Boxy buildings: boring architecture may be emotionally draining

Cognitve science research is spotlighting boring buildings. Boring architecture may be emotionally draining on the people who live in the buildings and around them.

Researchers say that humans are healthier when they live among variety – variety of buildings, landscapes, shops, and parks. Living near and working in well-designed and unique spaces leads to people who are happier and healthier than those who live around unattractive, boring, and plain architecture.

Urban policy professor Justin Hollander and architect Ann Sussman, authors of Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment, reviewed scientific data on the effects of architecture on people’s moods and behaviour. They say people function best, and thrive, in intricate settings and crave variety, not ‘big, blank, boxy buildings.’

Colin Ellard, a neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo, director of the university’s Urban Realities Laboratory, and author of Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life, studied boring buildings, especially those with ‘long, blank facades.’ In 2011 he conducted a study on the effect of the urban environment in a New York neighbourhood on the residents’ bodies and minds. Participants recorded their response to questions at stopping points in front of specific buildings. They also wore sensors that measured skin conductance, an electrodermal response to emotional excitement.

The result of Ellard’s study of the Whole Foods building on East Houston showed that participants reached a ‘low’ point – they were physiologically bored. The participants wrote words such as: bland, monotonous, and passionless. One block away, at another test site where there were lots of restaurants and open doors and windows, participants measured high levels of physical excitement. Participants wrote words such as: lively, busy, and socializing.

Other studies on boredom, such as the work of psychologists Colleen Merrifield and James Danckert, suggested that even small doses of boredom can generate stress. In their study they showed three videos to participants – one boring, one sad, and one interesting. Participants wore electrodes to measure their physiological responses. The results showed that watching the boring video increased people’s heart rate and cortisol level – even more than when they watched the sad video.

Results of these cognitive and physiological studies indicate that cities should not look the same, but the researchers are also not advocating streets of bright, flashing lights either. Psychologists have found that awe-inspiring sights (such as a monumental building or structure, or the Grand Canyon or other landmarks) can potentially improve well-being. One study showed that the feeling of ‘awe’ can make people more patient, less materialistic, and more willing to help others.

Charles Montgomery, author of Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, said good architecture is about ‘shaping emotional infrastructure.’ He said that some of the happiest neighbourhoods in New York City were ‘ugly and messy’ but ‘jumbled-up’ and ‘social.’ In other words, they had variety.

In 2014 Montgomery conducted a study in Seattle, which showed a strong correlation between messier blocks of buildings and pro-social behaviour. Participants in his study pretended to be lost tourists. They were assigned to ‘active facades’ (streets with a high level of visual interest) or ‘inactive facades’ (streets with long, blank walls of buildings). The results showed that pedestrians at active sites were nearly five times more likely to offer help to the ‘lost tourists’ than at inactive sites. Four times as many pedestrians at active sites offered to take the ‘lost tourist’ to their destination than at inactive sites.

So non-boring architecture does not have to be ‘pretty’ – just not big, bland, blank and boxy.

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/the-psychological-cost-of-boring-buildings.html

MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).