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There are ways to avoid falling into the trap of com- place-ency. They resemble the contemplative practices that human beings have used for millennia to find more direct connections with themselves and their surroundings. The methods of the contemplative sciences are also commonly used by architects and designers to tune their own designs. As we will see, being still and being receptive to your surroundings – letting a scene wash over all your senses with as little analytic interruption as possible – while not an easy thing to do, can, with practice, enrich your experience of places. Upon closer look—in what Adler called “inspectional reading”—Pillsbury Hall also has more than meets the eye. Adler advocated the “intelligent skimming” of a book’s table of contents and index and the “superficial reading” of sections of a book that initially seem most interesting. We can do the same inspectional reading of a building like Pillsbury. Skimming its facade, we can see that, in addition to the original entrances up long flights of stairs, the building now has an accessible entrance off a new front plaza. In general, the more easily people can get into a building—or a book—the better. D' Angelo, M., 2022. Neri Oxman Takes Her Interdisciplinary MoMA Exhibition Online. [online] Architect. Available at:
Understanding how a building works in this more practical sense takes a little time to do well. If you have the chance to spend an hour or more in a building such as a courthouse or a library, you can take up a variety of positions, watch the buzz of activity, and get a feel for how things are working (or not). For this exercise, it would make less sense to learn the ropes in your own home. Unless you live in a large estate or castle, the affordances for movement are probably restricted. Instead, go out into the world and find a place that interests you. A shopping mall, city hall, hotel, museum or any other large architectural space will work. One measure of the success of a building is surely the enjoyment, awe and appreciation of its design. However, there is an important distinction between the performance of a building as a work of art and its role as a functioning piece of machinery in the fabric of life. A breathtaking library is a thing to admire, but if it is very difficult to find a book or even one’s own way, there is a level at which the building has failed. The article ‘Architecture with the Brain in Mind’ (2004) by John Eberhard and Brenda Patoine covers some of the early modern history of scientific interest in the relationship between the brain and architecture. Eberhard was an early proponent of recognising the importance of this connection. A couple of other tips as you embark on your architectural adventures: it’s completely fine to explore buildings by yourself. In fact, much like solo movie-going, it can be liberating to be freed from the duty to talk to your friends about your experience. On the other hand, there’s much pleasure to be drawn from comparing notes. You’ll learn that our responses to buildings are hardly universal. Also, don’t feel that you have to visit the Louvre or the Sistine Chapel to practise these exercises. Indeed, there are benefits to exploring your responses to highly familiar spaces, even your own home (see the first exercise below).
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By purchasing this Precedents Analysis eBook, you will receive all of our “Precedents Analysis eBook” updates for free, forever. The award-winning journalist Emily Anthes’s book The Great Indoors (2020) focuses on the impact that interior environments have on our lives. The book is replete with fascinating examples and important applications of the science of interior design. Allow yourself to move through the space as your desires call to you. Allow yourself to be pushed and pulled by your surroundings. In the mid-20th century, a political movement led by the artist-philosopher Guy Debord advocated exactly this kind of practice, which was called a dérive, or ‘drift’. The legendary Swiss French architect Le Corbusier described what he called the ‘architectural promenade’, which is a similar idea for interiors. He suggested that interiors have itineraries, which are brought to life by our movements as we traverse a space. More generally, architects are preoccupied with transitions – those locations in a building where, as we walk, a surprising vista is suddenly unveiled. Think of the effect of descending a grand staircase or turning a corner to discover an unexpectedly large vault of space, which can cause changes of posture and movement with an attendant effect on our senses, a kind of awakening.
My own book Places of the Heart (2015) was written to bring to wider attention the fascinating relationships between the design of buildings and interior spaces, and our emotional lives.urn:lcp:howtoreadbuildin0000crag:epub:a6af2ed8-1400-4c48-b98e-46ed6f24b17c Foldoutcount 0 Grant_report Arcadia #4281 Identifier howtoreadbuildin0000crag Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t34291p7q Invoice 2089 Isbn 9780713686722 What can you hear? Spaces ‘speak’ to you mostly by the way that reflected sounds (of footsteps, for example) reverberate and echo. You might try closing your eyes for a few seconds to get a sense of this. If you have taken the time to follow some of the instructions in this Guide, and especially if you’ve discussed some of your observations with others, you will have discovered one of the ground truths of architectural appreciation: in many ways, we are all different in how we respond to a space. Architects must learn to attune themselves to the way that a design influences their feelings. This can be a little bit like mindfulness meditation and can be practised with very simple objects – even something like a chair or a vase – before working up to things such as cathedrals or other architectural showpieces. Though a trainee architect takes years to learn how to do this, some practice with the basics will enrich your experience of architecture.
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