DESIGNING FOR HUMAN BEHAVIORS (Influencing the behavior of building occupants positively)

image by: imaginearchitecture.blogspot.com

Some days ago, someone asked me a surprising question in the middle of a discussion, he said “what do architects really do?” is it not just to draw lines and beautify buildings, what do they do that lay person cannot do ? I quickly answered him and said architects do more than designing buildings, they design comfortable environment that meets human needs and solve problems, they design to uplift spirit, enhance sense of well being and make world

more livable, the goal of every architect in any design is to make the world a better place.

The kind of question I was asked above often pop up in most discussion when people talk about need for service of an architect because people often have misconception about what architecture is and due to the facts that some architects often place beauty before  space functionality and end up creating spaces that are beautiful but less functional. When buildings are not functional, problems arise from them and they fail to fulfill their main purpose of creation thus creating bad feeling for building users which may have negative effects on their behavior.

In first part of this post, I explained some of the points to be considered when designing to make building effective in its use in order to have positive influence on behavior of occupants. In this post, I will explain more things that can be done to enhance effective use of building. 

(1)   Designing to EXPRESS and not to impress alone: Architects should not fall victim of designing to impress without inputs for expressionism. Occupants of a building must not just be impressed by the building alone but must be able to fully express their way of life in such buildings, there shoud be smooth and good relationship between the building, its elements and the occupants not just relationship between the building and its element alone leaving the user out of the synchronization. Designs must not be meaningful to the architects and the observers alone but also to the occupants as they are the main users of the created spaces. Though there are no utopian building design but spaces must be planned in a way that even if the occupant will need to adapt to created spaces, the adaptation should be easy and flexible and should not be the type that will make the occupants end up not being able to express or live life ultimately in the building.

(2)   Understanding how nature and its laws can affect behaviors of building occupants: since human being need nature, any building design inspired by nature and incorporate natural elements and bring people closer to nature will be appealing to almost every individuals. The use of more natural elements in building design makes buildings more livable and understanding how building spaces can be affected by forces of nature like wind, sunlight, rain E.t.c makes buildings have good and positive effects on human behaviors. For example, during cold season, warmness is needed in interior spaces to be in comfort and stable mood, a building space designed to fulfill this kind of condition in hot season will be suitable and acceptable by the occupants while the one which cannot fulfill this condition will create more problems for the occupants and might have a negative influence on them.

(3)    Understand the problem the design is meant to solve: Architectural designs should be effective in meeting human needs for example, a Hospital design should perform its role, every element and space should be put together toward fulfilling design purposes. When it is done in that way, successful design will evolve otherwise there may be failure.

Thank you for using your time to read through this part. Please try to add other salient points that can be considered to have designs that are geared toward creating positive effects on humans.

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Categories: ARCHITECTURE, Designing for Human Behavior