“Egypt.”

I drew a map. Others drew pyramids. The sphinx. Mummies.

And so on for London, New York, San Francisco, and Fargo.

I drew the meat grinder with the guy’s leg sticking out of it, like that scene at the end of the film “Fargo.” This isn’t the sort of thing you raise your hand for when Shauna wants to know what we came up with. Most people drew a blank on Fargo altogether.

Amos Rapoport said, “The built environment is a direct and unself-conscious translation into physical form of a culture, its needs and values, as well as the desires, dreams, and passion of a people. Shauna told us that we have a massive amount of ideas to draw from as future designers, and that we need to develop a vocabulary of design. The theory is that we’ll express our idea of the ideal environment by the places that we build (except, of course, those who build dorms or prisons or “on spec”).

The designer has the power to affect people’s lives. The careless (or pathologically deranged) designer can make a place horrible to inhabit if designed without proper ventilation for adequate natural light and airflow – not only to bring fresh air in but to carry nasty odors out. Contrariliwise, a designer can create an inspiring place by employing plenty of ventilation… and perhaps beautiful architecture wouldn’t hurt either. That sounds really simple, doesn’t it?

A few points I’d like to make:
1. Is it about money… or bad design?
Chicago politicians said they weren’t going to spend any money on the Projects. They said the reason why they were so run down was because its residents didn’t take care of them. Of course, it’s hard to take care of your place if you have to buy inflated unnutritious 7-11 food since there’s no grocery stores nearby or any money for a car to drive to one. It’s hard to want to take your kids to play in the building’s allocated green space when crazy people hang out there. It’s hard to build a community in a badly designed place.

2. Design can tamper with people’s concepts and behavior.

3. Design can tamper with people’s concepts and behavior, Part Two.

Original Publication Date: September 24, 2007

The architectural manifestation of technology is structure, which is the sculpture of the utilitarian world. Structure has three purposes:

• Connecting two point, as in a bridge
• Withstanding natural forces, as in a dam
• Spanning and enclosing space, as in buildings

Of course, further conflict arises between the vertical forces of nature and the horizontal dynamics of mankind. A properly-designed structural system will solve this conflict.

So, you’re probably asking yourself, What kinds of structure technologies are there? The Professor listed these:

Acoustics
Structural Engineering
HVAC
Forensic Engineering
Plumbing
Electrical Engineering
Lighting
Communications Systems Engineering
Materials Engineering
Conveying Systems Engineering
Detailing
Fire Protection Engineering
Construction Process Technology

As successful design necessitates the creative integration technology and the creative resolution of conflicts, all of these technologies are apparently required.

There are a few points I’d like to make:

1. “You can shove thousands of people into the bowels of a building and just use equipment to keep everyone comfortable — using a hell of a lot of energy!”

2. “The most important thing you can bring to the design team is to hate ugly, poorly-integrated buildings.”

3. Once there was a grasshopper who spent summer and fall lounging around, teasing the hard-working ants. When winter came, the ants feasted, but the grasshopper froze to death.
Instead of freezing to death, however, the moral of our story will concern paying four dollars for a gallon of gas. Let this jovial children’s fable serve as a warning to those who expect unprecedented levels of comfort instantly, at the expense of smaller, darker, harder-working peoples. Just because, as the Professor writes, “it has become possible to ignore the natural context in the design of structures,” does not mean that it would be prudent to do so. Indeed, we are a nation of fools digging our own graves.

Original Publication Date: September 17, 2007

The answer, by and large, is bad architecture.

Since behavior is a function of the person and their environment [B = f(P+E)], it’s easy to see that it doesn’t take much for a “normal” built environment to become detrimental to well-being and functionality via its complete uselessness and preponderance to hazard.

Some of the more innovative elderly have come up with solutions. Fridge in an awkward spot in your too-small kitchen? Back your wheelchair in to access your milk and eggs. Too drafty around the door? Hang aprons and newspapers around the cracks (or have the landlord install weather stripping, as Professor Windley did for one elderly lady). Threshold hard to cross? Slap a plank of plywood down.

Solutions, yes, but pathetic ones. It would be far better if these flaws had never been designed in the first place. What makes it worse is the fact that many of these gaffes were designed by architects specifically for the elderly. It just doesn’t make sense to install thousand dollar ranges in every unit of an apartment complex for the elderly if the tenants lack the strength necessary to lift their pots and pans over a lip on the side of a range.

