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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for a vault episode. This one is part two

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Speaker 1: of our series on the psychology of architecture that originally

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Speaker 1: aired in December of twenty nineteen. This episode was on

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Speaker 1: the twelve uh, and here it is again for you today.

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Speaker 1: We hope you enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow your

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Speaker 1: Mind a production of I Heart Radios has to work. Hey,

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Speaker 1: are you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind? My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we

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Speaker 1: are back with part two of our exploration of of

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Speaker 1: architecture in the mind. That's right. In our first episode,

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Speaker 1: which we do encourage you to go back and listen

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Speaker 1: to if you have not already, we discussed the natural world,

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Speaker 1: and then we discussed the architectural world, this world of

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Speaker 1: artificial shapes and objects and designs and outs that that

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Speaker 1: we've made out of that natural world, and in many

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Speaker 1: cases we find ourselves living almost exclusively within those environments, uh,

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Speaker 1: the environments of cities especially. Yeah, we discussed studies about

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Speaker 1: the psychological and cognitive impacts of different types of interior spaces,

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Speaker 1: things like uh, color of interior spaces, ceiling height, and

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Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff like that. Today we're taking a

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Speaker 1: turn into the cursed realm. That's right. So to best

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Speaker 1: to understand the typical functionality of a healthy brain, scientists

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Speaker 1: off and study cases of illness and injury. So perhaps

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Speaker 1: to help us understand better understand the impact of great

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Speaker 1: architecture and uh and even like the different attributes of

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Speaker 1: attributes of every day architecture, we should also turn, you know,

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Speaker 1: away from the world of vaulted cathedrals and pyramids and

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Speaker 1: zigaratts uh uh and instead look at to the dark

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Speaker 1: sorcery of architecture, cursed architecture if you will, Okay, by

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Speaker 1: the way, if you do a websitch for cursed architecture,

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Speaker 1: you'll find a lot of examples of of carrible usually

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Speaker 1: quite quite insane home and building designs. Uh this what

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Speaker 1: was this a Twitter account you shared with me? I

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Speaker 1: think cursed cursed architect or cursed architecture is a Twitter thing.

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Speaker 1: But also if you just look around for like worst

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Speaker 1: renovations and so forth, there are a number of different

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Speaker 1: websites that will include a host of these photos, a

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Speaker 1: lot of them hosted on like Pinterest or Instagram. But

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Speaker 1: I swear I was looking at some of these less Friday,

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Speaker 1: and I was just I was by myself laughing out

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Speaker 1: loud so hard at them, and sometimes I couldn't even

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Speaker 1: really quite put a finger on why. Yes, but I

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Speaker 1: know exactly what you mean. I was also laughing really

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Speaker 1: hard at this stuff you sent me the one I love.

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Speaker 1: The ones where there is like a ledge that cannot

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Speaker 1: be accessed in any way. Yeah, it's almost like the

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Speaker 1: places where there's like, you know, a room with the

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Speaker 1: high ceiling and then against the wall up above you know,

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Speaker 1: where the second floor would be. There's like a hallway,

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Speaker 1: but there's there are no stairs leading to it. Yes,

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Speaker 1: stairways to nowhere, um, you know, weird weird doors to nowhere,

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Speaker 1: or doors in the middle of walls, you know, anything

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Speaker 1: where stairs have been have been altered drastically are a

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Speaker 1: great source of hilarity in these shots. And it it's again,

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Speaker 1: it's weird to try and like figure out exactly why

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Speaker 1: some of these are funny, because you know, sometimes people

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Speaker 1: just doing the best with the limitations of an old building, right,

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Speaker 1: an already weird layout, say, or an older, larger building

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Speaker 1: that has been sliced into apartments. I remember visiting London

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Speaker 1: with my wife like fifteen years ago. I think it's

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Speaker 1: staying you know, weird old hotel where the first thing

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Speaker 1: you did when you entered the room was walked down

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Speaker 1: a flight of stairs, you know, things like things like that.

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Speaker 1: But but then again, like given the limitations of the building,

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Speaker 1: perhaps that was the best way to go about it.

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Speaker 1: Oh I I recently stayed in a in a building

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Speaker 1: in Paris with a hilarious staircase was like a spiral staircase.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't quite a spiral. It was like a rectangular

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Speaker 1: spiral staircase. And there was no stair there that was flat.

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Speaker 1: I mean it was angled one way or another, even

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Speaker 1: outer in And I imagine going up those things after

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Speaker 1: after a night out on the town might be might

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Speaker 1: be quite perilous. We had a work trip we had

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Speaker 1: to do to Chicago once we stayed in a hotel.

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Speaker 1: If I'm remembering this correctly, on every floor there was

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Speaker 1: a short stairway stairway to a wall going nowhere, going

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Speaker 1: nowhere except to a painting I think, like a painting

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Speaker 1: of a creepy fairy woman. Yeah it was. It was weird.

