PEOPLE TEND TO SIT WHERE THERE ARE PLACES TO SIT
While reading the section on #4 “The Resistance of the
Place-Form” I saw this quote and was reminded of the plaza studies that William
Whyte. Whyte questioned why some plazas worked well and drew people in where others
failed horribly. He observed several different types of in order to record the
patterns of people using them. One of their findings during the Seagram’s Plaza
was that plazas that the boundaries that the architect made to be unused were
some of the most used areas.
Areas though to be circulation only (the stairs)
or a complete barrier from other types of spaces (the thin ledge around the
pool) were the most used because of their proportions. Stairs are easy to sit
on – especially when they are at the front of the plaza. The thin barrier
around the pool was challenging to younger people, and easy for those sitting
around to place their feet on. Even the corner of the plaza was commonly used –
mostly by those who stood talking amongst themselves. Whyte found that people would
often stop in the center of walkways to talk to each other or simply stand –
right in the middle of the traffic patterns.
But! the center of the plaza is
mainly unused. “People don’t often stop to talk in the middle of a large space.
They like to find places – steps, edges, flag poles.” People would stop to
exist near the boundaries of the space. The boundaries are what make or break
plaza use.
“A boundary is not that at which something stops, but, as
the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its
presencing”.
As architects, when we think of boundaries, we tend to see
them as an end of all activity. In reality, however, that is where the majority
of activity happens. We try to define what will happen in certain spaces and
believe that no one will go against our plans. However, as noted in the Whyte’s
study, people never do as planned. So do we as architects continue to plan
every detail, or do we create new forms and allow the populace to do what they
will? Because no matter what we do - people will always sit where there are places to sit.
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