A New Humanism: Part 6
Hildebrand’s research he applies to architecture the familiar landscape concepts of “refuge and prospect”; it spells out how our search for both is a response to shifting intensity among contending predilections. The basic impulse is evident early in the hide-a-ways and forts built throughout childhood. And gender, age, resources, time-of-day or season, strength or vulnerability, or urgent motivations of a “personal project” clearly can have widely differing influences on the way each of us will seek out a secure place. But he backs up a convincing case that designers can produce more welcoming, satisfying, human environments by recognizing that their publics will in fact experience them in these deep-seated, survival-based terms.
Sanctuary
Hildebrand takes the next step, too, defining and illustrating the architectural qualities that underlie protection and a release from fear or out-of-control nature in a “refuge”. Most important is the low height and enfolding form of a “ceiling” plane or overhanging trees. Light levels lower than in surrounding spaces, protected openings plus mostly solid-seeming walls – often the reality of, or echoes of earth forms, color, and materials – all naturally reinforce the feeling. Then horizontal dimensions significantly smaller than those of surrounding spaces – the “cozy” inglenook, “den,” or walled gardens – and an entrance that is a succession of vestibules or buffers, elevate the retreat into a “sanctuary”. As a prime example of combined refuge and prospect he again uses the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright with their focus on cave-like hearths and long, sheltering overhangs, combined with broad windows and projecting decks – warmth, protection, and openings out to freedom.
“Hearth and ‘prospect’ at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water”
He could have cited, too, the secure “shells” of more popular, conventional houses with their courtyard or backyards and outlooks into the neighborhood. And there are other dimensions of “refuge” as well.
Fire
Reinforcing – sometimes even replacing – the spatial sense of a safe, defensible place are symbols having other survival-based meanings, most prominently, of course, the hearth, the family’s fire that has been an integral part of human evolution and survival. The control of this once dangerous natural enemy – this early mastery of the natural environment and an enormous increase in available energy – was and still is an element of human “fitness”. Affecting all the senses in the circle of light and warmth, with the scent and promise of food, the fire seems almost alive like another companion, an ally with awesome power. While today the symbol may be reduced to a gas-fired log, candlelight, fire pit or grill, the need for an open flame and sharing a fire seems taken for granted. And we still recognize controlled fire as a powerful symbol of eternal life and, uncontrolled, as a symbol of eternal death. In other words, these flames that dispel the dark still stir life and death responses embedded in human nature; we expect them and take pleasure when we find them in our built environments.
Refuge in alliances
Equally elemental seem to be the symbols of genetic “blood” alliances – symbols that identify us as an integral member of entities larger and stronger and longer lasting than ourselves alone – families, ethnic and nationality groups, or gangs of “blood brothers”. The “home place” and property legacies, longtime family possessions and portraits, plus flags and public memorials, are in our design vocabularies at all scales as a “refuge” of reassurances. They document continuity and past victories – symbols, we believe, of “our” genes’ fitness for survival generation after generation.
And in parallel, all across the continent we see repeated in the places we live the architecture and landscapes that symbolize the human “mastery” of this continent. They’re realized in memorials at a community’s center. It’s part of what makes a “center” and some of our most reassuring structures are symbols of the competitive victories, selflessness in battle and the vitality of “our” place, our ideology, our people with victory columns, triumphal arches, the lion images in Venice, generals on horseback, Lenin’s tomb. These are not personal or sentimental gestures. Communities unite to assemble and sacrifice significant resources to tell these survival stories about themselves.
More elemental still, are the reassuring symbols of “our” faith that has put us under the protection of supernatural power – the skyline of church steeples, a cathedral dome, temple complexes, hallowed ground, and the family chapel or shrine for the gods of the house. This sense of refuge in a faith often exceeds the physical refuge offered by whatever else we may have built.
Prospect
An “outlook” – especially one where we can see without being seen – is an integral part of a secure refuge. Hildebrand again outlines the ideal. The architectural forms range from walls of glass to a narrow arc of window, combined with easy access outdoors into a broader view – a lawn or terrace or balcony, especially one projected or elevated to enlarge the prospect. Even a slight elevation on the land or in a room – and, of course, a mountain summit – draws us to it.
