Archinect - News

Thomas Heatherwick wants architects to improve mental health through 'interestingness'

2023-10-23T19:02:00-04:00

Boring, soulless buildings are making people stressed and lonely, according to Thomas Heatherwick [...] Calling for “a national conversation” about halting the spread of depressing architecture, he said: “We need to fearlessly demand interestingness. We need to rebel against the blandification of our streets, towns and cities, and make buildings that nourish our senses. Human beings deserve human places.”

The Lantern House and Vessel designer has been making the media rounds lately to promote his new treatise Humanize, which offers a call-to-arms of sorts for architects and planners both looking to combat the proven detriments bad architecture has on mental health. Heatherwick says his prognosis has been informed by multiple years of domestic research, including a new study he commissioned from the New Economics Foundation, and that offenders could be broken down by seven criteria: (too) flat, straight, plain, shiny, monotonous, anonymous, and serious.

Responding to this, the Observer critic Rowan Moore writes Heatherwick “does not have much to say about the value of simplicity” and that his argument is too reductivist and could result in “an outbreak of shallow wannabe Gaudís” should architects adapt his principles en masse. His position that Heathwick was too ignorant of the market forces behind modern architecture, however, seems to misunderstand the point of making such an appea...

Groupthink and the Hiring Process

2019-08-15T17:00:00-04:00

The dominant approach to hiring today – in which the hiring manager convenes a huddle and goes around the room hearing opinions on each candidate is particularly prone to groupthink. That is because in free-form discussions, the person with the metaphorical “loudest voice” typically over-influences the committee’s decision.

CEO and author, Atta Tarki, believes the hiring process can be prone to inefficiencies, particularly in group collaboration. He offers some recommendations on "how to make a true group decision:"

First, the hiring team "should not share their interview experiences with each other before the final group huddle." Next, each member of the team should perform these steps before the final group huddle:

distill their interview rating to a single numerical score.
write down their main arguments for and against hiring this person and their final conclusion. This will help them stay true to their beliefs once the discussion starts, which leads to less biased predictions.

And, finally, "the hiring manager should take note of the average score for a candidate." Tarki emphasizes that these scores should not be followed blindly but should instead be used as a process for "richer, unbiased and uncensored discussions." This, coupled with some other components, should lead to a process of more fruitf...

When Our Job Becomes Our Identity

2019-07-22T21:09:00-04:00

It is critical that we learn to distinguish and differentiate our roles from our self. We get into trouble when we lose ourselves in our role instead of thinking in a detached way about how the role is viewed by others...we forget that others in our organizations are reacting to the role we represent in their work lives, not necessarily the interesting and thoughtful people we think we are.

When we identify who we are with what we do professionally, set backs at work can often prompt us to spiral down emotionally. When something is merely an organizational issue we take it as a personal issue. Harvard University Lecturer, Timothy O’Brien, talks about the importance of distinguishing who we are as individuals from what we do at work. People tend to relate to us based off of the role we play in their lives. So for example, if we are in a leadership role, those working under us may not invite us to social gatherings, not because of who we are as people, but because of our relationship to them at work. O’Brien says that many leaders struggle to “be a boss and a friend at the same time.” But, when we embrace our role and the inevitable repercussions that come along with it we are better equipped to draw the line between ourselves and our role.

Tiny homes are fitting symbols of economic precarity

2019-02-12T14:38:00-05:00

Tiny houses are promoted as an answer to the affordable housing crisis; a desirable alternative to traditional homes and mortgages. Yet there are many complexities and contradictions that surround these tiny spaces, as I discovered when I began investigating them.

There is something inherently romantic about the nomadic lifestyle cooked up in the 1960's, exemplified by the VW van and the desert campfire. While this relic of America's recent past became, undoubtedly, the inspiration for the Tiny Home movement in recent years, the reasons for its current popularity do not match those of its precedent.

Interior of Elm, by Tumbleweed, Tiny House Company

Megan Carras "toured homes, attended tiny house festivals, stayed in a tiny house community, and interviewed several dozen people who live in them" to reach a discover that there is more to their wide spread use than popularly imagined. Tiny homes are, as Carras makes evident, a sign of economic precarity - one particularly felt by the millennial generation.

"All the tiny-houser millennials that I interviewed wanted to own bigger houses in the future," Carras reports. "They saw tiny living as a means of owning something now and being able to save at the same time. Several young couples planned to ...

