The Changing Every-day

The idea of designing for the everyday coincides well with the previous discussion on designing so that people might inhabit or adapt architecture to their preferences. Cultural arenas, theaters, museums, and other unique places that we often aspire to design are the places of special events. They are the attractions, the destinations, the once-in-awhile places. We can make them to be worlds of their own, as they afford people the chance to be somewhere different from the ordinary, the extraordinary, if you will. Designing for the everyday means not only designing for something that people will see, become accustomed to, or even forget, but it it also implies that it may need to be flexible and adaptable. Though each person's banal everyday routine may be to them hackneyed and uninteresting, it is likely distinctly different than any other's every day. The way spaces are used, enjoyed, and inhabited in everyday ways may vary widely from person to person, and such inhabitation may vary widely across age groups, demographics, and cultures.

I try to imagine designing a live/work environment for a group of young twenty-somethings. How would this every-day, frequently inhabited place change as they aged or their company developed? Over time, the same people would come to need and desire something different about their everyday world than they did at 25. Thus, I would suggest that perhaps designing for the "everyday" requires not only a humility but a flexibility that designing for "special" places may not.