Archinect - News

Designing through cognitive architecture.

2017-12-11T02:16:00-05:00

Architects know best, as they often claim. With conviction, they’re sure certain details will make a space more hospitable, more beautiful, more preferable, and more enjoyable...But an emerging field of research is now uncovering and quantifying our psychological response to buildings: cognitive architecture. The hope is that by better understanding through science what exactly it is people like or dislike about our built environment, designers can truly improve it.

What does it mean to see a building? As we approach a building, what is that calls our attention? The door? The entry? That corner detail that is doing something we have never seen before?

Architect Ann Sussman and designer Janice M. Ward are two leading researchers studying how our brains see buildings. Their interest arose from their own observations and curiosity about how architects could create places that encouraged walkability and lingerability. Their results give us a glance into the fascinating and potentially freeing manner in which our brains and conscious really see architecture.

Being an architect is sexy, according to modern society

2015-02-25T23:08:00-05:00

Nothing screams commitment like something that is built on a concrete foundation and set in stone: literally. Go ahead, then. Design something that will last forever.

While people working in architecture, whether through practice or academia, can give insight into the reality of the field, how does broader modern society perceive architects and architecture as a career?

In one of the more amusing approaches to that topic, sexy has stood as one assumption, especially when it comes to dating or looking for an ideal partner. According to one cringe-worthy heteronormative list aptly titled "Top 10 Sexiest Jobs for Men" by higher-education online database CollegeAtlas.org, Architect ranked as number 1 -- accompanied by some oh-so-thoughtful commentary that is just comical gold (but not really). There's a list for women too, but Architect or anything closely related to the field didn't make the cut. Big surprise.

Quite similarly, Mary Balfour of a dating agency called Drawing Down the Moon conducted a survey in 2012/13 that asked men and women what jobs they considered the most attractive. Those results showed that men working as an Architect or Designer...

This Upside Down House Might Make You Dizzy

2012-05-09T14:08:00-04:00

People walk out of an upside down house, built by Polish architects Irek Glowacki and Marek Rozanski, in the western Austrian village of Terfens May 5, 2012. The project is meant to serve as a new tourist attraction in the area, and is now open for public viewing. Picture taken May 5, 2012.