While evolution’s natural selection is about competing individuals, a broader perspective on our response to built environments, another set of genetic preparations for survival – another set of innate pleasures – is seen in the ways we mate and settle in communities. Both the biology and practical survival benefits are compelling – cohesive family groups, strength-in-numbers, extended expertise gained by learning from each other, trading, collaborating and specializing – and we are powerfully motivated to merge our competitive interests into a cooperating population when we can find like-minded people.
Look again at the choice of a “good home.” For those who can choose, it may well be on high ground, overlooking water and set in parkland. But making choices based on limited resources, we most often live in clusters – compounds, hamlets, villages, towns, gated or not – where the comfort of refuge is in the presence of neighbors, and security is found behind a protective “wall” of social contracts – customs, laws, and patrols.
It’s a way we’ve been prepared to transcend the in-born human limitations that frustrate competitive success. We volunteer to compromise our hard-earned independence of action – often enthusiastically – as we join in larger and more powerful alliances – friendships, a team, a community, a culture or ideology. And those connections, like our connections to nature, tend to draw their power from the spiritual experience – the sense of entering into, belonging to – something larger than our own day-to-day material world. We sense ourselves joining in time cycles that exceed our life, and the ultimate reward comes from surrendering to a super-natural ally and feeling our living essence achieve a form of immortality.
The significance of the commitment, submerging our own identity, what we are, into a group, can be read in the quick, often violent emotions evoked by – and the willingness to die for – such concepts as turf, ghetto, comrades, and fatherland and by the anxiety of personal separation or exclusion from the “refuge” of a group. These can be – they have been – life-or-death issues. And forms of hospitality – of sharing food and warmth – are one of the defining customs of a family or a culture. Further, the most admired virtues in many societies are self-sacrifice, loyalty, and courage – deciding to overrule our other survival instincts on behalf of justice, fairness, “duty” owed to others – or instantaneously, without thinking, responding to people in distress.
The underlying biology is in the mix of hormones stirred first by an initial encounter and then validated by repetition. Natural selection has made us a gregarious species, and while we respond to a threat with the well-known “fight-or-flight” impulses – aggression or fear – we may instead, in the same instant, detect a level of warmth or welcome. We’re prepared for the nuanced, often involuntary messages we receive from faces, body language, words, and voices to trigger a different body chemistry, one that induces a “tend-and-befriend” openness, curiosity, empathy and, ultimately, altruism.
We are quick to search out and detect capabilities and competence in potential allies and mates; we want to experience the pleasures of trust, of aligning our feelings and beliefs with theirs, and the sense of bonding outside ourselves. And while the ease and intensity of person-to-person connections – the chemistry – varies from gene pool to gene pool, introverts and extroverts, and with gender and age, we all tend to mirror – to attune ourselves to – each other’s feelings and behavior. The result is the kind of emotional contagion that underlies both person-to-person empathy and the behavior of crowds or mobs. In other words, our brain networks – its structure – can be shaped by what other people do around us.
“Water, food, and spiritual security – the working and symbolic
crossroads for a cluster of alliances.”
Relationships
In practice, social relationships are our primary “environment.” We are born into them. They are part of our identity and shape an experience of the places we build in two important ways. First, in the constant overload of received information we tend to single out and give first priority to social information. And the resulting pleasure or anxiety of person-to-person connections is often the strongest emotion feeding our responses. It may be an ephemeral interaction between people and a place – in rituals, trade, sports, or public promenading – or more permanent, like selecting the refuge of a home in a neighborhood of allies and the prospect out onto a reassuring village street.
Wrapped into our predilection to explore, and at times our most urgent immediate motivation, is the search for orientation – to know exactly where we are. Again, what happens in a built environment parallels person-to-person encounters. We want to eliminate unknowns and get-our-bearings in relation to the mental maps that we have constructed over time. Being disoriented – being “lost” – triggers anxiety, fear, and ultimately panic. It is clearly a “peril”, and it can be costly. Though we lack the innate homing skills of other animals, we do have an evolved capability to learn how to navigate; it’s another way we “master” our environment and feel “in control”.