What Professor Windley is calling for, particularly among the up-and-coming generation of young architects, is for spaces and environments designed for the real daily needs of its users. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

There are a few points I’d like to make:

1. Behavior is a function of a person and their environment.
A person’s “competence” is the aggregate of their ability to cope with the demands of their environment.

ENVIRONMENTAL DEMANDS
ADAPTIBILITY
ACCESSIBILITY
COMFORT
LEGIBILITY
PRIVACY
SENSORY STIMULATION
DENSITY
SOCIALITY
MEANING
QUALITY
TERRITORIALITY

COMPETENCE
FUNCTIONAL HEALTH
SENSORY CAPACITY
INTELLIGENCE
MOTOR SKILLS
EGO STRENGTH

A person’s environment must be demanding enough but not too demanding, lest maladaptive behavior ensue. Imagine. You’re brilliant but you have no privacy. Or you’re stupid and there’s all these people using big words! Or you’re blind and you find yourself lost in a labyrinth. Well damn. Sounds like a recipe for disaster!

2. Bad design is to blame for a decreased quality of life, particularly among the elderly.

3. Environments need to be designed for the real daily needs of its users.
Environments should not be built purely “on spec” but should be designed for the actual needs of its users. Rooms and doorways need to be large enough to facilitate movement, especially if the environment is specifically intended for the elderly or disabled populations. It is not, I would think, that some architects are sadists, but rather, are ignorant of the ambulation needs of someone who cannot use part or all of their body. Perhaps sensitivity training is in order, or, more delightfully, perhaps these architects and designers should be forced to live in their own dreadful creations. Mwa ha ha.

Original Publication Date: September 10, 2007

Since most of the population is “not like us,” it seems wise to take a critical look at how they have responded to their built environment needs. It is likely that some of our future commissions will be foreign and so it is important to meet the client’s needs with respect to their culture and not through the filter of our own cultural biases.

There are many factors that influence dwelling design and, as Rapoport said in 1960, the most important of these are the Socio-Cultural Factors. The other factors, which serve simply to modify the design, include:

• the response to climate
• the available materials, construction, and technology
• the resources, settlement, topography, etc., of the site, including the client’s sense of attachment to the place
• the need for defense
• the level of economy: scarcity vs. conspicuous consumption
• the form, plan, and orientation of the space in respect to religion: sacred spaces, symbolic significance, etc.
• the client’s attitudes toward nature: religious, cosmological, sybiotic, exploitative, etc.
• the desire for comfort

• proxiemics, which concerns personal space and territoriality
• spatial articulation
• meaning and symbolism of space
• time perception of space
• process and outcome

There are a few points I’d like to make:

1. (NEWSFLASH!) Not everybody is like us.
For those who did not know it, we white Christian university-educated people are in the minority. Most of the world is not like us and should not be expected to conform to our idea of what a “house” is. In working with our big melting pot world, we young architects must be sensitive to the needs and values of our foreign pals and not try to inflict upon them our Americanized view of what we think they’d like.

2. There’s a lot more to design than slapping some two-by-fours together, especially when the client comes from a culture where buildings don’t look like soulless corporate America monstrosities.

Most of the architecture that has sprung up in the past few decades makes the sensitive architect want to just puke their guts out because it is so butt ugly. Is there hope? You betcha. Hope lies largely in the fact that it cannot be culturally possible to continue to manufacture this boxy crap much longer. Call me a dreamer, but I believe that all things must come to an end, which means that the people who fund this soulless crap must come to their senses (perhaps by being forced to live in one of these boxes?). Yes, yes, I know that rich people are able to let their heart’s fancy just come to life all over their vast land holdings, but non-rich people require beauty in their lives too. See the chart above and note that three out of the five components necessary in any built environment do not have to do strictly with functionality.

3. It’s important to not come across to the client as the typical ignorant American.
While it’s true that big business own our media thus making it impossible to get any real news about what is going on in the world, indeed, in our own country, we cannot rely on this as an excuse for our rampart ignorance regarding the values of foreign cultures. It is up to the architect to educate him/herself on the specific needs and values of her clients, foreign or not.

Original Publication Date: September 3, 2007

1. Spend a really long time walking or biking through curvy street after curvy street permeated with an eery Stepford feeling, full of abandoned lawns and gaping garage doors. After finally getting out of the housing tract, brave the speedway-style collector street, inhaling carbon monoxide, absorbing the negativity of rude drivers, and trying not to get hit as drivers pull into and out of strip malls and gas stations. Then, repeat, in reverse, to go home.

