The sign on the door doesn't look good, pushing heavy doors doesn't feel good, and both can leave a negative impression upon your building occupants.
Image: gruntzooki | Flickr

The other night as I was approaching (to enter) a restaurant, a group of people happened to be exiting. And as they were making their way through the main doors, one of them exclaimed (with a lot of passion in her voice), “we had to eat a lot of food to be able to push these doors open” — the doors were just “so heavy“.

As it became my turn to enter, it also became my turn to hold the door and I quickly discovered just how right she was in her observation.

While this was a good restaurant…There were some lessons to be learned here.

As an architect you must make a concerted effort to go beyond the visual and aural senses — for, in the restaurant design that I recently experienced, it would have helped immensely if the designers had made their entrance/exit “gateway” feature more than just look good…because despite their best efforts to do this, once occupants interacted with the doors, their negative perceptions reflected badly upon the restaurant and their dining experience.

So much of architecture is a touch-based and tactile experience. Just think of how many times your occupants “touch” something (architectural details) while experiencing your building design.

It may help to actually walk yourself through their journey, while paying particular attention to what their sensorial journey will be like. For instance, what do they Read more

Image: o palsson | Flickr

Often in architectural design (and as with any business) there is a wide variety of modeling, testing, and planning to ensure that the final project (or product) will make its way into the real world with great success. As architects, I know that there are a wide variety of things we do to help us visualize our built environments for clients — where we pull from our own internal talents and resources, combine them with the latest know-how and efforts of our design team and consultants, and then proceed to get them accepted by all kinds of review boards, committees and so on. But — have you ever done a quality control design test of your building after it’s built? If so, how do you do it? And what do you do with the results?

Do you ever ask yourself — How much testing and surveying do we really do as architects once our building is built? What do we do after it is constructed? Do we merely check in on it in a general manner and use it for marketing opportunities?… Or, do we examine what our design team has created?

I say all of this because I think it is important to have a relationship and connection with your designed buildings after they are built. Wouldn’t it be nice to be a “fly on a wall” so you could get a sneak peak at exactly how your building occupants use your spaces, interact with them, behave within them and so on?

Why Running a Design Test Is so Important, And How You Can Start to Do It

Of course, if something about your building really fails, I am pretty sure you hear about it in no time flat. However, there are ways for you take the time to really observe the nuances to what you have built for your occupants. For instance, it is important to really listen and watch the way the people within your buildings use your designs. You will immediately begin to see the things that work and the things that do not, but even more amazingly your design test observations will lead to realizations and then into Read more

image: batintherain | Flickr

Your architectural design reverberates.

Yes, architecture maintains walls made up of materials and even wayfinding systems that convey important information; but, the beauty and function that radiates from an incredible architectural work into the soul of those that experience it is often the culmination of seemingly invisible effects exuded by that designed “place”.

Pay much attention to the “invisible” and “intangible” effects which your designs radiate, as these things can Read more

One way to Juxtapose A Door/Corridor cliché
Image: Andy Miah | Flickr

I recently read an article by Seth Godin who describes a very powerful writing technique where an author takes a popular and widely used cliché, points it out in his or her work and then writes about its exact opposite. When done cleverly this can produce a very powerful result whether an author is trying to stir humor, thought, emotion or even trying to change a reader’s belief or behavior.

As architects, we should take a cue from this author’s “gem”.

For example, the way many architects spec Read more

How do you use color to “move” your occupant? Do you go beyond merely using it as a wayfinding technique? Or do you “paint” your three-dimensional space to lead your occupant on a journey that enhances the spirit of place?

As you will find within the following slideshow, color can be used within architecture in soul-stirring and innovative ways. Color not only engages a building occupant by making real the beauty of function, but also invites them “in” to truly “touch” a space — perhaps at first with their eyes, but then with all of their senses as color becomes much more when it meets the eye.

So, how do you use color to “move” your building occupants?

Image: thisisbossi | Flickr

Right-handers Influence Group Behavior Simply By Choosing a Seat

When designing audience seating within theaters or auditoriums, have you ever given specific thought to which seats will be used the most, and by whom? At first, it may seem strange to ponder such details when most of what you will need to do involves selecting the style of seats, specifying how many total seats you will need, designating which ones will be accessible, planning how they will meet egress requirements and making sure each seat position provides a clear view to the stage.

But, should everything be treated so generally? What about the differences in behavior exhibited by each person in the audience? Perhaps not everyone watches a performance in the same way.

Well, a researcher from Japan named Matia Okubo, published a psychology article describing and proving that right-handed persons, interested in paying attention to a film, will actually choose seats to the right side of the theater.