“The classic legibility of a city – geography and the power of the alliances that built Florence”
Maps and legibility
In his pioneering study, The Image of the City, professor Kevin Lynch analyzed mental maps created by many people to orient themselves in a city. Although each individual’s map was necessarily unique, he found important overlaps – propensities – that he organized into clear, practical, usable ways that we use to make a city “legible”. Many of his insights and much of his vocabulary of “imageability” and “way finding” have been adopted, built upon, and absorbed into the conventional wisdom of generations of designers because they can be successfully applied in practice – and not only in his field, urban design. It seems likely that he is describing patterns that come naturally and easily into most human minds – a specific genetic preparation for learning.
In any case, we all know that aids to navigation and clues to orientation are integral parts of built environments – whether conscious and intended or not. Lynch focused on the physical form of Boston, but his pattern of thinking also organizes the broader bands of perception that we habitually use in practice to find our way.
- He identified five key elements that continually reappeared in mental maps – edges, paths, districts, nodes, and landmarks – and spelled out common themes that are perceived in each of them, primarily qualities of clarity, continuities, differentiation, and dominance, and the awareness of motion and time – plus, naturally, the recognition that all are then interpreted through filters of culture, personal skills, and associations.
- In addition to distinctive spatial forms, sources and echoes of sounds, aromas or stench, temperatures, wind and light levels are all elements in the maps.
- Sensing distinctive kinds of human presence and action, past, present, and anticipated – the social and cultural clues – can be even more powerful. The energy and excitement of crowds and commerce, a fear of strangers and violence, or the reassurance offered by records of long established human settlement, all tell stories of stability, danger or vitality that define a place – and whether we want to be there or, instead, find a path to escape or explore further.
- Ultimately, of course, the underlying coordinates of a mental map are framed in the context of our own pressing motivations, accumulated memories, and the feelings locked into them.
Most design competitions are won by entries with a narrow focus, as architects know only too well. There is simply no time to work through all the issues and tell a comprehensive story. The goal is to unearth a single idea and then work to present it in the most compelling fashion. Those who try to design too much fail. Those who concentrate on a succinct scheme, succeed.
When we began working on the Office Building of the Future Competition we realized that this was one of those game changing assignments, and it needed a completely new approach. Only by integrating a variety of issues such as engineering systems, site constraints, market forces, and architectural design could we hope to understand the challenge facing us. How then, could we achieve this integrated concept with limited time and resources?
We called our friends and some of our most trusted consultants: Mark Tamaro at Thornton Tomassetti for structural engineering; Christian Agulles at WSP Flack+ Kurtz for MEP Engineering; and Paul Totten at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger for building enclosure consulting. We fully expected to have to “sell” them on this project. After all, we wanted them to donate their most valuable commodity, their time. Their response was quick and definitive. Not only would they work with us, but they were excited by the prospect.
MEP Diagrams
In the course of reporting my piece on Edward Mazria, I had a very interesting conversation with Andrew C. Revkin, for years an environmental reporter for the New York Times. Today he writes the paper’s Dot Earth Blog and also teaches at Pace University. A big admirer of Mazria, Revkin has an altogether clear-eyed view of the environmental road ahead. An edited version of our talk follows:
Martin C. Pedersen: First off, what’s your role at Pace?
Andrew C. Revkin: I am Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding at the Academy for Applied Environmental Studies. And I co-teach three courses. One is a new course I’ve launched called Blogging a Better Planet. In the spring I co-teach a documentary production course, where we do films on sustainability topics, and an environmental science communication course.
MCP: You’ve been aware of Ed’ Mazria’s role in the environmental movement for a while. How would you characterize it?
ACR: His case—and it’s a good and simple one—is that buildings really matter. He’s trying to shift how we design them, and how we design architects, as well.
MCP: How does his advocacy differ from someone like Bill McKibben http://www.350.org/?
