Effects based design
Nothing has a greater effect on our daily life than the physical environment that surrounds us all day, every day... our homes, where we work, where we go to relax, to shop, and the means by which we get to those destinations. Reality is a non-derivative experience. It is not what we read or hear about, but what surrounds and touches us in day to day life.
Yet due to the way we have structured the rewards people earn for their work, we pay insufficient attention to what's around us and life becomes bland.
For example, consider something as simple as buying a cup of coffee: the café where you go, order a drink, read the paper and watch the world go by. Good cafés become popular; a community emerges as people see each other day after day and strike up conversation. In fact multiple communities emerge... the workers first thing in the morning; the mums with babies arriving mid morning, the lunch crowd and so on. Successful ones last for decades, so long as the proprietor keeps their focus on the physical environment... the taste of the coffee, the comfort of the chairs and most importantly, the sense of welcoming and community. Contrast this experience with the Starbucks phenomena. Founded by Americans who sought to capitalise on that classicaly urban, especially European archetype (think Italy or Vienna), they transformed it into a brand driven by market dominance which was said to have as many 15,756 cafés in 44 countries. Yet now Starbucks is crashing (click here) due to falling customer numbers. Why? Because it failed the reality test (the non-derivative experience) and eventually its customers found it lacking.
It is very difficult for designers to create a physical environment that remains invigorated, enriched and refreshing. When one looks at archetypes that succeed, one finds that authenticity and character comes from a less controlled process, where one provides the basic building materials, but then steps back and lets people do what they do.
Another example: Consider two groups of children at play. One has been given a playground populated with engineered toys that do specific things. The other group has been given the large cardboard boxes those toys came in, some ropes, trees, old tyres, and perhaps a few bales of hay. The second group will use their imagination and create their own world, their own playground and one will find them at it long after the first group of children have become bored and gone home.
What happens when the developer's brief includes creating an environment of positive effects and avoiding designs with adverse effects?
The very meaning of design changes. A designer who wants to control the process places a Starbucks on the plaza and ticks the box. A designer who sees value in a great café on the plaza makes sure there is a plaza with an available space on the sunny side, a population large enough to support a café and an infrastructure to enable a person or family to open their café.
Note the different emphasis... a person or family... an owner-operated business where the business is personal, where the person running the business loves their work, loves their customers and loves their life. The designer cannot create such people, but the designer can help create an environment that attracts such people.
In effects-based design, one pays attention to the effects created by habitat and how the parts interrelate. There are different types of effects:
- Social refers to how people interrelate; how well they get along, how to bring out the best (or adversely, the worst) in people. How a designer established the rules for house placement and soundproofing the walls will have a social effect. How they balance private and public will have an effect. How a design establishes a local economy so the community is inhabited 24 hours a day (not a bedroom, commuter habitat) will have an effect. Where educators place the schools (within the village vs on a campus) will have a social effect.
- Economic refers to how people meet their needs and provide for the luxuries in their lives. Ultimately economic wellbeing comes from creating wealth, transforming something into something better. A thriving economy engenders well-being. A diverse economy engenders durability. A generous economy provides security for all, especially the young, the old and the stressed (such as young families). The economic environment creates the nourishment a healthy community needs to thrive.
- Culture refers to the good things in life; the arts, the sciences, ones language and those treasures passed from one generation to another. If economic is grey, culture adds the colour, the vibrancy to life that keeps it enriched and interesting. Culture is often ignored in habitat design, or if it is considered, it tends to be window-dressing... trophy sculptures or boardroom art. Recently, sociologist/economist Richard Florida provided hard evidence that culture is the glue that holds successful communities together. He uses the term creative class to embrace a wider view of culture. In understanding culture, one must appreciate how broad a concept it is. A grandparent telling stories to a child passes on the culture... both have time, both have memory and knowledge and understanding travels from the past into the future. This form of culture dies when we move grandparents into retirement villages and substitute Disney's version of other places and other times. Culture is music... the classically trained violinist playing Bach and the garage band writing new songs, new melodies... many bad, but a few outstanding. Unless the physical environment provides a place for both, and many other aspects of culture, the fundamental character of the community weakens. The designer cannot control the grandparent's stories to the child, but the effects-based designer can make sure there is a place for grandparents in the village.
- Environment refers to three different realms.
- The physical environment is the one that surrounds each of us in the present. At night it is our bedroom... is it restful, or do we hear cars roaring by all night? During the day, it is where we work, study or occupy our time. How we structure our physical environment has a great deal of effect on how we live.
- The natural environment is the place of Nature. We are all natural beings, although we often create such a manufactured physical environment that we lose touch with our roots, our origins and eventually lose touch with ourselves. How we place ourselves in relation to the natural environment will have a great effect on the balance in our lives. This comment will seem alien to many modern people, because they have so lost touch with the natural environment as to not know what is missing. If you doubt this, seek out a grove of ancient, untouched massive trees and take a walk... alone and without a cell phone or Ipod. Almost every country still has such a place, although it may be far away and many tourists will visit it since such places of Nature are becoming rare.
- The global environment: Until the recent financial crisis, the global environment had become the hot topic both in government and in architecture, as green design became fashionable and carbon neutral the holy grail. In some regards, the global environment is not reality, for it is a derivative experience... we must take the word of scientists. As a matter of common sense, we need to take the word of the scientists, because if they are right, our non-derivative experiences in the future will be catastrophic with violent weather, rising oceans and adverse effects on food, economies, even life itself. If they are wrong, we will have cleaned up our act and stopped dumping rubbish onto Nature, which is a good thing. However, the problem with these green issues are their selectivity and the pain that selectivity can engender. Asking people to pay more to drive, or to drive less when the destinations are still far away, places stress and burden on the person. Designing a building that is carbon neutral but miserable to work in degrades the physical environment for those who must work there. The global issues must be considered, but not in isolation. The parallel village takes 6,000 cars off the road because commuting is boring, it destroys the social fabric, weakens cultural life and consumes a large portion of people's earnings. The fact that it also ceases to dump CO2 in the environment is an additional benefit, not the only one.
