Structures and Things

Jun 24

Public spaces

We all know what spaces are. We all have personal space. If someone gets in to our personal space, they had better be invited or suffer the consequences of someone who feels trapped in a small space who will strike out at a threatening presence. When we are out and about we operate in the public space, and everyone agrees to play nice and not get into someone’s personal space. The boundaries of somone’s personal space vary slightly depending on where they are. The boundary moves from when we are at work, on the train/subway, and when we are among friends. Public spaces are an artificial creation designed to bring people to a single area for purposes of public entertainment, announcements, and common access to natural resources. Sample platforms include sidewalks, plazas, terraces, theaters, sports venues, retail establishments, markets, and parks. Places that push the interaction from a public to private realm mostly include transportation.

When we are in our car (with our personal attachments), it has its own space requirements, we have boundaries that mimic our own bodily boundaries. Scratches, dings, and fender benders offend our person as if we had received a personal affront into our personal space. However, when we ride the bus or subway and it gets crowded, we make some effort to establish our boundary by physical posturing and positioning. If the subway gets too crowded, we adjust until finally people are in our personal space and every effort is made not to engage people’s private spaces. These spaces that are intimate even to our friends.

So what does this all have to do with structures and buildings? I don’t know. No, I’m just getting there. The point is to create public spaces that address people’s personal spaces. Strategies exist for minimizing the impact of crowding in public spaces. So depending upon the space, you can also make an effort to keep someone from stepping on someone else’s toes.

Exits, entrances, and flow patterns for traffic generated by people are important elements in designing a proper public space. Let us begin with looking at what public spaces we have control over. We have the entrance, lobby, hallways, elevator, parking lots/structures, restrooms, break rooms, emergency exits, patio areas, walkways, mechanical equipment (because a good environment makes a difference), transportation access, traffic control studies for special conditions, and maintenance of the space to minimize the impact during service. (As an aside, did you ever wonder what the people in traffic control were thinking when they schedule work on a major highway in the middle of rush hour traffic?) We have the power to consider something besides occupancy. Providing for flexible and robust public spaces and accessways is the best effort you can put forward in to making sure people enjoy your building or public space.

You define the boundary of these spaces. You define the walls, shape of the building, location of the access points, vehicle access, pedestrian access, elevator location, daylighting, public furniture (for parks, plazas, transportation) and where the emphasis of the building is going to be from an architectural standpoint. People who face these challenges daily are designing hospitals, museums, universities, arenas, stadiums, transportation hubs, churches, apartment complexes, barracks, corporate campuses, oil platforms, submarines, cruise ships, senior care centers, casinos, airports, roadways, retail centers and parks (public/amusement). These are the public spaces of the city and sub-urban neighborhoods.

We find that public spaces used just for leisure and gathering are few and far in-between. Most of our public spaces are mixed-use commercial centers that accomodate housing, retail and professional offices. It seems that they are parking lots with places to spend our money attached. We do not gather at these places to engage in public discourse, cultural enrichments, social engagements, family activities, or as part of our path when we travel by foot. People are best able to appreciate their environment when they are not bombarded by advertising, work reminders and vendors asking them to part with their money.

It is the job of the designer to provide a public space that can be enjoyed by many people in a personal way. Give a path to the public to enjoy your achitecture and not rush them past so that they can avoid being trampled upon. This is not how I would want my building or structure remembered, as a inconvenience that had no place for me. Define spaces for the public with the public in mind.

Posted 2 years ago

space, public, architecture, design, mixed-use,

Jun 3

Is building space the same as building in space? Is space a void to fill or a filled quality to refine?

Space inside, within, without, around, surrounding, permeating, infilling, and outer. Will we ever run out of space?

Posted 2 years ago

space,

Jun 2

Architecture and building space

It would seem like a contradiction to be building space. In fact, what’s done is the confinement of space, harnessing of space, defining of space and assigning function to space. Space in its self has no definition. Unless you’re a phycisist and would argue that space is defined by mass-energy-quantum-particles and influenced as a medium by gravity, dark matter and unseen forces, then we can state that space is undefined until people step into the equation. We define spaces for living, working, sleeping, eating, bathing, and so many other activities.

The defining process is architecture. So in order to satisfy architecture, we ask many questions regarding those elements that will help form and develop the undefined space in to occupieable space. Will it be for groups of people? Will it be for private occupancy? Will the outside world impinge on the interior space? How will the space be lit, sound controlled, access given, and what geometric configuration will the space occupy? How does the space interact with other space?

It might be argued that each space is a dynamic environment that must see, listen, breath, process, recover and endure. It is not living, though it may be alive when used. It’s artificial heating/cooling mechanisms, its apperatures to control daylight, its electroluminecent contol mechanisms (lighting), its sound control mechanisms, warning messages for danger, its interior linings and entry/exit passage ways. It has similar characteristics to living organisms. It has some self awareness through sensors, controls, and corrective algorithms. However, it lacks the ability to achieve self-preservation through fight/flight mechanisms. We as architects and designers provide all of these mechanisms to defined space so that it can care for our needs without our active efforts. It protects, entertains, feeds, joins us together, and seperates us from one another.

Should space be so defined that it can only perform one function for us? Is space a specialized feature of our lives? We don’t live that way, changing our minds, habits and activity every day. Do rooms provide us a place to act or do we act according to the room? From experience, we have seen people live their whole lives in a single room that serves all their daily functions. It does not necessarily serve their needs. It is limited to be only what it was designed to do. We sometimes need confined comforting spaces and sometimes vast unending spaces. We sometimes need to sit and concentrate, while other times we need to run free from a single place.

When we design, build and engineer architecture it is up to us to remember that flexibility and the use of a particular space will not always be what we think it should be. To provide longevity to a particular space, we must be willing to provide the space with the needed mechanisms, controls and features that allow it to adapt over the years to serve many differing people. Open floor plans, so popular in high-rise complexes, office building and convention centers, provide unique conditions in the built world. This practice is so different from our residential design practices where each room and space is assigned a specific function. It is becoming more rare that an individual or family will live a single generation in a home, much less mutliple generations. The needs of one family will often differ considerably from the next and as different cultures begin to occupy foreign architecture, the challenge is to provide space and platforms for people to live their lives.

When was the last time you learned of a major city coming into existence? I’m not talking about sub-urban city centers or expansion of an existing metropolis. I mean a city, founded near a natural resource, grown and planned to meet a growing population and commercial interest. The closest thing is perhaps a college campus or new corporate campus. This is not the same. I don’t think we’ll see too many fresh opportunities to define communities or large city centers (except perhaps in countries outside of America). I think we’ll define and redefine existing spaces to serve the current population and technological method.

So, with this in mind, seek to provide flexible space both inside and out when defining new architecture.

Posted 2 years ago

architecture, space, buildings, design,