ACR: I think Ed is focusing on things that are imminently more doable. Bill is very good about building movements around numbers, but has not adequately articulated how you get there. In other words, besides yelling at fossil fuel companies. That may be something that needs to be done, but it’s not a path that will actually change a lot of things. Ed is working in a space where there’s a lot to be done, both on existing structures and on new buildings. There’s huge potential to make big gains.
When we published a Metropolis issue on Access in 1992, we were optimistic about the positive changes the Americans with Disabilities Act would bring to the designed environment. Signed into law by president Bush the elder two years earlier, the ADA was a hopeful expansion of civil rights, promising to include citizens with disabilities, in all that America offers. Considerate design was to be at the heart of this momentous social change. Well, it didn’t quite turn out to be that momentous. Compliance to the law seemed to wipe out the possibilities for design thinking about real people’s real needs.
Five years earlier we told the story of Patricia Moore, an industrial designer and gerontologist, who as a young woman took aging seriously and set out to experience the built environment—from street crossings to shopping—as an eighty-something. With the aid of a professional makeup artist, she navigated the world as an elder whose mobility and reflexes had been compromised by the natural process of growing old. In addition to her own research, Moore was also instrumental in helping craft the ADA. Through the years, her abiding commitment to inclusive design has never flagged (though it has been often frustrated by an uncaring marketplace).
As we developed our 9th Annual Next Generation Competition, focused this year on inclusive design, we asked Moore to serve on our Advisory Board and as a member of our jury. In between one of her trips to China and some other far-flung stop, we caught up with Patricia A. Moore, president of MooreDesign Associates, LLC. Her stellar credentials include communication design, research, product development and design, package design for such clients as AT&T, Bell Communications, Citibank, Maytag, 3M, Sunbeam, and scores of others. As February 18, 2013, the deadline for Next Gen entries nears, I decided to ask my friend Pattie to talk about design in the service of human needs, give some advice to practicing designers, as well as those just stating out. Here is what she told me:
Susan S. Szenasy: Your game changing work came into my consciousness when we, at Metropolis, ran an article on you at age 26 navigating the built environment as an eighty-something. This was 26 years ago, when I came on board as the editor of the magazine; your story has informed my thinking about design responsibility ever since. For those few who might not know your story, can recap the reasons for your so-called “cross dressing” adventure?
Patricia A. Moore: In 1979, when I undertook my “Elder Empathic Experience,” the focus on ageing was primarily a medical model for treatment of illnesses and the chronic conditions related to growing older, and being an elder. The architecture, design, and engineering communities were essentially ignoring older people, with the very erroneous assumption that elders were not “consumers,” but rather “patients,” and therefore, not their concern.
My personal tipping point was the moment I was chastised by a superior at Raymond Loewy International. I was the youngest and only female industrial designer in the New York Office. We were gathered in a meeting room, discussing the design a refrigerator, when I asked if we couldn’t consider some door handle solutions that would be easier for elders and people with grasp and strength limitations to use. The response was a dismissive, “Pattie, we don’t design for those people!” Those people? If the Raymond Lowey organization wasn’t designing for consumers of all needs, then who was?
I realized that observation and surveying, while important tools, would not be adequate to communicate the findings I so passionately knew to be true. As a child, watching my grand parents and their friends struggle with the activities of daily living, I instinctively knew the failure wasn’t theirs, but the result of poor and inadequate design solutions.
When I met the television and film make-up artists who helped to create the various elder personas I utilized, from the first day my foot touched a sidewalk in New York City (May 1979) until my last sojourn in October of 1982, I realized the means to provide a proper “wake-up” call for action. By becoming woman in her eighties, I was able to immerse myself into the daily reality of life as elders living in a youth-oriented society.
Paul Rudolph’s Claire T. Carney Library at UMass Dartmouth, Western facade during renovation
When I read Robert Campbell’s recent article in The Boston Globe on designLAB’s sensitive renovation of a significant Paul Rudolph building at UMass Dartmouth, I was intrigued to learn more. The word that got me going was “Brutalism”. For some time now we’ve been covering this experimental, some call it aggressive or even willful and arrogant, form making. Our story on the ongoing struggles to keep Bertrand Goldberg’s iconic Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Chicago dates to 2009, our more recent blog on the last minute reprieve of Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center brightened my day even as I mourned the loss other important works from that optimistic period in our culture’s history. And so we welcomed Brunner/Cott & Associates’ ongoing blog series on the trials and tribulations of saving and adapting Brutalist buildings.