“The village of Brantes on Mont Ventoux in France”
The architectural aperture of the outlook frames the prospect experience, and the door or window is an event that refocuses attention. A vertical opening that extends down near the floor feels like a door, an invitation – an imagined movement – out into the scene. You feel “there”. Clear continuity into the out-of-doors of the ceiling, wall, and especially the ground plane do the same. In contrast, a windowsill level at waist height feels both protective and confining. Separation is dramatized. You feel more an “observer”, seeing the prospect as a picture. In businesses and public buildings the prospect may also be reversed. The transparency orients and welcomes strangers into a predictable and expressive interior.
In any case, while all the senses are alerted, the eyes tend to take over, searching for potential pathways and destinations. The pleasures in finding them are embedded in the rich design vocabularies of gardens and urban places, and also in the value we place on the content of the prospect. Naturally these all depend on feelings that matter most at the moment. We will pay well for a prospect that reinforces the sense of being in a safe refuge at sunset when the world turns dark – or the confidence and serenity induced by a prospect that “commands” a defensive perimeter or a fertile landscape in a valley or rolling hills, or the lights of “my” city or neighborhood. And it’s likely to be the same impulse that attaches us to the “prospect” in computer and TV screens – the constant connection, the sense of belonging to the larger society’s winners-heroes-stars, combined with a secure lookout over the globe and out into the universe.
These ideas about predilections that shape architecture can be applied equally effectively to cities, land and streetscapes, of course. In practice, they are woven together with such other evolved influences on “home” selection and design as social cohesion, economy of means, status in a hierarchy, and individual associations of built forms with feelings about people, ideas and the natural world. Those dimensions are explored further in later chapters, but first, he has other interesting, important ideas that I want to outline and expand on.
Exploration and peril
Hildebrand poses exploration-and-peril as a second pair of innate predilections that underlie “architectural pleasure”. He starts by pointing out that the “drive to seek knowledge has been…one of the key factors, perhaps the key factor, in our evolutionary success.” In practice that has meant a compulsion to explore, to learn more, to penetrate into mysteries, and to follow the promise of uncovering useful information in the territory up ahead. Citing the pleasures of following winding pathways, the urge to discover what’s hidden around-the-bend, and the enticement of a partially seen, brightly lit scene, he traces these powerful curiosities through architectural vocabularies found across cultures – linked courtyards, curved and layered spaces, framed vistas, manipulated light, the mystery of shadows, and orchestrated movement along promenades with links from landmark to landmark or to hidden rewards. One whole spectrum of the pleasures we give ourselves in recreation, entertainment or as tourists – in travels or trails, hill towns or a shopping street – derive from that primal drive to learn by exploring. Whether or not designers enhance the experience by “orchestrating” the movement, the impulse remains, and our response to a place tends to be boredom if it’s not fulfilled in some way. We’re curious. We’re “predators”. And we want to “hunt”.
“Refuge, prospect and a base for exploration – Portofino on the Ligurian coast of Italy”
Then Hildebrand speculates, too, that our evolutionary success was enhanced by a predilection to seek out, and overcome “perils” – risky, life-threatening challenges that seem to promise exceptional rewards. They start with our innate exploratory optimism – overestimating benefits and underestimating costs. And in the end the pleasure comes from experiencing the emotional rush of self-esteem – a body chemistry earned by facing up to danger, mastering fear, and exercising strength, courage, and competence to “win”. He traces out then how this emotional response is deliberately evoked in both architecture and garden design vocabularies, particularly overcoming the primal fear-of-falling and the resulting thrill of being in high places – prospects – balconies, overhanging decks, bridges, cliffs, treetops, and in our imagination, soaring forms and spaces.
Naturally, each of us has different kinds and different levels of imperatives to explore and take risks; these tend to peak in our early years and decline with age. Yet, as with “refuge and prospect”, behind the personal and cultural structures in our minds, there seems to be that underlying predilection to find the excitement, the pleasure of adventure, making it as safe as “possible,” but taking the risk. The financial, gaming, recreation and entertainment industries are masters of creating the experiences that exploit it.
Our next post will examine the compelling search for orientation, order and control, plus the creative imagination that carves out a unique niche for us in every ecosystem we invade.
* * * *
This is the sixth of a series of posts that spell out a set of ideas called A New Humanism: in architecture, landscapes, and urban design. They’re about enlarging the way we think about design by applying, in day to day practice, a broader range of insights into the cutting edge sciences of nature and human nature — using them to understand how our evolved mind-and-body actually experience the places we design, and why people respond the ways they do.
