We Will Make Our Own Way

I have always found it fascinating how paths are created. Specifically, the paths created by movement, adventure, or curiosity. While walking through nature trails you encounter a main pathway that was created for the "basic" intended movement throughout a park or naturistic scene. While some people stay on the path, others tend to deviate. All the twisting and winding paths throughout the woods all created by curious humans looking for a new vantage point or a path less traveled. Taking skiing as another example. There are main paths mapped out by those running the facility that most people tend to stay on during their ski vacation, but every once in a while, you'll see an adventurous skier popping out of the woods having made their own path. Take traveling around Italy for an example. We traveled to a well-known Villa that had a large estate as well. We spent a couple hours there and, of course, there were paths intended for people to walk along to see the place. However, foliage, trees, and plantings caught my eye and became a path I preferred to take. While some of my friends stayed on the main path, I took a small adventure through the greenery creating a path and an experience of my own. 

Knowing and having experienced these ideas of how paths are created by people firsthand, it begins to make me question as architects, how can we anticipate the tactics of movement by people as we begin to design a project? Instead of creating "main" paths that people will likely deviate from, how can we imagine ourselves in the project and anticipate user experience and how they may move throughout the space or the exterior? This may be an impossible task, but in reflecting on our own experience with creating our unique paths whether that is on a nature trail, skiing, or traveling through Europe, we can start to imagine movement around a structure and better plan for meandering people. Or, there is no way to guess it and we continue to allow the user to make their own adventure or them just getting from point A to point B a bit quicker. I think it is worth the time to think through it and attempt to anticipate the movement and create a strategy, but still know that at the end of the day, the user will decide.