(or)

2. Drive

That’s not actually a choice. It’s a perversion of choice, and it was created by speculative land developers who were not interested in your happiness, your well-being, or your quality of life. They were interested in seeing how much money they could extract from you for the privilege of living in a new McMansion. That’s it.

Thunderhead Alliance has released a report outlining the results of their Bicycling and Walking in the U.S. Study. Shall we review their main findings?

1. A positive relationship exists between the built environment and levels of biking and walking.
2. Where levels of biking and walking are higher, bicycle and pedestrian safety is greater.
3. Cities with strong Thunderhead organizations generally have high levels of biking and walking.
4. Higher levels of biking and walking coincide with lower levels of obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes and higher levels of adults meeting recommended levels of daily physical activity. This suggests that increased biking and walking would contribute to a healthier society.
5. Data revealed that while some cities and states lead others as models for bicycle and pedestrian policies and provisions, all states and cities have a need for improvement.

Trapped in their metal boxes, drivers while away their lives in the same sedentary positions they’ll assume once they reach their cubicle. When they’re done sitting at work, they’ll sit some more in their cars. Once they’re home, they’ll probably sit some more in front of their television sets. Sit sit sit. Their metabolisms would cry out for revolution…if they weren’t so dormant. Habitual drivers send the message to their bodies that they don’t care enough to be healthy – and their bodies comply, slowly building up a collection of ailments with which to surprise them later.

When you walk or bike to work, however, you reap the benefits of twice-a-day exercise. You may still spend eight hours a day sitting at a desk, but by raising your metabolism early in the day, your metabolism burns extra calories for you for hours. You get this again in the evening. You feel great. You lose weight. You have more energy. You find that you’re happier. Kinder. More truly alive.

Then why do people prefer to drive? Why do people prefer to be fat, unhealthy, and unhappy?

Some people propose that people love their cars, that people gladly choose to drive every day. The collector streets and freeways are choked with people who made the free choice to drive. Look at all that freedom of choice, honking and crashing into each other! Look at all those people, freely choosing to stress themselves out, to get angry, to cut off and be cut off.

Car commercials push a fantasy world. Theirs is a world of a single happy [professional] driver, driving skillfully [on a closed course] along beautiful scenery. This world does not exist. It was manufactured to appropriate the pleasure center of your brain, demanding an emotional, unreasonable, illogical response. Buying into this lie helps to perpetuate the [car-dependent] suburban way of life. Indeed, the two go hand in hand and are mutually responsible for development of each.

The aspiring urban planner must not heed the siren call of this established method of development. The aspiring urban planner must dedicate him/herself to a different, more life-giving paradigm in which the human being is given preference over the automobile. The aspiring urban planner must design walkable communities. The aspiring urban planner must always consider the social and health ramifications of his/her designs.

Original Publication Date: September 2, 2007

1. The vernacular tradition, which is environmentally-friendly;
2. The high style tradition, which is nice if you’re rich;
3. The speculative tradition, which is the bastard son of capitalism; and
4. Participatory design, which is not yet a tradition, unfortunately.

The vernacular tradition is evolutionary, meaning that designs were derived through trial and error, meaning that you didn’t just start out with hardwood floors and a jacuzzi and 6,000 square feet, no, you started out with the basic essentials, such as a roof. Designs, although rife with cultural symbolism, were strictly functional and were only changed when someone could figure out a better way to accomplish the same task.

The high style tradition was a real great way to go if you were obscenely wealthy and/or the Government and/or the Church. These buildings were designed by world-class architects and constructed by top-rate artisans. The materials, yes, were of the highest available quality, but had to be transported from long distances, often by slaves. Symbolism, decoration, and refinement were more important than pure usefulness; consequently, these are the world’s most beautiful structures.

The speculative tradition and its profit-motivated design are responsible for all of those boring boxy cookie-cutter subdivisions spreading like a cancer across the land. There is a special place in Hell for those who thought that it would be a good idea to disregard the social and environmental impact of manufacturing thousands of soulless, generic, mass-produced, nondurable, nonrenewable-resource using houses for a fickle, volatile, and often uninformed market whose decision-making skills are not much more developed than those of selfish children who insist on constant entertainment and instant gratification.

Participatory design, while not yet a tradition, may very well be the thing that saves us from an entirely ugly landscape. This is the most democratic of the traditions in that it is architecture for the people, by the people. Design professionals educate the public such that their decisions about the nature of a proposed place are socially and environmentally conscious of long-term effects. Designers, too, become educated, learning how to better respond to the needs of every day people and their community. It is my sincerest wish that this heralded tradition-hopeful is ushered in with Godspeed.