Robert Lamb Hart is a practicing architect and planner educated at Harvard GSD and the University of Pennsylvania. He is a founder and a principal in Hart Howerton, a planning, architecture, and landscape design firm with an international practice out of offices in New York, San Francisco, London, Shanghai, Park City, and Boston. He believes that the design professions have been falling behind in their understanding of one of the defining enterprises of the Modern revolution, the application of the maturing, fast-moving sciences of ecology and human behavior — and the compromised results are showing.
Albrecht Pichler, who drew the sketches, is a practicing architect and a principal in Hart Howerton’s New York office.
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Thank you for looking beyond the obvious… Refuge - inward… Prospect - outward… Loving this series. Anticipating the next one… order and control with imagination?? M
Comment by Mary Robinette — January 14, 2013, @ 5:32 pm
I also feel like I have to thank you every time I read your postings. This one brought to mind a theme in some contemporary work that’s always befuddled me. The idea that architecture should reflect a sociological malady of our time. Whether it be the “tension in our culture” or “crisis of our time,” these types of psychoanalytical concepts are intriguing when in a scientific journal, but when built in concrete and steel, one can’t escape them unless you make a detour to avoid the building. This isn’t to say that in some programs they couldn’t add a deeper level of symbolism as in a museum, but when thrown at everyday building types they become a banal excuse to build public sculpture which tend not to communicate their generating ideas to the average passerby.
Sometimes a government building will unconsciously communicate its power like a theme park might consciously communicate its purpose, but I’m referring to those unsettling designs meant to provoke discomfort. If those designers are aware of these evolutionary findings you’re presenting, they tend to laugh them off as sentimental pastiche afraid to confront the realities of our times, as if the past was an enchanted land of contentment.
Even these ‘fun-houses’ for neurotics can be partly excused because they’ve been commissioned by consenting adults, and as such are legitimate expressions of our culture, however wasteful, ethereal, or trendy they may seem. My interest is in how to train young architects to handle whatever a client throws their way, yet still fulfill their obligations to a site and population that will have to live with and among their creations.
This latest posting of yours reminded me of an article in the NYT Sunday Review entitled, “Designing for Calm.” It was about how to minimize violence through design, in psychiatric wards. Like your reading of “refuge and prospect,” why should we only think to design for calm in psychiatric facilities? Isn’t being calm a state of mind we can all benefit from now and then? And when better than seeking “refuge” in our homes. If we can teach young architects to design healthy and environmentally sound buildings, why not teach them to create healthy environments for the human psyche? Not that every building need embody the idea of “refuge and prospect,” but surely it will benefit a young architect to understand human nature more than the latest computer driven design tool or french philosopher.
Thanks again.
Comment by Thayer-D — January 14, 2013, @ 10:29 pm
Great commentary, especially about the concept of “sanctuary” or “refuge”, which is the most elemental application of architecture. The cave is as timeless as humankind and even today, and it is still in play, from the true cave dwellers to the man-cave of modern life - every man needs his own place, with back against the wall, in which to face the challenge full on.
Comment by Suzy Nash — January 14, 2013, @ 11:09 pm
An interesting series, however:
1. Architect-planners have never ceased to be interested in - and to design in accordance with - their own views of human nature. This certainly did not end with the ‘Modern revolution’, as alleged.
2. These views of human nature are often arbitrary/personal. In this case, why is Hildebrand favoured over any number of other thinkers on the topic?
3. Much of the damage caused by the profession is when architect-planners forward their own narrow view of human nature over those of others - their clients and users - who may have a different view of what makes their lives meaningful and pleasurable.
I go on and on about all this here: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409439226
Having said all that, I sincerely admire Hart’s posts for their open exploration of this crucial issue, which often remains hidden.
Comment by Simon Richards — January 17, 2013, @ 2:44 pm
Views on human nature are arbitrary and personal, except when backed up by evolutionary biology and neuroscience. Mr. Hart has gone to great lengths to explain the phenomena of visual communication and perception as dispassionately as possible and how these findings might impact the world of architecture.
Our tendency to want to see ourselves as masters of our own fate chafes at the idea that we are pre-programmed towards any one particular perspective, but as the author Mr. Hildebrand, whom Mr. Hart credits, clearly states “I do not think this approach is the only way to understand and discuss our physical surroundings, or even the best way…Nor do I propose that it is universally applicable” So it might be unfair to characterize Mr. Hart for pushing his own “narrow view of human nature over others—their clients and users—who may have a different view of what makes their lives meaningful and pleasurable.”
Ironically, Mr. Hart is attempting to explore the view of architecture from the “day-to-day” user’s perspective and how it too often seems to differ from the view promulgated by many “designers, marketers, and the design media.” It’s a disparity that many of us have innately felt yet found hard to articulate, which his why this exploration is so exciting.