Eastern facade during renovation
It’s no surprise, then, that the Boston architecture firm, designLAB Architects’ success at the library at UMass Dartmouth re-awakened my evergreen curiosity about Rudolph, Brutalism, preservation, adaptation, research, and progress. So I went to the source and asked designLAB’s Robert J. Miklos, FAIA, to talk frankly about these and other issues swirling around one of the most controversial movements in architecture history. Here is what he said:
Susan S. Szenasy: Now that your renovation work on Paul Rudolph’s Claire T. Carney Library at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is nearing completion, it would be great to hear some of your reflections on the project. I believe that you and your firm, designLAB, consider Rudolph an architecture hero. That relationship can be intimidating to some architects. Did you struggle with Rudolph’s spirit? Or did his spirit seem to be at ease with your re-interpretation of his iconic building?
Robert J. Miklos: Truthfully, we don’t see him as a hero. His work is heroic, perhaps, but I am a product of 1970’s GSD and was conditioned to reject the work of Rudolph. At designLAB, our ‘courtship’ of the hero was a long process of research and analysis before we were able to find any true ‘affection’ for his work.
Rudolph with the library site model
It started with a talented young designer on the team who studied his early work at the University of Florida. There, Rudolph truly is a hero, if not a cult figure. I traveled to Florida to tour all his work in Sarasota–it was inspiring. His career is filled with contradictions: rationalism vs. expressionism, structural determinism vs. a personal obsession for hexagonal form. While we were continually trying to understand the original intentions and spirit of this project, we always recognized it as one of many experiments filled with successes and flaws. A radical approach to the interpretation and transformation was necessary, yet we believe our approach is rooted in the spirit of Rudolph.
It’s also important to note that at designLAB, we are invested in expanding the language of a specific context, whether natural or constructed. In this project, the existing building was that context, which we termed ‘Post-Utopian’. Our methodology is similar to what we have used in other contexts, determining when to push back, when to be deferential. Throughout our design process we immersed ourselves in Rudolph’s ideas and process developing a dialog between existing and new where the interventions might amplify the power of his original ideas and compositional themes. We also were not afraid to correct inconsistencies in his approach.
Library’s eastern facade during renovation
Alternative Workplace Strategies, Collaborative Environments, Co-working, Mobile Working, Virtual Officing or Flex Work space. I thought I was up-to-date on all my industry buzzwords until recently when a designer asked me if I had any information or studies on Agile Facility Management. Caught a little off guard, I told her I would check with my team and see what I could find.
I ended up turning to the Internet for more information, and learned it is not a new phrase as it relates to computer programmers and writing code. The primary struggle with their environment is the ability to bring groups of people together quickly for problem solving. These teams may be brought together for a day or more then a month, and require huge expanses of whiteboards, flip charts and other accessories, but the environment must also provide space for programmers to do heads down work. The methodology associated with these teams and management style is being adapted as a means to the general work environment.
Today, a company’s ability to react to social and economic shifts means that the traditional work environment must make adjustments. In recent years, with the growth of more sustainable environments, panel heights are being reduced or eliminated, which can take away the traditional storage an overhead provides. Office footprints and the reshaping and agility of the office environment are also changing rapidly with the acceptance of work-from-home and telecommuting policies.
I’m working with a client who is looking at a 60/20/20 split in office personnel: 60 percent work in a dedicated space within the office, 20 percent work entirely off site and the remaining 20 percent work in and out of the office. It’s a cultural shift in the way people work and it allows employees to have a better work life balance. Additionally, it enables an organization to capitalize on the strengths of their employees while allowing flexibility.
