Archinect - News

Why We Love Beautiful Things

2013-02-27T19:03:00-05:00

window views of landscapes, research shows, can speed patient recovery in hospitals, aid learning in classrooms and spur productivity in the workplace. In studies of call centers, for example, workers who could see the outdoors completed tasks 6 to 7 percent more efficiently than those who couldn’t, generating an annual savings of nearly $3,000 per employee.

After Newtown, Architects Weigh School Design Changes

2012-12-22T17:46:00-05:00

Mark Simon, a founding partner of Centerbrook Architects and Planners, agrees. “I think [bars and other fortifying techniques] send the wrong message to both kids and teachers,” he says. Based in Centerbrook, Connecticut, Simon has designed 20 school buildings, including five public elementary schools, though none in Newtown. “Buildings tell stories, and when a building is designed that way, it tells you that it doesn’t trust you. And kids intuit that they’re not trusted,” he says.

Mindy Fullilove Named AIA Public Director

2012-10-10T11:42:00-04:00

Dr. Fulliove is a research psychiatrist at New York State University Psychiatric Institute and professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University. In her role with the AIA Board she will share her insights gained from studying the problems of American cities from a psychiatric perspective.

A Study on Job Seekers' Mental Health

2012-05-04T20:00:00-04:00

According to a new study led by Connie Wanberg, a University of Minnesota professor of organizational and work behavior, the average laid-off worker experiences a gradual improvement in mental health until the 10- to 12-week mark, when the trend reverses. The study found that those participants who reported better mental health tended to conduct more intense job searches, increasing their likelihood of landing jobs.

Here, take a happy pill.

How Roger Thomas Redesigned Las Vegas

2012-03-19T11:29:00-04:00

Wynn’s hotels are famous for having brought a luxurious, five-star approach to Vegas. But their real achievement may be psychological: they have remade the architecture of gaming itself. The received wisdom of modern casino design was codified by a former gambling addict named Bill Friedman in his book “Designing Casinos to Dominate the Competition.”

Jonah Lehrer pens a piece in this week’s issue of the New Yorker, in which he visits Roger Thomas, the head of design at Wynn Resorts, who has revolutionized casino design in Las Vegas.

Seeing the Building for the Trees

2012-01-08T23:32:00-05:00

A REVOLUTION in cognitive neuroscience is changing the kinds of experiments that scientists conduct, the kinds of questions economists ask and, increasingly, the ways that architects, landscape architects and urban designers shape our built environment. This revolution reveals that thought is less transparent to the thinker than it appears and that the mind is less rational than we believe and more associative than we know.

Architecture critic, Sarah Williams Goldhagen wrote a brief piece exploring the use of embodied metaphors in contemporary architecture. Looking at recent works by Junya Ishigami, Jürgen Mayer H., Zaha Hadid and Sanaa for instance, Goldhagen notes that the use of metaphors that allude to trees, river-like space or a habitable mountain-scape, is on the rise. While the possibilities of the ongoing revolution in our understanding of human cognition and their potential for shaping the design of our built environment are unknown she believes that the employment of such metaphors in such projects "point toward how the built environment could — and should — be radically reconceptualized around the fundamental workings of the human mind."

Commercial architecture’s similarity across nation provides mobile Americans with a sense of stability, study says

2011-09-23T14:11:38-04:00

Perhaps you have noticed that commercial architecture lining roads in Maryland and Virginia looks more or less the same and not much different from strip malls and boxy stores lining roads in Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio or Oregon. [...] Why do housing developments and retail shopping facilities look so much alike, given how much Americans value individuality, freedom of expression and independence?

An Illusion of Familiarity

2011-07-19T18:06:42-04:00

Based upon the woman's story and Moulin's research, Mabon and Hayes constructed a film-style set for the chronic déjà vu sufferer, complete with marks on the floors, visual instructions and specially-designed objects. They also created a very detailed schedule to give a feeling of continuity and help the woman go through the day with as few surprises (hence risks of déjà vu) as possible.