I think that’s why Mr. Hart clearly lays out his purpose at the outset. “This blog series is about an opportunity. It’s written “…to work out ways that more of us can design more practical, meaningful, beautiful places—the kinds of places most likely to realize both our own intentions and the aspirations of patrons, clients, and publics who rely on us.”
Comment by Thayer-D — January 17, 2013, @ 9:28 pm
Bill Hillier refers to cognitive neuroscientists at UCL to back up his theory of Space Syntax. Any narrow view can be bolstered with the ‘objective’ science of your choosing. Or, indeed, by claiming it corresponds with the “‘day-to-day’ users’ perspective”. Standard tricks. Always interesting to encounter this phenomenon, though.
Comment by Simon Richards — January 18, 2013, @ 8:31 am
Ps.: the “‘day-to-day’ users’ perspective” might best be gleaned by asking the day-to-day user, rather than looking for it in one’s favourite book. As the mighty Denise Scott Brown said: “which book?” Take your pick…
Comment by Simon Richards — January 18, 2013, @ 9:09 am
A response to Simon Richards. We seem to agree that, for better and often worse, all designers necessarily work with personal beliefs about human nature. (And that isn’t something that started or ended with Modern culture.)
But my point is that we can all do a better job — for clients, society and ourselves — if we up-date our understanding of the human mind-body by drawing on today’s fast-moving,cutting-edge sciences of evolution, neuropsychology and ecology. Their findings have been exploited successfully in the entertainment, marketing, gaming and financial industries, but architects still tend to draw on partially-educated intuitions that were based on some faulty conventional wisdom. And with some splendid exceptions, the results on the ground are disappointing.
I favored Hildebrand — and others you’ll see in later posts — because he dug deeply into ways to apply that science in day-to-day practice.
I look forward to reading “Architect Knows Best.”
Comment by R.L.Hart — January 18, 2013, @ 4:19 pm
Thankyou for your respone, Mr. Hart. I agree entirely that this appears to be a perennial part of the discourse. The important thing, as you say, is that the discussion be had more openly so the buried assumptions can be scrutinized. I was encouraged to find Geoffrey Scott in your earlier discussion, who of course criticized the ‘ethical’ - i.e. behavioral reformist - ambitions of Pugin and others, which “no longer forms part of a conscious system of thought, but of a general atmosphere of prejudice…automatically stated and automatically received.”. This is especially urgent for the architect, of course, who may not only be harboring views about human nature, as does the philosopher, but goes further in seeking to shape the world in accordance with these views.
Do please excuse my slightly critical tone earlier - clearly I feel a little too strongly about the issue! I was genuinely delighted to find an architect willing to discuss this issue and I shall be following your series attentively.
Comment by Simon Richards — January 19, 2013, @ 1:45 pm
It’s interesting to note the territorial nature of Mr. Richards’ criticism that this is a “narrow view” backed up by science of one’s “choosing”. I’m not sure that it can be qualified as science if it’s a matter of choosing. It might be that Mr. Richards is heavily invested in the exploration of environmental determinism as can be seen by the marketing of his own book in his first post, which by the way seems very promising.
Also interesting to note is the way Mr. Richards dismisses Mr. Hildebrand’s science without dealing with any of his substantive points. This form of relativistic thinking is particularly prevalent amongst European academics who tend to pride themselves more on their ability to deconstruct other thinking while shirking away from having to posit something concrete themselves, no doubt a product of their history with “messianic Utopianism” that Mr. Richards so rightly warns against. The cynicism inherent in this deconstructive approach is apparent when describing the reaction to modernism’s post war hegemony. “The image of a unified enemy of malicious intent (modernism) made it easier to present one’s own work as fresh and redemptive departures.” While no one will argue that this is an common rhetorical device, this oversimplification glosses over the very real and conspicuous faults Mr. Richards brilliantly points out in his take down of the CIAM and modernism as a whole.