Esther Sperber argues that to end abuse in architecture, stop believing in the creative genius myth

2018-08-07T18:23:00-04:00

But gender bias is not the most dangerous consequence of the lone-wolf image: It is the unspoken permission to abuse that should worry us. For the privilege of working alongside this aggressive and uncompromising genius, we are asked to tolerate his erratic, harsh, and selfish behavior. [...] To fight sexual abuse and abusers, we must first let go of this simplistic and fictitious image of the lone wolf.

In this short opinion piece, Studio ST Architects founder Esther Sperber argues that, in light of the ongoing #MeToo movement, rejecting the prevalent “lone wolf”/creative genius myth and emphasizing a collaborative culture instead are important steps to stopping abuse in architecture.

Getting a headache from staring at all those buildings? This study explains why

2018-07-09T14:17:00-04:00

Because the repetitive patterns of urban architecture break the rule of nature, it is more difficult for the human brain to process them efficiently. [...] over the last 100 years, the design of buildings has been departing further and further from the rule of nature; more and more stripes appear decade by decade, making the buildings less and less comfortable to look at.

Are mental disorders behind modernism? Le Corbusier and Gropius get diagnosed

2018-02-08T13:53:00-05:00

Two researchers recently suggested that autism and post-traumatic stress disorder led to the minimalist stylings of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. Their questions and tools are useful, but there’s danger in mistaking one piece of a puzzle for its entirety. The places we inhabit influence the way we see the world [...] Equally and inevitably, psychology has shaped architecture.

Darran Anderson responds to the piece “The Mental Disorders that Gave Us Modern Architecture” by Ann Sussman and Katie Chen, arguing against their totalizing narrative of two influential figures and modernism as a whole.

Sussman and Chen suggest modernist architecture originated from autism in regard to Le Corbusier, and post-traumatic stress disorder in regard to Walter Gropius. The final argument is one against modernism, claiming its origin derives from mental dysfunction.

While it is interesting to consider a possible excuse for Le Corbusier's callousness or the effects of serving in WWI on Gropius, Anderson argues, "the evidence that modern architecture is founded on 'disorders' is highly questionable".

His response reveals an empathetic side to Le Corbusier, and delves into Gropius' immense achievements unimpeded by trauma. Read the full article and go deeper into Anderson's argument for modernism and two of its key figures.

...

When designing for mental health, how far can architects go?

2016-09-19T13:23:00-04:00

“Genetics, early experiences, family relationships and social settings can’t be addressed through urban design,” McCay explains. “But urban design can and should play a role, just as it does for physical disorders, which have equally complex causes.” [...] But experts believe guidelines for healthy urban environments are currently failing to take this growing awareness into consideration. [...] “understanding of these issues is not yet mainstream” in the architectural community.

Layla McCay, director of the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health, outlines the various ways urban design and mental health intersect:

Check out more videos from UDMH on their website.

For more news on urban psychology:

What drives creativity among architects?

2016-07-13T14:48:00-04:00

What makes a person creative? What are the biographical conditions and personality traits necessary to actualize that potential? These were driving questions behind a 1958-59 study conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, which attempted to divine the elements of creativity by analyzing and interviewing several prominent architects of the time, including Mies van der Rohe, Charles Eames, Gregory Ain, and Quincy Jones. The architects were also encouraged to rate each other. Bottom line? Richard Neutra "has intellect" while Mies Van Der Rohe was considered to be "a great sculptor" although "human comfort is disregarded."

The study languished in obscurity until this year when Pierluigi Serraino published The Creative Architect (and spoke about it on Archinect's 1:1 podcast). On reading the book, Steven Holl commented: “We now know that childlike wonder, an absence of fear, and strong intuition are key aspects of creativity. The Creative Architect is a thought-provoking and ...

Measured Genius: One-to-One #29 with Pierluigi Serraino, author of 'The Creative Architect'

2016-06-27T13:16:00-04:00

In the late 1950s, some of the world's most prominent architects gathered in Berkeley, California, to take part in a landmark psychological experiment on creativity and personality. Eero Saarinen, Philip Johnson, Richard Neutra, William Pereira and dozens of other architects were put through a barrage of tests and surveys, to gain a better understanding of what creativity is, and its place in architecture. They also rated one another, and in the process exposed not only exposed their egos honestly, but also their insecurities.

For the first time, the story behind the study (along with its data and results) have been made public, in The Creative Architect, by architect and author Pierluigi Serraino. I spoke with Serraino about the context of psychological research in the 1950s and the evolving personality behind being a “creative” architect.

