every architectural office will be able to produce three-dimensional full-scale holographic virtual environments, or at the very least photo- realistic “Second life” simulations in which their clients can “inhabit” the proposed architecture as avatars. Work on this is already well underway at Harvard. Stay tuned.
See also: Digital materiality
Further sources: Litwell (2003: 158); Muller (in Gausa 2003: 502)
Figure 90: 1973 Forecast of the future of architectural production process
Psychological needs
Something is needed for some end if the end cannot be achieved without it. — Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy
The needs of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor weak nature. — Theophile Gautier
The architect can only aim at generalized satisfaction of averaged social needs, and it may satisfy nothing.
— Reyner Banham
Humans are social animals. We associate, belong; we join, influence, dominate, control, like love people. Do we have a “herd instinct,” which draws us together? Are there psychic dynamic forces which pull us, or gradually acquired drives we develop for survival purposes? Are we to talk of a few basic general drives which energize our behavior, or a vast number of motivating influences directed towards the satisfaction of our goals?
These are some of the questions to which psychology and evolutionary biology have failed to provide clear answers. Whether the human needs that express these drives are basically physiological, or basically psychological, or a fairly even mixture of the two, remains uncertain. The extent to which such needs can be explained simply in terms of territory alone is also far from settled. Research on defensible space (Oscar Newman, 1972) and Designing Out Crime (current UK legislation and directives) are examples of this approach.
P | 176 Psychological needs
F. F. Darling (1952) suggested that the provision of territory satisfies not only our physiological needs but also our psychological ones. In this “castle and border” interpretation of territory, the nest site provides for security (as opposed to anxiety), and at the border, the periphery, for stimulation (as opposed to boredom). R. Ardrey, in his book The Territorial Imperative (1966) added a third need, that of identity (the need of the animal to defeat anonymity and to differentiate itself from all others of its species).
Kurt Goldstein, followed by Abraham Maslow, adopted as man’s main driving-force the idea of self-actualization developed earlier by Carl Jung – the drive to make actual realization of one’s potentialities. Maslow (1954) believes that there is a “natural unfolding; of our needs in a gradual and progressive fashion from the ‘lower needs’ to the ‘higher needs.’” Individuals follow this development as they mature, ideally arriving at self-actualization. In hierarchical order, the five basic need levels are physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.
Over the past 30 years various architects have considered human psychological needs as an integral part of their design. For example in the Pågens bakery in Malmo, Sweden, Ralph Erskine has considered occupants’ psychological needs such as the balance between “contact” and “privacy” as well as “identity” and “personalization,” while remaining very much aware of the occupants’ differences in terms of personality and values.
Herman Hertzberger’s (2002) attempt to get people involved with their surroundings, with each other and with themselves, is another such approach. Lucien Kroll’s dictum, “no inhabitant participation, no plans,” is yet another. The late Charles Moore’s observation that “buildings, if they are to succeed, must be able to receive a great deal of human energy and store it and even repay it with interest” is a genuine attempt to consider, interpret, and translate the concepts of human need, aesthetics and wellbeing into designs.
On the understanding that such approaches do not claim to have developed an adequate theory about the complex nature of personality, lists of psychological needs such as Maslow’s are helpful as simple practical guides for checking and identifying needs within the context of a defined problem. Further research on the relative strength of such needs between cultures could provide us with useful information leading to greater understanding about the nature of human needs and the way in which the environment can facilitate their expression.
Missing from these modernists’ approach to needs are the following questions. Are human needs objective? Are they distinguishable from wants? Are they universal or culturally relative? In considering self-esteem and self-actualization, it is hard to posit that these needs are understood objectively, or that one can draw the line between needs and wants. The implication is that wants are somehow less deserving of consideration, yet the essence of architecture, versus mere building, is likely found in the accommodation of wants. Other than the question of life or death, needs and wants are really the same thing on a continuum. Having said that, needs and wants are clearly culturally and geographically relative.
In the twenty-first century the consideration of “user needs” has been overshadowed by user entertainment. Satisfying the desire for self- esteem and self-actualization is the focus of the contemporary architect.
177 | P Purism
It is to be hoped that that focus can be maintained as the onslaught of pragmatic green design grows. BM
Architecture is not the answer to the pragmatic needs of man, but the answer to his passions and imagination. — Emilio Ambasz
See also: Modernism (Archispeak) • User
Further sources: Johnson (1994: 324); Lidwell (2003: 106); Mikellides (1980); Scruton (1979: 31)
Purism
Generally “purity” in the arts has been associated with form: Kant understands a pure or free beauty as one that pleases by virtue of its form alone. — Karsten Harrries
… everything in architecture is expressed by order and economy. — Le Corbusier
De Stijl’s insistence upon elementary form was not only a return to some anachronistic purity but also a deliberate regression to a secure order. — Bernard Tschumi
Purism is generally associated with the modern art and architectural movement of the 1920s and 1930s. De Stijl and Le Corbusier are perhaps most closely identified with purist architecture. The hallmark of purism was the use of primary colors and forms, devoid of extraneous features. It was never a popular form of architecture, outside of a small group of early-twentieth-century artists and architects. The purist tradition was continued for a short period in that second half of the 1960s with the work of the “New York Five.” It included some of the leaders of the post-modern movement – Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, Michael Graves, and Charles Gwathmey. Of that group, Richard Meier has continued to practice purist architecture, only without the color. A neo- purism is emerging with the work of contemporary digital architects. Their work, as exemplified by Will Alsop, is colorful, exuberant, and all about form. Purism is reinvented as blobitecture.
Form does not follow function. Form does not arise out of its own accord. It is the great decision of man to make a building as a cube, pyramid, or a sphere. — Hans Hollein
See also: Abstraction • Beauty • Plastic architecture
Further sources: Harries (1998: 230); Tschumi (1994: 83); Tschumi (in Ballantyne 2002: 174)
R | 178 Rational method