As human beings, we leave eternal echoes through history in the form of art, culture, and architecture. Architecture has acted as the reflection of specific communities’ values, traditions, and success. What had started with a monolithic rock representing a burial spot has now transformed into highly advanced skylines with soaring skyscrapers and fascinating facades. Though we are mortals, we still seek eternity and try to make a presence in this world. Architecture has been a very commonly used language for this purpose, and many of the current cities with historical monuments stand as a testament to this fact. With the diversifying knowledge over time, the scope of architecture diversified. Today in the modern era, we have many building typologies like community centers, public spaces, skyscrapers, museums, etc., that fulfill our various purposes. We can see that architecture is affecting our psychology and sociology in many new ways. So, the question has to be asked: How is architecture impacting our lives, and in what ways?
Impacts on Our Perception and Mindsets
The impressions of architecture on our human psychology, and our perspective is quite remarkable. But this impact remains hidden and unnoticed till one pays attention to it. Buildings primarily provide shelter and cater to basic human needs, and when architecture is at its best, it can enrich people’s experiences and lives. But on a larger scale, that effect is much broader, and you can say that buildings produce a ripple effect. Structures first affect the immediate site and the users using them, then they affect the communities around them, the city’s economy, and lastly, the environment.
However, we can divide the impact between the user and the immediate site into two significant reasons: The positive psychological effect of thoughtfully designed buildings and the negative psychological effect of poor architecture. For example, in the various hustling cities, we can notice that urban planners have very thoughtfully fabricated the buildings with small breathing spaces in the forms of public or open spaces. As a result, these public spaces remind busy people to pause and connect with new people in this modern environment. This would give them a break and provide a source of pleasure, and hence we get a happy working environment.
One of the most significant architectural gifts is skyscrapers, and they have become a symbol of a developed country. Though this is the easiest solution to provide housing for many people in lesser site areas, it is observed that when built insensitively, it highly impacts the spatial quality of the people living in them. The lack of open, green spaces and the monotonous pattern create a form of sensory deprivation. Sometimes the prominent glass facades of these skyscrapers end up burning things in the surroundings. The point is, architecture, when used in a detailed and thoughtful manner, can provide a significant source of happiness and motivation in our lives; on the other hand, when used insensitively and poorly can directly affect our lifestyle.
Impact lies in the eyes of the beholder.
In this world filled with various people, everyone has their definition of what a good building is. As each individual perceives structure differently, hence its impact varies as well. From an architect’s perspective, a building is not just about the user experience; it is about the concept, technical aspects, its impact on the neighboring environment and the future. One can observe that if a city is filled with intelligent buildings, it inspires the local architects to build something new every time and thus lead to the upliftment of the city’s total built environment. From a designer’s perspective, these buildings provide excellent inspiration for their design ideas, as architecture can also be summed up as a complex design process. While looking at structures, designers would mostly pay attention to the various design elements, the color schemes used, and how these factors would affect the user experience.
As it is the people who use it, the opinions of the users matter the most. A building that addresses all their needs is aesthetically pleasing, enriches their lifestyle, and mental health is considered good architecture. Suppose a facility fails to satisfy their needs, then even if the building is aesthetically pleasing or is conceptually rich for a user, it would have a negative impact. This is the main difference between practical architectural practice and architectural education schools. In schools, students don’t deal with actual clients and mainly design according to their choices and preferences. But, in reality, we have to deal with many different types of clients and fulfill their expectations.
Architecture and its Future
Architecture is one of the few professions that dates back to ancient times and has a profound impact on the immediate environment, which probably lasts for decades. With the advancement in technologies and artificial intelligence in the past few years, we have reached a new level of freedom in this field. What was once impossible to build structurally and was just a vision is now actually possible. This field since then is a fast-growing profession. Today users are becoming more aware of the role of an architect in designing, and thus, more people consult them for designing structures.
The population is also growing significantly, and so are the cities in which they reside. To fit this massive population in a small piece of land, we have the most convenient option: skyscrapers. Due to more technological options available to us, we can expect the future to be more advanced in these fields. To cope with this fast-moving world with a high population, we often forget about being sensitive to our natural habitat. For example, we can spot these negative impacts of this modernization in cities built as concrete jungles with very few green spaces. This led to the rise of various global issues and concerns for our changing climates. Presently architects are becoming more and more sensitive about this issue, and there is a mass awareness among architects about sustainable architecture. In the future, we can expect the built forms to be more sustainable and empathetic about the user experience and its effect on our quality of life quality.
How Current Online Education may Affect Architecture’s Future
Due to this ongoing pandemic, One of the most affected sectors in this world is the education sector. For students’ safety, schools, and colleges, have been shut down for an extended period depending on the country and covid impact. Some courses are easy to handle online, but practical courses like architecture require frequent site visits and practical knowledge of intelligent buildings. Being an architecture student myself, I have suffered from this issue for about one and a half years. Though lecturers are giving their best to keep the education as practical as possible, some things can never be taught online, and can only be taught in physical presence. In this pandemic, architecture students cannot go on site tours, one of the essential parts of architecture education. In this kind of situation, I believe there are mainly two things that can happen. Either these adverse circumstances truly impact our architectural practice, or due to these adverse conditions, we discover new architectural opportunities.
If we find new opportunities and create a new form of architecture, it will significantly impact the user’s experience. Just as covid has mutated over time to stay alive, in a similar way architecture will also find its way of coping with the situation.
How Architecture Changed my Perspective
We all grew up seeing buildings from our childhood. Before studying architecture, I just enjoyed the aesthetic appeal of it without questioning it. Based on my experience and its aesthetic, buildings were either good, average, or bad for me. I never paid attention to the architectural details because I didn’t know about them. When I joined my architecture school, I could gradually spot all the details in every building. Then my perspective of viewing buildings changed entirely as I constantly searched for new information about the structures. But then this knowledge sometimes bothered me too, as now I could spot the various construction mistakes in many of the buildings and it often had an itch inside me to correct them. I could sense the complexity of architecture and how difficult it is to build something that takes cognizance of all the factors that affect human lives and the environment.
Since prehistoric times, every civilization has constructed its own architectural marvel, which defined its society. Egyptians had a pyramid that signified their belief in the afterlife, Roman, and Greek architecture are known to be the Pioneer of most of the construction methods today, and this list goes on. Architectural projects have proved to be the ones that govern most of the changes in our society. We can observe that the architecture of a place becomes a sign of how developed a city is. The more developed architecture an area has, the more positive effect it has on its people. One of the reasons architecture is considered a challenging course is that it has the power to impact our lives significantly, which can be positive or negative. This effect on society is and will continue to be fundamental to the development, evolution, and growth of human civilization. Everything that is built today will continue to affect the present and the future.
