6 Comfortable spaces and furnishings support mental health versus 7 cold minimalistic interiors
Complacent with money and power, the building industry simply assumes that the practice of architecture will continue in a straight line, and that this emergency was nothing but an annoying pause.
THE PATH TO SUSTAINABILITY There is only one way to sustainability: build towns and urban spaces that are loved, and then people will wish to preserve themxvi washing’xvii
. It’s time to invest in Green city innovations—biophilic, instead of deceptive ‘green- . How do we guarantee that users will love a new project? It has to be beautifulxviii . ! Even though notions of
beauty are frequently twisted to serve an agenda, Richard Florida argues that the most beautiful places are also the most commercially successful on all countsxix
Looking ahead over the next 20 to 40 years, the possible (or likely) future of cities is uncertain. It could develop in one of three ways:
1. Blissfully going along with the status quo towards a dystopian, industrial, inhuman world. The dominant power will continue to seek out and suppress vestiges of human-scale design.
2. Transform our world into a humane, healing environment that is also sustainable; slowly at first, then gaining momentum to become the mainstream.
3. Mainstream society continues in its destructive path, manipulated by global interests to destroy the environment and erect ugly buildings, while an isolated minority creates healing environments. Those few must continuously fight a culture war to protect the remnants of humanity from the onslaught of the majority power. Humankind is set up for a post-human split into two parts.
The most likely is the first option, following the historical principle that a tiny minority can never overturn totalitarian power. Only unforeseen large-scale, sometimes catastrophic, events could trigger such a change.
Yet some optimism is indeed called for. We propose an economic solution that can still benefit developers while achieving human-scale urbanism. Legislators can rewrite the scale-erasing codes enforced after World War II, because those make the living urban fabric we wish for illegal. Those of us who know the science now consult with architecture and building firms. We apply Alexandrian Patternsxx tools for adaptationxxi
INTERIORS AS LIVING ENVIRONMENTS
Why have we forgotten how to build spaces that nurture and comfort us while we inhabit them? Because, decades ago, architecture schools started to teach ridiculous abstractions and stopped considering basic human neurological responses. At the same time, users accepted a severe reduction of their sensorial world, did not complain, and even misinterpreted its alien and sterile look as ‘modern’.
People locked inside their dwellings during the recent pandemic might have noticed that those interiors are inadequate to sustain human life emotionally. Indoor spaces designed by architects ignorant of human spatial needs lead to increased degrees of stress and mental illnessxxii
. The effects are the most severe
on children, which suggests a huge responsibility. Inhuman environments are still tolerated by the world’s population, because very few people connect their own psychological unease with design minimalism and ill-conceived corners, surfaces and transitions.
This is a terrible shame, since decades of discoveries on how design patterns create healing environments are available today as open source to those who are interested in implementing themxxiii know how to create salutogenic geometriesxxiv
. We . Yet the gatekeepers of design knowledge—the architecture
schools—have suppressed all of this information. Not only are today’s practitioners mostly ignorant of it, but also whenever they come across such knowledge, they reject it because it threatens the design typologies they have been implementing without thinking.
50 FUTURARC
and supporting geometrical
. Neuroscience experiments are finally validating what we knew empirically all along. We are convincing stakeholders of the health and long-term advantages of biophilic design.
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