The Human Variable

I was chatting with an architect friend of mine on the weekend — as we watched our one-year-old daughters unleash havoc upon the playground — about the social component of architecture, that as an architect you are responsible for creating an environment and that your design ultimately has a direct affect on how how people interact within it. He related to me two scenarios: The first one was of a courthouse that was rebuilt and after some time in the new building, it was noted that there were less instances of cases getting sorted out pre-trial, and so, as a result, the courts themselves were much busier. What was theorized was that the lobby of the old courthouse had been adorned with Neoclassical columns allowing for the attorneys from the two sides of a case to step aside and make discreet last minute negotiations that had thus avoided the need to stand before the judge. The new facility, with its cleaner more open entrance way, did not accommodate for such exchanges and therefore more people were doomed to have their day in court.

The 2nd example he gave was of a multi-disciplined research facility. The different departments had been originally quite segregated with separate entrance ways and staircases. But the new design featured a central staircase that all personnel used to access their labs. What began to happen was that researchers from different fields would run into each other coming and going from their days and, in the discussion that ensued, interdisciplinary connections and discoveries were suddenly being made that had previously gone completely unnoticed.

In thinking of these two scenarios this evening and how, just as in architecture, as web designers we can put up unintended barriers to information, or create unpredicted niche communities or a tool that gets used for an unforeseen purpose. What always needs to be accounted for is the human variable and despite all the efforts of content strategists and usability engineers, the main secret weapon in creating a successful website will always be flexibility and a willingness to adapt to your users' needs.

 

Monday, February 09, 2009

Then and now...the CCTV Building in Beijing

"…the headquarters of CCTV, the Chinese television network, by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture—a building which I had thought was going to be a pretentious piece of structural exhibitionism—turned out to be a compelling and exciting piece of structural exhibitionism."

–Paul Goldberger, The New Yorker


"Word has it that the building is close to explosion. Whole thing pretty much toast, all in all."

–@DavidFeng

 

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

On Infrastructural Domesticity

"Whether or not this is even true – after all, I never think truth is the point in stories like this – ... the idea of appropriating a construction crane as a new form of domestic space – a kind of parasitic sub-structure attached to the very thing it's helped to construct ... is totally awesome;"

-BldgBlog

 

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

On The New City..

"The amount of building becomes obscene without a blueprint. Each time you ask yourself, Do you have the right to do this much work on this scale if you don't have an opinion about what the world should be like? We really feel that. But is there time for a manifesto? I don't know."

--Rem Koolhaas

 

Sunday, April 06, 2008

"No global reasons.."

It was only after seeing the rendering for the Hines tower next to a photo of the Institut du Monde Arabe in today's NY Times Magazine article that I made the connection and realized, holy shit, Jean Nouvel is hands down my favourite architect. Then I got lost in his website for about 3 hours...

 

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

exploring generative design methodologies developed from the complex self-organising behavior of political, social and biological systems

I want to live in the world that kokkugia is building.

 

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

A Field Guide to Military Urbanism

A current favourite online visit, Bryan Finoki's Subtopia is a discourse on military urbanism, the architecture of occupation and oppression, and the overarching question of why we, as humans, have it in our nature to build walls between ourselves.

To give you an idea of the subject matter, a recent entry features Jonathan Olley's stark, haunting photos of Northern Ireland's police stations, barracks and watchtowers; structures from a troubled past that are quickly disappearing to progress; to be too readily forgotten rather than stand as a reminder/memorial of how very wrong the world can sometimes turn.

Finoki writes:

"While [these] photos are evidence of a distinctly terrorized Irish landscape the more frightening truth about them for me is that they could almost be, in so many regards, the filmic traces of any number of places around the world today.
If we were just to focus on the brutish walls and violent features of defensive accouterment, it wouldn't be that inconceivable to mistake N. Ireland for, say, parts of Jerusalem or Gaza, or even Johannesburg, maybe downtown Manilla for that matter - possibly a neighborhood in central Egypt or Lebanon; conflicted places which are facing some of their own most cruel histories with political walls and entangled battle urbanism still today."

 

Friday, September 29, 2006

The 10 Most Important Buildings of the 21st Century

As premature as it might be, GQ magazine has released its Top 10 list of The Most Important Buildings of the 21st Century. PSFK has the details.

If you like a little more history with your architecture, check out Lisa Rochon's Seven Wonders of Architecture from entries past.

 

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Future by Design

Jacque Fresco designs the civilizations of the future; and in the process, he defines how the human race will need to change in order to get there.

 

Monday, May 22, 2006

Seven Wonders of Architecture

Lisa Rochon of the Globe & Mail has just finished her Seven Wonders series for the newspaper with a focus on architecture "both historic and modern ... but only if the works are still intact and accessible to visitors." It is a great list, but one which immediately had me searching the net for more images and information on the celebrated structures.

So after reading Rochon's choices and her rationale behind each one, check out these links for further insight into what makes these seven so wonderful:


1. Casa de Barragan, Mexico City


2. Notre-Dame-du-Haut, Ronchamp, France


3. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain


4. The Great Pyramid, Giza, Egypt


5.National Assembly, Dhaka, Bangladesh


6.Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey


7. Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia
BONUS: Check out this sweet Angkor panorama.

 

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Frank Gehry raises the bar in Brooklyn

Always inspiring, Frank Gehry reveals his proposed design for the Brooklyn Nets arena and its surrounding 21 acre corridor. The Times architectural critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff proclaims "If it is approved, it will radically alter the Brooklyn skyline, reaffirming the borough's emergence as a legitimate cultural rival to Manhattan."

 

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

#8 – moma's tall buildings

www.moma.org/exhibitions/2004/tallbuildings
Architecture was a full time distraction for me in 2004. Frank Gehry's influence was always working itself into my designs and I was floored by the plans that were revealed for Beijing's 2008 Olympic Stadium(check out design B11). But when it comes down to a website that kept me coming back, it was the Museum of Modern Art's Tall Buildings site that did it, earning them the #8 spot in my "Top Ten Most Important Websites (to me) of 2004". This site is clean, informative, and chock full of some of the coolest buildings from around the globe.