What do you think? Will such a seemingly miniscule characteristic make you think differently about how you design audience seating?

Individuals Make Up a Population, Design for Them.

There are almost innumerable times, as an architect, that you will need to make “small” decisions that affect a the entire collective group of your occupants at once. (Namely, I’m thinking of theater or auditorium seating arrangements, and school classroom student seating arrangements here.)

So, is it often that you think of your occupants in a “lump some” — rather than as individuals who happen to make up a collective?

Yes, negotiating that balance between a “population” and an “individual” can be a delicate thing to do. For instance, just like in the above theater example, school classroom design must also tailor to Read more

Image: kamikazecactus | Flickr

When you design an architectural space, are you concerned with how you might push or pull your occupant while they travel through it? What about when they are standing still? Your occupant’s frame of reference serves to balance them — and you, as the architect, can really play upon this factor.

In essence, you are creating a “shopping experience” for your occupant, and this can apply to more that just retail type architecture. Just as shoppers walk quickly, take their time, stop to browse or stop to rest…your architecture needs to provide good opportunities for your occupants to speed up or slow down.

Like in the painting Four-Way Intersection (above), people can be asked to show different amounts of energy at different points in our designs. Just imagine walking along the sidewalks in the painting — it’s a good thing that there is an intersection providing not only a resting point, but also a chance to regain that frame of balance and reference.

Negotiate Your Occupant’s Efforts

Occupants go through your building spaces and often this takes energy — physically, mentally and even emotionally. So, let me ask you this: What does your design do with their energy? Does it use it efficiently, creatively or do you simply waste it.

Imagine an occupant traveling through a museum design. Will it work better to save the best for last? Or should the important design moments be revealed to them along their journey — in “bite-sized” pieces?

Really, it is all a negotiation, where you must balance their attention, their physical energy and their emotional state.

The IKEA Experience

The store IKEA does an interesting job regarding what I’m talking about. Here is a breakdown of a customer’s experience at IKEA in the United States: Read more

Image: wauter de tuinkabouter | Flickr

Great architecture exists as a rich conversation between critical parts. I know that is fairly basic — but when you start to consider all of the parts that go into a building it sometimes can become muddled as to which parts are most important and some may be forgotten all together.

Rich Balance for the Visually Impaired Occupant

I recently came across a great model by which to think about architectural design balance. Yes, balance is more that just a visual experience. So, to take this a step further lets explore what it would be like to achieve great architectural balance to best accommodate the visually impaired occupant.

By considering how to design for an occupant that puts less emphasis on the visual sense — it becomes clearer just how important balance is for good architectural design. In this example, there are three main parts that need to be in meaningful dialogue and, thus, balanced: they are aesthetic, function and economy. Now, by removing the visual aspect to our hypothetical design project, you as an architect, may begin to think of each in new ways: (1)

It is interesting that aesthetics for a visually impaired occupant may mean that you Read more

As you design architecture, it is important to consider your occupant’s memory. You should consider not only what your occupants remember, but also how they remember.

Why?

Just after experiencing your building design, your occupant will be full of a large portion of the information they just absorbed. The memory of walking through your design will be fresh in their mind and the nuances about their experience will be easy to recall. But, what do you want them to remember about their experience? Do you have any control over what they remember as a great moment? Do you want to have a say?

HOW OCCUPANTS REMEMBER

When your occupant processes an architectural “scene”, they actually dismiss a lot that they don’t think is important…. In the video below you will watch a scholar from Princeton University further explain that the brain uses processes (like shortcuts) to help people Read more

Image: Dom Dada | Flickr

HUMAN LEARNING IS MORE THAN YOU “THINK”

When inside your building, how do occupants actually make choices? They are continuously making decisions, and the orchestration of your design elements has a lot to do with the decisions they make.

To make decisions, your occupant must learn; and to learn, your occupants engage in “conscious reasoning”. (1)

But — did you know that “subconscious learning” also plays a role? Hence, their “gut reaction”…

In an article written by Alexis Madrigal entitled Humans Can Learn from Subliminal Cues Alone, the author explains how humans can have an intuition-based learning. In the study, participants were shown a visual cue for less than five hundredths of a second — so fast that these participants didn’t have time to consciously “see” these cues. (1)

Using money as a reward, the participants used their “intuition” to respond to a question. The participants were right about two-thirds of the time. Of course, conscious reasoning still plays a very important role in decision making, (1) but isn’t it amazing to understand that there is a role for intuition as well?

OCCUPANT INTUITION

As occupants travel into, through and out of your building design, a great deal of learning takes place. Both through reasoning and intuition, your design intention manifests.

In fact, there are so many elements within a building, that occupants cannot possibly Read more