This page is a collection of unedited texts I have written over the past months and years. Some were created as part of a project, some were the result of thoughts I needed to articulate, and some are notes and, in a sense, unfinished thoughts that may be picked up again in the future.
How can the built environment and its underlying structures be made more accessible?
Every minute of our lives, we are surrounded by human-made structures. Even what is left of the natural landscape was either touched by humans or deliberately left as it was. There are very few things we have yet to alter.
After being brought into this world, humans have managed to design themselves out of their subjection to nature and in return, have been subjected to their creations. We live under conditions that we have made. These conditions make and continuously change the human-made world we live in. For most people, this world is too complex. There are too many rules, systems and structures that make it impossible to understand why and how things work. We see what is happening around us, but don't understand why.
Although we live in the so-called information age, most information can only be found in the digital world and has to be searched for specifically. Except for adverts, departure times, traffic lights and different surface materials in urban landscapes, the physical world is currently not used for sharing information about itself. Would it not make sense to see the physical world as a blank canvas waiting to be filled with information? Information that is meticulously selected, presented and made accessible directly in the appropriate context. Would this make our world more accessible and more transparent?
Increasing the transparency of our surrounding structures means increasing the availability of information. Ultimately, information allows for more independence. Information is empowering because it helps humans to understand the systems and structures our world is made of. This allows us to take power from our surroundings, increase ours and make more informed and independent decisions. Although we will never be fully independent from the structures humans have created, being aware of how they work can give power to the average person.
J. H. Gleiter described ornaments and architectural types ('Typen') as a mirror of society as they provide information about the desires, hopes and illusions of society. Then, would revealing architectural structures through ornaments be a reflection of our present time? A time in which information is digitally accessible 24/7, in a world where people are looking for answers but tend to find a simple explanation for situations and things that correspond to their understanding due to excessive complexity?
This would mean that introducing ornaments as a way of sharing information about a given structure might not only help to make our world more transparent and empower people, but it would also be a mirror of our time by referencing the complexity of our world and the human urge to know and understand.
Introduction to Sensory Awareness
My concept focuses on our perception of spaces. I believe we only notice and question sounds that don‘t match our subconscious expectations. These can be loud sounds, unusual rhythms or reverberations, and generally sounds that do not match the material we interact with.
The human-made environment seems to have been designed to minimise friction. This means that we rarely encounter materials, shapes and sounds that challenge our senses as we move through the urban landscape. We don‘t experience urban landscapes, we merely move through them without being aware of our interaction with the space and what it is made of.
One could argue that they hear the sounds of their steps while walking, doors opening, the mechanic rotation of escalators, and cars driving by. However, I believe you could actively experience sounds and process them if you wanted to. But, one merely accepts their existence within the sonic landscape of constant uniform repetition and everyday life.
The difference between accepting and experiencing is simple. To accept is to be aware of the existence of the sound without paying any further attention to it. To experience something is to actively process what you have just heard by processing the information it carries.
The human-made environment numbs our senses by depriving them of reason and space to function. There is little we as humans can actively do to become more aware of the sensations around us. This is because the human-made environment holds the power to trigger our senses, not us as humans. We will never truly interact with our environment unless the experience challenges our subconscious expectations.
While this can be a discouraging realization, there are certainly people who should be held accountable for creating spaces that force a deeper engagement between humans (senses) and human-made structures. Designers, architects and urban planners are responsible for producing anomalies in public spaces that force people to again pay attention to their deprived senses.