'Architecture has to keep evolving not because of the advancements in other aspects and areas of life but because of the advancements in the relationships among people'.

Today’s convenience in each diaspora of life from food being delivered at home to swiping right/left on tinder to getting your toilets cleaned by professionals to getting your cigarettes using dunzo to playing horizon on PS 4 to changing the world by just tapping on your screens to 100’s of other advancements we have today around us just a click away.

While we very conveniently adapt these material comforts to make our lives more and more easier all the time, do we realize the impacts of these on our daily lives in relating to and with people?

When was the last time you and your family had a dinner without your cellphones with you, when was the last time you and your girlfriend/boyfriend did not check your phone immediately after having sex ? when was the last time you and your siblings actually went out and played in the open and not fight for who will play Xbox or watch something on you tube, when was the last time you took a stroll with your lover hand in hand just the two of you without any digital, augmented or visual distractions around you? When was the last you did a digital detox ?

We want to keep evolving, updating and break all our own records of innovating, creating and materializing each and every aspect of life, the question to ask here is at what cost ?

While interacting with all the things mentioned above our behaviors have transformed, our attitudes to each other have changed and the way we interact, relate and feel for each other has changed.

We are perceiving and dealing with people as ‘use and throw products’ because of these constant updates in all the material environment we have around us. It is shaping the way you behave and see things. Because cell phones and other gadgets keep upgrading and hence become unworthy to have the same thing for more than 2 years, the same phenomenon is observed in the way we are relating to each other. Just look all around you and you shall notice it.

As this is a living reality now, the concepts of open relationship, sugar daddies, polyamory, orgies, swingers, perfect marriages etc is propagated via social media and have been marketed to you in subtly but powerfully packaged systems that it has become and trend and curiosity is something which makes each one you try it at least or explore it and hence engages you.

While the source of these things really have no interest in your lives, end goals being always economic in nature the simultaneous impacts of such things is mutifold which not only disrupts our lives with people around us but more importantly your own perception of yourself.

I personally have no opinions as of now on any of the mentioned forms of relating with each other as every individual has their own way of living, thinking and existing, another question to ask here is that, is this all really helping us ‘evolve’ or is it ‘diminishing’ the humanness within us ? Is it leading us to become more and more numb and dependent on man made things?

Can this dynamic interaction between architecture and human relationship transform the way we are living?

Can this lead to a better integrated and humane habitats, and cohesive environments where our species isn't insecure all the time and neurotic but sane in concurrence to its human self ?

Can intervening into architecture instead of all other factors taken into primary consideration, we give priority to what sort of relationship does this space instigate?

what kind of emotion, vibe, feel, mental ambience, mood does it contain within it?

Don't you think we would have much more humane space just by shifting our thinking with this slight twist.

Open space office concept has scientifically been proven irrelevant and detrimental to the so called 'better workplace environment', but it is still marketed as the trend of our era!

What if work places were catered according to the profession or the kind of people it involves, to their characters, to their collective behaviors rather than standardized floor plates with structural grids of 8m x 8 m and fitting in open space desks in it to get the most efficiency within the confinements of the space available?

what if the whole logic of real estate housing was questioned and not based on economic and efficiency model but based on the kind of people who will occupy that space?

What would the house of people who believe in and practice open relationships could be like?

What sort of civic spaces would these different kind of interactions among people generate, may be it gives us a completely new typology of architecture?

Because we are evolving at an alarming pace, along with all the conveniences of the world, the relationships of people, the way they interact, engage and celebrate our lives together are evolving at an even much higher pace. As primarily our nature as humans it to adapt.

With this phenomenon taking place on a global scale the most important question to ask as designers/creators and a medium of generating space is that -

Are we really adapting to the things that matter ?

Does architecture have a role to play in relationship among people ?

Do the relationships of people with themselves and with others have a role to play in architecture?

What do you think ?