A common solution for this type of environment is benching, which can help organizations save on real estate costs and accommodate more people into a space. Be aware, these are fixed elements that don’t allow the facility to adapt to an individual or group of individuals that may need additional surface space to enable them to work more effectively. Some organizations or designers may suggest assigning mobile pedestals to each worker that could be housed in a central “parking” area, which sounds like an easy solution until you do the math. If a typical floor plan allows for a density of 150 people and 60 percent of them work in the office full time, than 90 of those spaces are occupied on a regular basis. Plus, if an average of 20 percent visit the office two to three days per week, than the space would need to constantly house 120 mobile pedestals somewhere on the floor. If each pedestal took up 15” x 24” of floor space the space would be using 312 square feet of dedicated floor space only to accommodate pedestals. This is not an efficient use of space.
In Europe, some companies provide employees with a personal, lockable storage space to keep office essentials; however, given the same scenario above, if we used the designated floor space per storage unit but stacked the lockers four units high, the useable floor space would decrease 78 square feet. (more…)
To understand how landscape architecture can address our society’s rising security concerns, we naturally turned to the eminent architect Laurie Olin in our November issue. His Philadelphia- and Los Angeles-based studio has long engaged with the thorny task of designing the public realm, from New York’s Bryant Park, to the grounds of the Washington Monument. I met with Olin in his sun-drenched office overlooking Independence Hall in the heart of historic Philadelphia. Some of our long conversation about designing for security was published in the article “The Trouble with Washington.” The conversation continues below:
Avinash Rajagopal: How did designers get left out of the conversation on security?
Laurie Olin: Why do designers get left out of so many conversations in our environment? It’s partly because people don’t realize what we can do and how we can help, and partly because people panicked.
A few years ago, after 9/11, when the federal government insisted on closing Chestnut street here in Philadelphia— basically paralyzing this end of our city with their notion of defending Independence Hall from some sort of attack—it took us three years to unwrap that, and to get the street open, and to get the barriers down. I personally had to go down to Washington to talk to two senators one day, to get them to reopen one of the main arteries of our city, which passes in front of Independence Hall.
Now the truth is that any teenager could figure out how to blow up Independence Hall if they wanted to. You could do it from any of these offices around here; it’d be so easy. Probably no one will. Even if they did, it is a building that, thanks to the American Building Survey, has been documented to death, and it could be rebuilt. If Dresden has been rebuilt after the fire bombing of WWII, surely we could rebuild this hall. It’s been rebuilt two or three times already, those aren’t the real towers anymore. It’s like those old shrines in Japan that are rebuilt every 25 years. They’re 800 years old, but they’re really only 25 years old. Yes, Independence Hall was built in 1759, but its been rebuilt many times since. There’s a lack of perspective on the part of the current administrators.
A sunken wall and bank were used as security measures in 17th and 18th-century parks in France and England. Some of these, like this one in Greenwich, near London, have been modified into embellishments. Image courtesy Laurie Olin.
As we re-engage with our federal government, in the belief that productive discourse for the good of the people and the environment may resume once more, let’s take inspiration from a moment of hope and optimism.
The year was 1962. President Kennedy…
I don’t enjoy flying and not for the reasons most people dislike it, such as rising ticket prices, long lines, security scans, and cramped seats. For me the sound of roaring engines, sitting in a tight space, and turbulence at 30,000 feet are what make my palms sweat. Despite my nervousness, however, I refuse to allow flying to stop me from going places and seeing the world.
A number of years ago when I traveled frequently back and forth to my hometown, I became accustomed to sitting in a window seat. During those flights, I would gaze out over the country to help pass the time — this calmed my fears. Today I have a love-hate relationship with flying, now that I know Mother Nature and the man-made world are spectacular at great heights.
A river winds along the south coast of Massachusetts
Over the years, I’ve seen lightning between the clouds, holiday lights twinkling below, a sunrise over the Atlantic, and skyscrapers from the top down. While other air travelers may not think this is exciting, for me, with my passion for art and design, the view from high altitudes is exquisite and inspiring. Now every time I fly I take my digital camera to record the magnificent views and I save them in a folder called, ‘My Fear of Flying.’