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Speaker 1: So that sort of stuff. There's that sort of stuff.

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Speaker 1: But then there are other examples where it's like, so

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Speaker 1: clearly somebody just did not care or did not have

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Speaker 1: time to care and did not look back to corrected things,

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Speaker 1: where like a toilet can no longer close because there's

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Speaker 1: an overhanging the way. You know, weird cases where a

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Speaker 1: waterfall sit comes out over the edge of a small

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Speaker 1: sink or does not come out far enough to actually

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Speaker 1: empty into the sink. Uh, some of them just had

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Speaker 1: gross implications. I think there was one I was looking

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Speaker 1: at that was just like a bathroom with a ton

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Speaker 1: of urinals and like a thick shag carpet or yeah,

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Speaker 1: any kind of carpeted bathroom scenario is uh, it is awful.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, I love the ones though, where where not

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Speaker 1: only did whoever you know renovated this, because clearly there's

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Speaker 1: not really design elements there. Not not only did they fail,

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Speaker 1: but someone did this and thought close enough they just

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Speaker 1: leave right. Um And and this gets back to this

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Speaker 1: idea of design though, like there is this ideal version

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Speaker 1: in mind where an architect is consulted. Uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: they're they're architects, they're engineers, and there's this there's this

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Speaker 1: process of intentional design before something is built. But of course,

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Speaker 1: historically and even sometimes contemporarily, that's not always the same.

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Speaker 1: First that I was talking with a friend of mine

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Speaker 1: recently about how when they were younger, they were you know,

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Speaker 1: they were they had this job and they were helping

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Speaker 1: somebody build some buildings, and there was just kind of

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Speaker 1: the sense of like where we're just gonna throw it up.

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Speaker 1: We're just gonna throw up some walls, and you know,

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Speaker 1: what goes into a building. You gotta have a floor,

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Speaker 1: you gotta have walls, roof, you know. Yeah, and and

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Speaker 1: so I guess, you know, certainly with older buildings, and

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Speaker 1: it's going to vary in different parts of the world.

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Speaker 1: You know, there may be less intent in what is

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Speaker 1: being built. It may be more about we need a structure.

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Speaker 1: At the end of the week, let's build a structure.

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Speaker 1: And maybe the individuals building it are not not quite

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Speaker 1: you know, the craftspeople that the task requires. But it's

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Speaker 1: you know, it's one thing to screw up a renovation

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Speaker 1: or to you know, moment monumentally fail on a toilet installation.

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Speaker 1: It's quite another to actually design and construct an entire

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Speaker 1: building or multiple buildings that have a debilitating effect on

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Speaker 1: our mental well being. Yeah, and the world is is

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Speaker 1: full of examples in which a stark or a less

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Speaker 1: traditional architectural design draws the ire of local inhabitants right,

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Speaker 1: often due to the fact that it replaced a more

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Speaker 1: traditional building and or stands alongside traditional examples. Um, and

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Speaker 1: you can pretty much you can. You can drive around

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Speaker 1: any major city and you can see that you can

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Speaker 1: see all right, traditional building, traditional building, weird modern building,

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Speaker 1: and you can be almost positive that at some point, uh,

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Speaker 1: the neighbors were upset about this, or maybe are still

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Speaker 1: upset about this. Oh yeah. It seems like every major city,

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Speaker 1: if you talk to the locals, they'll have like the

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Speaker 1: one ugly building that they hate. Yeah. Uh. And then

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Speaker 1: blogs are devoted to this sort of thing as well. Now,

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Speaker 1: for my money, I sometimes find this a bit dumb.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes someone builds a cool modern home alongside a bunch

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Speaker 1: of traditional little boxes, and people with a more traditional

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Speaker 1: taste they get bent out of shape over it. And

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Speaker 1: I think we have to realize that someone us want

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Speaker 1: to live in weird Gothic concrete apocalypse bunkers, and that's

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Speaker 1: ultimately okay. Um, But then I go back to the

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Speaker 1: McMansion example we mentioned in the first episode, the idea

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Speaker 1: that you know, developer comes along and builds a colossal house,

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Speaker 1: as much house as as possible in a given a lot,

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Speaker 1: and that kind of thing I do find obnoxious. But

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Speaker 1: then again, like when somebody comes along and it's like, yes,

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Speaker 1: that's it, that's the exact amount of house I want,

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Speaker 1: and I don't want to mow al on. So to

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Speaker 1: a certain extent, some of these concerns are a bit

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Speaker 1: ridiculous to even get too wrapped up in, right. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's just people's tastes are going to vary. Some people

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Speaker 1: want traditional, some people want modern, some people want ultramodern,

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Speaker 1: and some people maybe want to piss off the neighbors.

