if the future needs a participatory and engaging architecture or alienation and dis-associative built forms?
References:
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- Blueprint (2018). We are not just minds, we are Carnal’: Leading Architects on sensory design. Design Curial. Available at: http://www.designcurial.com/news/making-sense-of-architecture-quotes-from-architects-illustrations-6203719/ [ Accessed 16 September 2021].
- Frederick, M (2007). 101 things I learned in architectural school. [Book] Cambridge, Massachusetts. London, England. The MIT press. Retrieved from: http://www.egyptarch.gov.eg/sites/default/files/pdf/Books/101%20Things%20I%20Learned%20in%20Architecture%20School.pdf [ Accessed 17 September 2021].
- Levie, N.().[Illustration] https://www.nirlevie.com/
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- Marino, C. (2015, January 13). Current exhibition: Designing people. [Blog] Environmental Design archives Available at: https://archives.ced.berkeley.edu/blog/archives/2015/01 [ Accessed 17 September 2021].
- Pallasma, J. (2005). The eyes of the skin – architecture and the senses. [Book] West Sussex, England. [Book] John Wiley and sons ltd. Available at: https://cc-catalogo.org/site/pdf/Pallasmaa_EyesoftheSkin.pdf [ Accessed 17 September 2021].
- Mortice Z. (2019, January 14). Why architecture is important? [News]. Study architecture. Available at: https://studyarchitecture.com/blog/architecture-news/why-architecture-is-important/ [ Accessed 15 September 2021].
- Ali, S. (2020, September 29). The future of creative higher education in the age of covid -19. It’s nice that. Available at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/future-of-creative-higher-education-in-the-age-of-covid-19-creative-industry-290920 [ Accessed 17 September 2021].
- Gnehm, M (2014, November 5). Die kopierte Stadt (The Copied City). [illustration] Amazing building adventures! The New York review. Available at : https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/11/05/amazing-adventures-architecture-comics/