Some points I’d like to make:

1. Thanks to the uglification of American architecture and all its wasteful ways, people are beginning to realize how wise our uneducated, primitive ancestors really were.

It was by necessity that folks used locally-available materials, but how’s this for a flash of brilliance? Maybe, just maybe, the materials that already exist in a particular location are probably the best suited materials for building in said location. Maybe it is ostentatious and foolish to insist in importing materials from far-away lands. Maybe the exponentially-growing environmental and social ramification of shipping building materials great distances should be causing people to reconsider their selfish, petty wants. We can learn much from indigenous cultures, but, the question is: will we?

2. While the high style tradition is responsible for some of the world’s greatest architecture, it is also responsible for planting the seeds of conspicuous consumption, which is an abomination against nature and common sense.

If you’re a king or the pope or a Hollywood director, you probably have the means to put together a real swell pad. That’s great. It’s wonderful to go to Europe and feel like you’re in a large living museum of awe and splendor. It’s nice to read glossy magazines full of saturated photographs of people who have obscene amounts of money who are able to import Italian travertine for their bathroom floor. But let’s talk about jealousy. If you see something pretty in a home decorating mag, it’s as good as porn for setting yourself up on a vicious cycle of desire and disappointment. You do not make 1.2 million dollars a year. You work at Walmart. You can’t even afford to go to the dentist. You will never rest your feet on Italian travertine while you are taking a dump. No. These are empty dreams, designed by cruel marketing people to make you want what you do not need. But you will go to Target anyway and put some Michael Graves teakettles on your Discover card. It will be satisfying, but the feeling will go away. You will buy more, more, more, but it is never enough. You feel suave and sophisticated, but your credit card debt will be passed on to your children. This is not success. This is being a victim of the games advertisers like to play with your mind. Resist.

3. How ridiculous has our system become when talking to actual people about planning their own town is seen as a new and novel method of development?

It seems like common sense, doesn’t it, to actually meet with the people most directly effected by building design? Wouldn’t it be helpful to an architect to gather the unscripted, candid opinions of townsfolk who know, better than any developer, what it is that their town does and does not need? Wouldn’t a place designed by democracy and yet guided by design professionals prove to be a culturally satisfying and meaningful place to live? I think so.

Original Publication Date: August 30, 2007

Did I mention I live in LA?

For me, riding my bike to work means fearing for my life. It means slowing before every alleyway, every blind driveway, every strip mall curb cut, because drivers are only sorry after they’ve almost hit you. They do not look ahead, or plan ahead. They have no problem passing a bicyclist in a sidewalk-less, one lane, dark underpass (I think it was her attention to her cell phone that kept her from noticing my large, red blinking light). Because the automobile affords anonymity — and a speedy getaway — drivers seem to feel that they have been given a free pass for wanton sociopathic behavior.

Far be it from me to pretend that LA is some idyllic cyclist’s paradise — I knew before I started biking to work that it would be dangerous. But, as a certain administration of ours likes to say, if I’m afraid, it means the [drivers] have already won. Besides, starting and ending each work day with a bike ride makes me feel great all day. I’m feeling healthier. I have more energy. Stamina. Riding gives me the opportunity to notice the homeless at a more personal level, lest I forget that “The Greatest Country on Earth” can’t even take care of its own. Driving would rob me of these opportunities.

All this is to say that urban planners, and those who aspire to wield this great power, must be cognizant of the effects of their design decisions. Urban planners must care about the people who will inhabit and use their proposed patterns of living. Urban planners must say to themselves, How can I serve people. Not cars. Not lobbyists. Not corporations. Real people. Like those who would sure like to stop spending four hours a day on the 405 sometime soon, thank you very much.

Some questions to ponder:

Are we designing for cars? Or for people?

Do we need to widen the streets to accommodate more cars? Or do we need to provide better, more efficient methods of getting a lot of people from Point A to Point B (and C, D, E, and back to A again)?

Do we really think suburban dwellers like the fact that they cannot walk to a store without mastering a maze of lookalike cul-de-sacs and the effrontery of bullying collector streets? Or can we design more balanced distributions of residential and commercial zones? Can we add some mixed-used development? And can it be affordable so that regular people can enjoy the social and health benefits of a nice walk – or a bike ride – to the store for milk and bread?

I don’t think it’s too much to ask.

Original Publication Date: August 28, 2007