To say that “this kind of synthetic writing neglects the fact that modernist architect-planners did not have as much influence as one might think” betrays an almost willful ignorance of the consequences of this kind of messianic Utopianism. “The ideas of the most prominent modernists amounted to little until they were taken up through a bewildering web of building companies, public authorities, land-use legislators, structural engineers, popular media, pressure groups, politicians and so on by which time they where so altered and embellished that it was difficult to say who was responsible for what, let alone the alleged miseries of high rise living.” Bewildering indeed. One would have thought that understanding who and what was responsible would be the job of academics such as Mr. Richards. Yet he does so brilliantly when he chooses, as do most sentient beings with the understanding that conclusions might differ and change depending on new information, time, and one’s predilection for “communism” or “liberal capitalism, assuming one can only chose from those opposing paradigms. In his determination to elucidate competing polemicists of the post war period, Mr. Richards seems to rule out the fact that some architect would be concerned with things other than influencing an ideal lifestyle.
Avoiding taking any one position may be a product of Mr. Richards’ encyclopedic approach, but assuming his book strives to the kind of objectivity Mr. Hart aspires to is also a standard academic trick, albeit one unfortunately not always interesting to encounter.
Comment by Thayer-D — January 19, 2013, @ 3:18 pm
Response to Thayer-D: I sympathize with your frustrations about my book, but as mentioned in the conclusion I was keen to avoid “fatiguing” the reader by presuming to offer yet another alternative answer to the problem after having tried to document - as impartially as I was able (perhaps not very!) - the views of several dozen others. Also, the “bewildering web” has been brilliantly document already by scholars like Eric Mumford and especially John Gold, so I saw no need to repeat that.
Comment by Simon Richards — January 20, 2013, @ 4:54 am
Response to Mr. Richards,
To be honest with you, I have ordered your book, finding the excerpt I read on line, “Heroes and Villains,” to be extremely interesting. My frustrations have to do with how we educate architects and planners with-in what seems at times both arbitrary and ideological parameters, the very opposite of what I’ve always understood to be “modern”.
Maybe the bewildering selection of choices in our ever expanding information age makes us overly suspicious of any one source of inspiration, without realizing that ‘inspiration’ is what needs to be nurtured to bring vitality to ones work. We all can’t be starchitects, but the current educational system seems geared to promote the hero architect over the accomplished craftsman, leaving many to wallow in cynicism when they could be producing humble yet wonderful buildings and places. The torturous over-intellectualization that many times passes for “process” in academia tends to stifle the very qualities in architecture that drew many of us to this profession, and that seem absent in so much contemporary work, regardless of what socioeconomic web we must negotiate to bring our work to fruition. In fact, I would argue that a more forthright engagement with this “context” might result in work that would communicate more directly to the public who “rely on us” to be their advocate.
That’s why Mr. Hart’s explorations are so exciting to follow. They seem to justify the very innate impulses that have given rise to so many great buildings, from the Pantheon to Ronchamp and so much vernacular architecture in between, regardless of style. I was encouraged by your statement “that the discussion be had more openly so the buried assumptions can be scrutinized,” something that may be inherently difficult within an institutional context like academia with its fiefdoms and political in-fighting.
My interests don’t lie in restricting the avenues we each might be drawn to when searching for our own expressive outlets, rather it’s to animate them with the qualities that a lot of older work seems to possess, a humanity that speaks through the ages. I also look forward to reading your book.
Comment by Thayer-D — January 20, 2013, @ 1:50 pm
My response to the “which book” question— Any book that helps us understand how human minds and bodies work — our audiences’ and our own.
And we’re most likely to find reliable, usable answers in the contemporary human sciences that explain — better than we ever have before — why we , homo sapiens, interact with our surroundings the ways we do. For those with a little patience, future posts will open many other ” books” that broaden and deepen this point of view.
Just as we depend on 20th-21st century sciences for improving construction technology, let’s not waste our creativity on faulty, unexamined intuitions, when an enormous field of tested knowledge is daily opening up in front of us. It’s being exploited by other professions. Simon Richards’ “Architect Knows Best” has illustrated how architects’ out of date, conventional “design sense” can readily disappoint the people who rely on us.
Comment by R.L.Hart — January 21, 2013, @ 6:44 pm
To Mr. Hart and Mr. Thayer:
Denise Scott Brown (yes, her again! I very much admire the forthrightness of her writing, and its unfashionableness with the east coast architecture ‘cognoscenti’ suggests to me she must be getting something right - haha!) once said that young architects were trained to be in thrall to their starchitect heroes and ended up regurgitating the same “formal hand-me-downs”.
I think we’re all agreed there are intellectual hand-me-downs too, concerning how these architectural forms are thought to affect and influence the moods and behaviours of the people who encounter them. It’s extremely refreshing to see this topic brought out into the open, then, and I look forward to continuing our conversation in relation to future posts…
Comment by Simon Richards — January 22, 2013, @ 9:11 am