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| TD Towers, Toronto |
I
was listening to an interesting podcast the other day as I went walking in my
favourite park (of course abiding by strict guidelines for social
distancing and all other forms of social intercourse). Jim Kunstler (JHK) was
interviewing Ann Sussman, a registered architect in the United States, who is
currently studying neurobiology for her doctorate. She’d written a book called Cognitive Architecture, Designing for How We
Respond to the Built Environment (Routledge, 2015), and has a new
book coming out—Urban Experience
& Design: Contemporary Perspectives on Improving the Public Realm,
(Routledge 2020). JHK spoke to her about her findings. One of her main talking
points is that the built environment around us both shapes and informs our brains,
and certain shapes, city plans, streetscapes and so on are more beneficial
to our neurological health than
others. She suggests we intuitively know this and that, given our druthers, we
would rather live in towns and cities that support and enhance our brain’s
functioning than not.
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| Provincial Courts (or bunker?) Brantford, Ontario |
She
says that many types of buildings and city designs today are antithetical to
the well-being of our neurology, and that we have much to learn from the architecture
of other times and cultures. Unhealthy cities breed unhealthy people.
Interestingly,
she also says: “Hurt people hurt people.” She goes on to describe the history
of modern architecture that began in the early 1900s, and suggests that several
of its chief proponents were themselves neurologically damaged, and their
damaged neurology, in turn, can be seen in the type of buildings they made.
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| 1970's York University, Toronto (or gulag?) |
Today we are familiar with the ‘glass box’ skyscrapers and the miserable legacy
of public buildings using concrete as a main facing element, particularly
the “Brutalist School” of architecture. These types of buildings (and there are
many other examples of ‘sick’ buildings) are out of scale and proportion, and
have shapes and cladding that rebuff human interaction with them. Some public
and commercial buildings even repel
us from wanting to go inside. (Even before the coronavirus, how many of us truly
wanted to spend any time at a WalMart?)
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| Science Museum, Dallas, Texas (or...huh?) |
Why
are today’s buildings and cities in so many parts of the world so ugly and
uninviting? Why have our built environments become dispiriting wastelands? This
is a topic JHK has been invested in for decades, and he writes extensively about
architecture and urban planning on his blog, along with politics and social
issues. His books, website and podcast are invaluable resources to help
us answer these questions.
Ann
Sussman adds an interesting wrinkle here by proposing that the early modernists
in architecture like Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Phillip Johnson and others came
out of a time of great conflict, namely WWI, some even having served during
the war who, Sussman says, exhibit symptoms
of PTSD, a mental disorder that informed their life’s work. And not in a
good way.
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| Le Corbusier's Aborted Paris Plan, 1925 |
The
Modernist movement both in architecture and the Arts came about, in part, as a
rejection of ‘the past’, particularly after the horrors of WWI—arguably the
first industrialized war (and unfortunately not the last). ‘The Past’ brought
about the killing fields Europe, therefore architects like Le Corbusier, for example, were
determined to wipe it all away and start with a clean slate. His proposed (and
thankfully never developed) city plans for Paris is an example of this rejection
of the past—with its scale and in the use of modern materials like glass and steel,
the elimination of decorative elements, and so on. It reminds me of a machine, rather than as something that
is part of people’s lives. And schools of architecture continue to promote
dismal, dispiriting or just plain absurd design principles. A particular
bug-a-boo of mine is the ROM museum in Toronto, Ontario where the Bloor Street
addition to the structure strikes me as hideous and lacking any
relationship with the surrounding streetscape. It looks like a giant, cosmic space-goitre!
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| Paris, Today (thankfully!) |
Buildings—public
buildings, commercial ones, homes and residences, streets, parks, etc. are for people. They must provide us with a
sense of security and safety as well as make sense to our hard-wired neurology.
Structures like the ROM’s only confuse us and repel our senses. At least mine. By the way, can anybody tell me where the main entrance to the building is? It
used to be around the corner, off of University Ave. When I went to Toronto
some years ago to view an exhibit there, I had to actually look for it! I
watched people line up at a door that looked more like the entrance to some
hidden, after-hours night club or suburban Cineplex.
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| Royal Ontario Museum Space Goitre Addition |
(A clue:
it’s that small black rectangle underneath one of the jutting glass and steel wings.) Stupid and ugly!
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| Breaking News: Alien Space Goitre Crash Lands on ROM! |
There
are many examples of how our cities are designed to work against human
neurology and physiology. We need to be building cities that are walkable, that
have streets that are human in scale and provide a sense of welcome and order
for those living and working there. There’s much that needs to be done to
change things. Perhaps Covid-19 will offer us the opportunity for a reset? Time
will tell.
Cheers,
Jake
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| "WTF?!" |
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