How do you plan for your everyday?
Thinking about designing for the everyday moment, the idea of designing the spaces between buildings is really interesting to me. The examples that we looked into during class had shared courtyards and green spaces. When we went through all the examples, David regarded some as successful and others as non-successful. Crawford says that " an amazing number of social, spatial, and aesthetic meanings can be found in the repeated activities and conditions that constitute our daily, weekly, and yearly routines.” If we consider that everyone has a different routine and perspective, how does an Architect consider something successful? Depending on the size of the project, we could have a couple of users or a couple of hundred users. Do we consider pleasing the user of the specific building that we work on, or do cross-section of the local community to gauge how to plan for success?
I guess that a space will never be perfect for everyone, but is there a way for us to measure our impact?
It seems that it would be hard to truly measure the impact of a building because architecture is so subjective. The best way so far sems to be the opinion of the public and father time. Buildings that are preserved and applauded must be for a reason.
ReplyDeleteNice post Yarely, this seems to be where politics plays a major role in architecture. To my experience, many feel the need to involve the community in a process until a developer doesn't allow such communication. Many developers are only focus on profits and any opinions from the community will impact their profit margins. Good clients will allow the architect to involve the community on a project rather than only a business man or woman. This is also where your own personal opinions about how politics and culture should be taken into consideration. I think it's good to figure out your own opinion sooner than later and try your best to work in a firm, and with clients who have similar values. This will make it easier for the architect to decide the best route possible and who is the real client (even if they aren't the person of direct contact for a design).
ReplyDeleteArchitecture will always be subjective, but that isn't a bad thing. A lot of other things in life are subjective too. A lot of things in life are a lot easier to make seem objective. If we tack on "studies show that..." to almost any statement, it seems more factual. But there are a variety of reasons that a study can actually be more subjective than you think. It would be nice if we could learn ways of putting our architectural decisions into more "scientific terms" without being dishonest.
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ReplyDeleteI think one of the most important aspects of architecture that I think is lost in practice is precedent research. In practice I think their should be a deep dive into precedents-- looking for similar building programs and environments and their successes and failures to inform ours. Also reviewing post occupancy reviews and actually analyzing opinions and considering them as a part of our design in future similar buildings.
Yarely, I found your point of view very interesting. I think that architectural success is very subjective because there is no "right answer" at the end of the day. Somebody might like a particular building, and another person might hate it just because of their preferences. Also, historically, we have seen that many of the buildings we hail as architectural marvels were scorned during their time and only achieved acclaim decades later (like Gaudi's work). So, as architects, sometimes all we can do is our best - considering all the factors available to us. Whether people like it or not is out of our control because opinions can change overnight, and just because the majority dislikes it doesn't mean it's terrible.
ReplyDeleteYarely, I agree with everyone else that architecture can be very subjective and it can be difficult to gauge what people will be more gravitated towards. I kept thinking about our COTE project when David was presenting different examples of informal architecture. While we had units planned throughout the entirety of our "commune" on Lake Union, it was the boardwalk that these units were on that were the most adaptable and informal. Some nooks and crannies provided differing shade, light, community, and privacy. I think this was a successful tactic to create multiple experiences for diverse informal programming to take place.
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