Listen to One-to-One #29 with Pierluigi Serraino:

iTunes: Click here to listen and subscribe to the new "Archinect Sessions One-to-One" podcast
Soun...

The high psychological cost we pay for boring buildings

2016-04-12T20:24:00-04:00

Boring architecture may take an emotional toll on the people forced to live in and around it. A growing body of research in cognitive science illuminates the physical and mental toll bland cityscapes exact on residents. Generally, these researchers argue that humans are healthier when they live among variety — a cacophony of bars, bodegas, and independent shops — or work in well-designed, unique spaces, rather than unattractive, generic ones.

Putting entire cities on the psychiatrist's couch

2015-07-01T12:59:00-04:00

Rule No. 1 for long life: Stay active, keep the blood flowing. Rule No. 1 for urban planning: Never close an artery.

It's well known that strong social ties can benefit an individual's mental health. Investment in a community can help people to cope with the stress of traumatic events, physical disability, aging, and simply the everyday banal. Cities, the natural biomes of most humans, then become a strong influencer of community and individual psychologies.

This fascinating New York Times piece looks at the career of Mindy Thompson Fullilove, a psychiatrist whose work with entire cities imagines them as a functioning body – one that needs all its parts to remain connected and coordinated in order to thrive.

For more on the psychology of urban environments:

Creativity is rejected: Teachers and bosses don’t value out-of-the-box thinking

2013-12-12T20:48:00-05:00

This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise. “We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.

Designing and understanding the "Happy City"

2013-12-09T20:24:00-05:00

"For years, urban designers and architects have claimed happiness as their goal," Montgomery says. "And yet none of the claims have been supported by empirical evidence. Which isn't to say they're not right. It's just to say that we don't know. That we haven't known." In this spirit of empirical discovery, Montgomery takes readers around the world in search of the places where urban design has (and has not) improved quality-of-life.

Human behavior can be extremely difficult to quantify, and determining its exact context even harder. But some cities just seem happier than others, no matter how difficult that status is to qualify. In his book, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, Charles Montgomery tries to create an empirical basis for that causal link between happiness and urban design, through case studies of cities where those two concepts are clearly intertwined. Montgomery spoke with Eric Jaffe at The Atlantic Cities about his research for the book, and how we measure happiness.

Sensitive to the fact that what works in Bogotá might not fly in Oslo, Montgomery is not out to find hard-and-fast rules for happiness. He instead wants to tease out methods of urban design that civic governments may use to become more sensitive, responsive and accountable to their citizens' well-being.

Do these buildings turn you on? The psychology of curvy architecture

2013-11-26T12:34:00-05:00

Oshin Vartanian and his colleagues slipped a group of people inside a brain-scanning machine and flashed hundreds of interior designs -- some curvy, some angular -- in front of them. They then had the choice of describing each room as either "beautiful" or "not beautiful." The study found that participants overwhelmingly preferred interior spaces with curving coffee tables, meandering sofas and winding floor patterns to rooms filled with angular furniture and rectilinear design.

The Psychology of Online Comments

2013-10-25T15:59:00-04:00

the nastier the comments, the more polarized readers became about the contents of the article, a phenomenon they dubbed the “nasty effect.” But the nasty effect isn’t new, or unique to the Internet. Psychologists have long worried about the difference between face-to-face communication and more removed ways of talking—the letter, the telegraph, the phone. Without the traditional trappings of personal communication, like non-verbal cues, context, and tone, comments can become overly impersonal...

UCLA's Patricia Greenfield Tracks Urban Psychology With Words

2013-08-13T18:21:00-04:00

As a society slowly urbanizes over time, its psychology and culture change, too... If American culture and psychology grew more individualistic as the country urbanized, wouldn't that transformation be clear in the words from American books (and the concepts that lie behind them)?

Urban and rural environments impact personal psychology differently, according to research published by UCLA psychologist Patricia Greenfield in Psychological Science. While observational evidence may draw a clear line between current city- and country-mindsets, Greenfield's source material draws on data from over 200 years of publishing in the United States. Using Google Books Ngram Viewer, Greenfield tracked English words that refer to certain trends or larger ideas, such as "obliged" vs. "choose", to see if urbanization accompanies a more individualistic mentality. It's given that a word's frequency of use will change over time, but seeing how that frequency correlates with urbanization is an exciting metric for the collective urban unconscious.

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.