Research and Methods

Workbook #02 | HUMAN FACTORS: SUSTAINABILITY AND HABITABILITY
Published
August 30, 2024
Category
Residential

Does research have any use for architecture? Why bother? Research jargonizes the obvious.

Typical findings and interpretative comments from Architectural Psychology and the Unavoidable Art:

  1. Introverts have higher privacy standards than extroverts (obviously).
  2. When asked staff and factory employees preferred sharing dining facilities on a communal basis (obviously).
  3. Visually handicapped people “see” rooms differently from people with normal sight (obviously).

but

 “everyone of the statements is the direct opposite of, or significantly different from what was actually found”

So maybe there’s more to the seemingly obvious after all. After all, the sun doesn’t actually revolve around the earth does it? Assuming valid research methods came up with these non-intuitive conclusions, we have to acknowledge that maybe our architecture needs to be driven by an understanding of the physical and psychological inclinations of individuals and societies, in addition to the other pragmatic issues. Research has certain limitations:

  1. Diversity of information eg. some people may feel colour affects emotions while others might say political and social factors.
  2. Variables in research eg. a research “solution” may not be transferable between cultures, places and environments.
  3. Degree of confidence in results i.e. yes I’ve seen it but how can I be sure that it happens all the time? If I was in Times Square on New Year’s Eve to see the celebrations, would I be right in assuming New Yorkers spend all their nights watching a big shiny ball descending from the skies? 

Having said that, maybe the best way to do this would be (for example) to take each slide shown in the class, note the issue or idea, read about it and look for examples of it in practice in past experiences and present observations. Maybe come to some conclusions, maybe not… depending on whether or not I think it’s fair to make a generalization. To test this out, I want to take four photographs from my album, and then make broad generalizations about the relationship between man and nature at a macro-scale based on those photographs.

[Man and Nature - in contemplation]
My brother Dev at Gangotri glacier in the Himalayas, the source of the Ganges River
Photograph by Demis R Bhargava
[Man & nature embraced by the built environment]
Yours truly comfortably attired in traditional Indian summer clothes, in the courtyard of the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi
Photograph by Mansi Gupta
[Man and the built environment: no nature](smog is not sky)
Railway water tanks at Kashmere Gate in Old Delhi
Photograph by Varun Kapoor
[Man, the built environment and Nature]
Somewhere in Greece
Photograph by Aparna Maladkar

So what tales do these photographs tell? Each is different, and therein lies the generalization – there is no generalization when it comes to man, built form, and nature. Man has no coherent or universal understanding of his relationship with nature. He is the dispassionate observer outside nature who isn’t responsible for what happens to his subject, but he is also inextricably linked to nature – the revenge of Heisenberg? Do our physical constructs

  1. embrace nature
  2. ignore nature
  3. acknowledge nature by subjugating it

and whatever they do, what alternatives do we have as architects? Maybe pretty forms and surfaces do not define “good architecture”, but the opportunities it provides for people to play out their parts. By observing how people behave in different environments, and how comfortable they are (physically and socially), we might not end up with a set of rules for architecture, but with a better understanding of the possibilities for architecture.

“What with the difficulties about obviousness, the relevance of such diversity of information to design, the large number of variables involved, the degree of confidence when looking at the results, the ‘data paradox’, the first and second order problems… he (the Architect) may be convinced that the best and easiest way out is to forget the whole thing and design completely by feel… What is wrong is that he does not test his ideas against what we do know about people both from psychology and from those architects who have succeeded in designing pleasing and humane environments.” (Mikellides, 1980)

“Architectural psychology seeks to find out why people react to buildings differently. Why are some buildings and environments liked more or hated less….” (Mikellides, 1980)

Photograph by Mansi Gupta

Rajasthani village in India

The bare necessities: shelter from the desert sun, and family. But would an American conditioned to live in AC glass boxes be as comfortable? Different social backgrounds count as much as different environmental backgrounds. By researching and comparing, we could understand these backgrounds better.

References

Crichton, M., 1993. Jurassic Park. Ballantine Books

Mikellides, B., 1980, Architecture for people: explorations in a new humane environment. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980.

Architecture + design.
Start your home journey today.
Let’s start a conversation.

Contact us