The sun setting between layers of clouds
The recent hurricane-induced blackout, and the loss of light — both in our homes and in our permanent street lighting system — plunged us into a chaotic and unpredictable environment. It was, at an emotional level, frightening, bewildering, and incredibly stressful. Indoors, it created inconvenience (where are my clothes? where are the kids’ toys?), danger (where are my pills?, how do I manage 18 flights of stairs in the dark?), and the disruption of habitual activities that focus our evenings (cooking, reading, playing games). Outdoors, the looming darkness escalated anxiety. We feared stumbling, bumping into walls; falling into manholes; that a car or cyclist might hit us; loss of orientation (what street am I on?). We feared strangers. And then there was the loss of what I call “glow.” It’s the social experience of light: I see you, you see me, look at everyone around us. “Glow” provides comfort and ease as we go about our nighttime routines amid the delights and enchantments a city offers, abuzz and alive after dark.
When a street lighting system goes down, we may not be able to replace each element, but we can look for useful and imaginative responses that might ease some of our very real ‘functional’ fears, and bring back some of the social dimensions of light. We might consider the blackout as a time machine transporting us back to a Dark Age before we were so dependent on technologies that we can’t personally control. We forget that, for all but a recent moment in human history, we have, as a species, lived without a state-supplied artificial light system. Yet at night we maneuvered around our homes, negotiated stairs, went outside and navigated pathways. We traveled across counties, indeed, entire countries, and explored all the continents available to explore, using the technologies we had at hand, harvesting the potential of starlight, the Milky Way, and the moon.
We need to mine this Dark Age technology, not just because another blackout might occur, but because it helps us to imagine other less electric alternatives for a future in which we may well want to use less light. So here are a few simple principles gleaned from a review of pre-industrial cutting edge technology.
On a steamy Monday morning in July, over a dozen high school and college students took their seats in a Washington DC gallery just half a block from the Anacostia River. They’re here to participate in a two week-urban design charette. Following a brief presentation the students launched into questions about the proposed transformation of an existing freeway bridge into a pedestrian link and recreational destination. The tone of the discussion was occasionally rowdy, but the content was right on target, hitting all the major concerns that arose since this project began as an inspired pipe dream: how will it be funded, is there political will to see it built, how to ensure that foot traffic and access are adequate, how to deal with polluted river water, will there be gentrification and potential displacement of existing residents, and how to prevent crime?
The old 11th Street bridges that connect southeast DC with communities east of the river have reached the end of their lifespan; replacement bridges are now under construction. The D.C. Office of Planning along with several District agencies are exploring the idea of using the base of one of the bridges to create a park for active recreation, arts, and environmental education and connecting the communities of Capitol Hill with Anacostia.
Though the students understand the obstacles facing the bridge project, this has not hampered them from delving into design and programming to achieve the four lofty goals of the project: promote healthy communities, restore the health of the Anacostia River, bring economic prosperity to the region, and symbolically stitch together the two sides of the river. Participating students are in the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program, chosen for their interest in architecture, planning, and environmental engineering. They come directly from one of three District agencies: the departments of Planning, Environment, or Transportation. They understand the challenges they face, while they’re eager to come up with some truly innovative solutions.
Living in a big city can be hard. If you live in New York, you have probably quoted the famous song, “If I make it there, I can make it anywhere.” But Portland-based developer Gerding Edlen recognizes the need for giving a softer side to the city.
They develop buildings that, from my perspective, promise to be soft on communities, soft on the environment, and soft on residents.
Gerding Edlen has spoken with Metropolis before, but now they are considering bringing rental development to the east coast, potentially to New York City. I spoke with Mark Edlen, CEO, about their development plans and how those plans fit into cities like ours, “the city that never sleeps.”
“We’ve seen a movement to the cities. Cities are the solution to our global population growth,” said Edlen. His firm recognizes that people see city living as a way to help solve global problems. They also see how it’s becoming more popular to live a mobile and sustainable urban lifestyle.
In 1984, the environmental psychologist Roger Ulrich made a startling discovery. In studying hospital patients recovering from surgery, he found that one factor alone accounted for significant differences in post-operative complications, recovery times…
