The CCTV New Headquarters Project (designed by Rem Koolhaas, Figure 1) in Beijing has been in the spotlight, since the first day of its appearance. The confusing public as well as the media gave it a nickname--“Big Pants” to joke about the strangeness of this building (Figure 2). Interestingly, architects seem to take an opposite stance, and use it as a good example to explore how this “strange” from is realized and supported by the structural calculation. This distinctive attitude towards Koolhaas’s CCTV building suggests the different cognitive processes of architects and laypeople. Architects tend to perceive the building as a technological problem and in a more abstract way; while laypeople tend to interpret this building in a more concrete way and relate it to a familiar, everyday object—pants. Drawing on Kaplan’s explanation (2015), architects as experts, are trained to build more simplified mental models of the CCTV building, and are selective in the information they are willing to consider.
Figure 1
(Source: Retrieved from http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2008-05/07/content_8120308.htm)
Figure 2
(Source: Retrieved from http://www.tubaiwan.com/topic/showpic/81441-2063.html)
This gap also exists in a different cultural context. A study conducted by Jack Nasar (1989) in the context of North America, shows that in interpreting the symbolic meanings of home-styles, architects responded differently from the public, and they misinterpret the public responses. In general, architects ranked the Contemporary style (Figure 3) as more desirable, while the public ranked traditional styles (such as Tudor, Figure 4) as more desirable. The differentiated perceptions pose several questions: If architects and laypeople generate different representations of buildings, how can architects design buildings that satisfy their users or the public? Or even though architects know the differences, as experts, what are their choices? As we are sharing the built environments with people from different social fields, whom shall we architects or urban designers design for, our own ambitions, our clients, or the public?
Figure 3
(Source: Nasar, J. (1989). Symbolic meanings of house styles. Environment and Behavior, 21: 235-257.)
Figure 4
(Source: Nasar, J. (1989). Symbolic meanings of house styles. Environment and Behavior, 21: 235-257.)
Encouraging participatory design, in this sense, is of great importance in the field of architectural and urban design. Through engaging in the process of design, the public can get familiar with the concept and integrate this information into their existing cognitive map. This will help the public 1) to understand why and how this certain built environment is formed, and 2) to feel they have some control over this built environment. This process will alter their interpretations about the built environment, which will further narrow the gap between the public and the architects. At the same time, the architects will get alternative information outside their expertise, which will remind themselves how they perceived the world before their architectural education.
References:
Kaplan, S. (2015). The Expertise Challenge. In R. Kaplan & A. Basu (Eds.), Fostering Reasonableness (pp.43–53). Ann Arbor: Maize Books.
Nasar, J. (1989). Symbolic meanings of house styles. Environment and Behavior, 21: 235-257.
Thank You Jieqiong for your insight on 3CM and preference surrounding the idea of architecture and housing. I found this very thoughtful and thought provoking. I am currently working with the Michigan Engaging Community through the Classroom (MECC) project. As social workers, we are consulting with the urban planners to help with an affordable housing plan in Traverse City. We ran into the dilemma of a difference in preference between the communities idea of housing and what that would look like versus the developers idea of housing. So when you explained exploring a participatory design that creates an understanding of how the environment impacts the building of certain structures or designs is important as well as the idea of the housing preference. I think many members within a community would rather have input and understanding of what the housing should look like within their community.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with both of you about the importance of participatory processes in community development. Even with a great education and the best intentions, it is often very difficult for a professional to come in from the outside and truly understand what a community wants and needs. Both expert and local knowledge are needed to create a successful community development; no matter how great a project is in theory, if it is not embraced by its intended occupants then it will be completely useless. The rise and fall of Modernism in public housing projects (including Pruitt Igoe) is a prime example of this--in modernism, one theoretically good strategy was applied everywhere without any consideration to local needs. Despite the best intentions, today most Modern housing projects have been torn down, and the remaining ones are widely regarded as among the worst places to live. Architects and planners today should see this as a lesson that even the best professional knowledge is no substitute for local insight, and that community involvement is crucial in many urban developments.
ReplyDeleteExpertise is a subject that i struggle with a lot. As a practicing chemical engineer in Chile, i was supposedely an expert in industrial, technological and technical decision-making, but when i started working in a production plant back in 2012 i realized that my expertise was useless in the "real world".
ReplyDeleteEngineering is a discipline where participatory desingn does not exist. Engineers are self-proclaimed gods that came down from the Olympus of science and progress to shape the mortal land in the way of a techno-utopia. Participatory design in engineering does not exist because inputs from non-experts are deemed "wrong" because technical views are all that matter. I don't know how it is here in the US, but while in my undergrad back in Chile i had so many cool classes about thermodynamics, chemical reactors, mechanical operations but none about how my work as an engineer could be impactful for real people and not for mathematical models or non dimensional points existing in a vacuum.
Since the time i decided to drop the idea of being a traditional engineer and now, I realized I want my future career to focus on reshaping the role of engineers on modern society: engineers as champions of sustainability instead of progress. Maybe a way of doing so is integrating communities in the design process, not in the technical design, but if we broaden what an engineering design process is (to incorporate notions of sustainability and community development), community inputs and critiques might become essential to the system.
