design for lived experience

“We believe that lived experience should be more important than physical form in defining the city.”

This quote from Margaret Crawford’s “Everyday Urbanism” describes what seems like such a simple approach to design, yet as we have seen, is nearly impossible to actually accomplish.  Why is that?  

For all of our postulating about how people behave and what they really want out of architecture, we seem to be incapable of regularly producing buildings that respond directly to lived experience. 

We have to stop thinking about ourselves as outside of the group of people for which we are designing and starting think about our own human condition, those things we have in common with every other person, architect or not.  

Mark Reigelman’s “Stair Squares” is a great example of this type of design.  Reigelman identified that people were already sitting and relaxing on public stairs, so rather than competing by creating a new space, he made a very small intervention that served as a great enhancement to an already loved space.

http://www.morethangreen.es/en/stair-squares-by-mark-reigelman/