A large number of people today live in cities and towns that have grown up in commerce, industry and automobiles. Think of the docks of Liverpool, the factories of Osaka, the motoring craze of New York’s Robert Moses, or the sprawl of modern Riyadh. Few of these places are designed with human life in mind. Meanwhile, as mankind has shifted its center of gravity to cities, there has been an alarming increase in diseases such as depression, cancer and diabetes.
This difference between people and our habitat should not surprise us. From the second half of the 20th century, pioneering artists such as the American writer and activist Jane Jacobs and the Danish architect Jan Gehl began to highlight the inhuman way in which our cities, with boring buildings, empty spaces and brutal roads.
Their work was widely read by the construction industry but simultaneously ignored. It was an unpleasant reality that seemed to defy conventional architectural thinking, with its often unpleasant and unpopular aesthetic. The challenge was that, although Jacobs and Gehl highlighted the real problems facing a particular community, in the absence of concrete evidence, they could only rely on case studies and their speeches to make a point. But the recent availability of new and advanced methods of mapping the brain and behavior, such as using wearable devices that measure our body’s response to our environment, means that there is still it becomes more and more difficult for the construction industry to continue to ignore the responses of millions of people. in the places it did.
Once confined to the laboratory, these neuroscientific and neuroarchitectural research methods have reached the streets. Colin Ellard’s Urban Realities Laboratory at the University of Waterloo in Canada has led pioneering studies in the area. The EU-funded EMOTIONAL Cities project is now active in Lisbon, London, Copenhagen and Michigan. Frank Suurenbroek and Gideon Spanjar of Sensing Streetscapes conducted experiments in Amsterdam, and the Human Architecture and Planning Institute followed suit in New York and Washington, DC.
Just this year, the Humanize Campaign formed a partnership with Ellard to conduct a new international study investigating people’s psychological responses to different building facades. This was ordered in conjunction with a study from Cleo Valentine at the University of Cambridge, which is examining whether certain building facades can lead to neuroinfigueation—drawing a direct link between the appearance of the building and tested health outcomes. she is beautiful.
Their findings are already informing the work of my studio and many others, such as the Danish practice NORD Architects, who drew on the latest research on cognitive decline when designing the City of see Alzheimer’s in Dax, France. This is a high-maintenance home that mimics the character of a medieval “bastide” fortified town. The goal is to create a common design that is comfortable for many residents whose ability to find their way has been reduced by age.
Although these may appear to be isolated incidents, there are encouraging signs that the construction and architecture industry – previously immune to research – is beginning to change. Generative AI has already changed the way architecture works. Once a novelty, now it’s an essential tool. If we could connect the results of neural architecture to these AI models, the change would be even more dramatic.
Meanwhile, progressive urban leaders are beginning to link passion with economic growth and human well-being. In the UK, Rokhsana Fiaz, the mayor of Newham in East London, has made happiness and health one of the key performance indicators for her economic policy. And now that we can measure health in more sophisticated ways, I’m sure more will follow. People will realize the direct contribution of building facades to public health and prosperity and start spreading the word.
In the near future, I believe, property developers may have to consider psychometric findings as important information to be measured along with calculations of architectural weight, energy efficiency, lighting and acoustics. . And the man in the street will welcome this change. Not only because it will improve our health but simply because it will make our world more exciting and attractive.
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