Thank you for sharing your Architecture story with us. In my opinion, not all experts necessarily meet the so-called dilemma. Arts, including dancing, music, painting, filming, architecture, or maybe even writing, are a kind of expression of emotions. A director, a painter, an author, or a composer wants to share his/her inner feelings with others through the form of films, drawings, fictions, or a piece of music instead of just speaking out right away. I am one of the laypeople in terms of paintings and drawings. Every time I went to a gallery, I really enjoyed the colors and compositions of a picture, but I never have a clear idea what the painter wants to tell us. People who are also artists and are able to read the drawings may have a resonance with the painter, smiling or crying when seeing the drawings. In this case, maybe an expert in art can only exchange ideas with another expert in the same field. Their works are somehow only meaningful to a specific group of people. If you want to understand them, what you need to do is to learn and try to become one of them. However, it doesn’t matter in the field of fine art, music, or filming, because it is no big deal whether other people can understand them or not. But the same is not true for architecture or experts in other fields that are related to human and humanity in a broader scale. The understanding of the gap of information and interpretation between experts and common people is crucial. An architect is not the only person who is seeing the building. The building itself, as a work of the architect, has a lot to do with the environment and many other people, which is far beyond the single purpose of “expressing one’s own ideas and feelings”. It is not possible to require all the other people to become an expert to understand the profound meaning laid behind. In this case, the experts need to consider the different cognitive maps in other people’s mind, and try to make a bridge connecting both sides.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read the posts above, I can't help but think of all of the experts that are involved with designing a community space. Engineers bring technical perspectives and ensure that spaces are safe. Architects and landscape architects bring the aesthetic perspective, along leading practices in space management (ideally incorporating environmental psychology). All the while, urban planners and social workers bring the social perspective, and ideally engage the community to effectively gain the perspective of the community. (Observation: I unintentionally included the community perspective last, though this probably has a significance. Perhaps I, as an "expert," am not properly respecting community input??)
ReplyDeleteBut, with more expert input comes more difficulty in getting to consensus. Moreover, the community input may become drowned out. Last, each expert comes from their own background and experience, so they don't necessarily respect or even listen to other perspectives. (I can't help but notice that the social workers above (love you guys) advocate for greater social input, and the former engineer acknowledges that engineers think that they are the end-all, be-all.)
All of these limitations of additional expertise or input require more facilitation and better communication skills. This is often left out of a planning effort. Thus, in order to take care of all of the brilliant minds mentioned above, we need a foundation of facilitation and communication, otherwise the project will loose effectiveness.
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ReplyDeleteThis post brought me back to a concept we discussed in one of my architecture courses regarding Social Impact Design. We were required to analyze "Reframing Practice:Identifying a Framework for Social Impact Design" (2012), a reading that sought to establish four principles that underly design in the informal sector. These designs include projects for little thought people groups such as illegal immigrants. One of the terms, referred to in the article as Milieu, was focused around designing with in-depth understanding of the existing context that surrounds the building. This understanding was meant to extend beyond simple elements, such as what one could research on a google article, toward a vernacular knowledge which could only be obtained by interacting directly with the client learning the particulars of their day to day lives and therefore design necessities.
ReplyDeleteWe could easily relate this concept back to Professor's De Young's lecture today in which the point was made that the best way to gain understanding of the unique qualities of a specific location is to ask the people that have spent most of their lives living their. Perhaps architecture as a whole could benefit from the application of this principle which is typically only emphasized in this particular sector of design. Those directly affected by the design should actively participate in design process to not only allow architects to understand the constraints under which the client operates, but also to allow the client to understand the thought process and constraints of the practice.
The disconnect between architects and laypeople is really interesting, and I think nowhere is it evidenced more than in the proliferation of "McMansions" (http://www.mcmansionhell.com/). I'm of the opinion that this is largely the result of architectural hero-worship and consumer herd-mentality mixed with a healthy dose of one-uppery, corporate strategy, and an appeal to rebelliousness, than any actual miscommunication.
ReplyDeleteWhy do people go into architecture? Is it to churn out Tudor or Colonial houses by the dozen? Or is it to create something to call their own - something edgy/avant-garde/modern/post-modern that people will take note of, a.k.a to be the next Frank Lloyd Wright or Le Corbusier? I think more the latter. But, who actually ends up being that designer? Practically no one, and it shows. Looking at housing nowadays, it seems like whatever trendy feature the customer wants to slap on the outside of a house overrides any architectural sense. Ornamental copper-sheathed awning? Sure. Multi-slope roof structure? Why not. Pillars? Yes. Please. Consistent structural vision? What?! Go back home to the 50's, and take your theories of masses/voids, balance, proportion, and rhythm with you.
How do we re-open lines of communication between architects and laypeople? Do modern suburban developments have room for an iterative design process? Maybe that's the real issue here: architects designing for mass production with only a facade of uniqueness. It's not hard to understand architects' misunderstanding if you imagine that the person being designed for is not an individual, as interviewed in the study, but is actually a suburban development board or corporation who has no interest in aesthetics further than how it can make them more "exciting" than the development down the road. So, maybe we should look at how suburban developments design for customers, rather than individual architects. That would be an interesting study.
I was recently reading a book about architecture in Netherlands called "Double Dutch" by Bernard Hulsman. In this book, Hulsman argues that there are two parallel approaches in contemporary dutch architecture: one based on radically new ideas and forms pioneered by Koolhaas and MVRDV and a postmodern/traditionalist approach led by Wilfried van Winden. He was arguing that while buildings in the second group do not present radically new ideas, but people -at least visually- like them. However, buildings in the first category are subject to debate and controversies. There is a similar condition in China with all the "weird" architecture being built which leads to the alienation of locals. However, there remains a question: is there anyway to merge these two trends? One might ask, why we even should try when people already love old forms and configurations. My answer would be to explore the potentials of the built environment that has never been imagined before. Relying on old forms and structures can only give us grounds to re-imagine the built environment. Therefore, I think architecture will find a middle ground that reinforces the "understanding" of familiar forms and the "exploration" for new forms.
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