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Speaker 1: Oh sure, I mean the spite houses are a whole

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Speaker 1: wonderful thing on their own. Yeah. Uh, we can come

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Speaker 1: back to that, but yeah, I mean, I think one

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Speaker 1: thing that's important to keep in mind as we go

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Speaker 1: forward and think about the subject is the difference between

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Speaker 1: just like our esthetic preferences and what actually has psychological

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Speaker 1: effects on people like the difference between what kind of

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Speaker 1: school building seems nice to you versus what kind of

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Speaker 1: school building actually has measurable outcomes on children's performance in

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Speaker 1: in their education. Absolutely so in figuring it out and

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Speaker 1: trying to decide, like, you know, how much of it

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Speaker 1: is uh to what ex soon is there's some sort

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Speaker 1: of intrinsically debilitating aspect to certain architectural styles or approaches

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Speaker 1: versus this idea of just personal taste. One has to

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Speaker 1: visit the topic of brutalist architecture. Brutal so architecture emerged

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Speaker 1: out of Switzerland, I believe in the nineteen fifties, was

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Speaker 1: especially popular in the fifties and sixties, and you can

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Speaker 1: find it around the world, but especially in the UK,

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Speaker 1: the US, Canada, Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc and

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Speaker 1: in the former Soviet Union, and generally with brutalist architecture,

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Speaker 1: you're dealing with um, you know, stark, imposing, geometric designs,

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Speaker 1: built with lots of concrete. Uh. It is often stark,

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Speaker 1: and some of what's classified as a brutalist I see

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Speaker 1: as as as beautiful, creative, or even evocative of uh

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Speaker 1: you know, some some of them the designs feel very

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Speaker 1: just ultra modern in in a way, or sometimes ultra

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Speaker 1: modern kind of like a retro fashion, you know. Um.

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Speaker 1: Other examples are are harder for me to love, but

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Speaker 1: again your mind, which is going to vary. When it

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Speaker 1: comes to brutalist architecture. A lot of what's most recognized

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Speaker 1: in brutalist architecture are these large surfaces of exposed concrete,

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Speaker 1: and in fact, that's where the name comes from. The

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Speaker 1: name of brutalist architecture does not come from it somehow

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Speaker 1: being brutal, like a like a brutality in Mortal Kombat?

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Speaker 1: Is that a thing? Brutality? Okay, you're the m K

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Speaker 1: expert here um, But no, it comes from the phrase

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Speaker 1: betem brute, which means raw concrete. And that's because he

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Speaker 1: has very often has these large raw concrete features. One

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Speaker 1: example I think we mentioned in the last episode is

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Speaker 1: Boston City Hall, which I think is, you know, one

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Speaker 1: of the most famous brutalist structures, which personally, I think

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Speaker 1: is extremely esthetically pleasing. I like it a lot, though

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Speaker 1: I know a lot of people hate its apparently just

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Speaker 1: a controversial building. I was saying, one of the things

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Speaker 1: I like about it is um, at least from some

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Speaker 1: angles of the building. There are ways that it has

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Speaker 1: sort of like a variable structure that can be like

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Speaker 1: horizontally uh, permeated, but then sort of spreads out as

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Speaker 1: it goes up. And in a way to me, it

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Speaker 1: is a concrete structure that sort of mimics a forest.

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Speaker 1: Something about it looks kind of like organic, like a

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Speaker 1: copse of trees that you could walk into. Uh and

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Speaker 1: I really like that about it. Yeah. I look at

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Speaker 1: this image of it, and it it defies really sort

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Speaker 1: of easy identification, Like I look at it and I

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Speaker 1: would not be able to turn and necessarily draw it.

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Speaker 1: You know. Um, there's something that you it It asks

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Speaker 1: you to map it out. You know. It feels like

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Speaker 1: an environment of concrete as much as you know it

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Speaker 1: is a structure of concrete. Yeah, and I think it

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Speaker 1: incorporates some of the elements that we're talking about in

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Speaker 1: the last episode that make for good structures, Like it

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Speaker 1: has patterned complexity. It it has this organic feeling type

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Speaker 1: of variability in the structure. It's somewhat looks like trees. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a sort of mcs er vibe to it to

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Speaker 1: a certain of a little bit that too, Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: not in a way that makes it functionally confusing, not

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Speaker 1: in a way where it seems to break the laws

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Speaker 1: of nature, physics or anything. So when when we're when

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Speaker 1: we're dealing with architecture of this sort, I think there

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Speaker 1: are a few things we have to to realize. First

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Speaker 1: of all, and we'll come back to this later, is

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Speaker 1: that architecture does not exist in a vacuum like a building,

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Speaker 1: uh even just a highly designed building. It is not

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Speaker 1: does not exist independent of, say, what that building is for.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't exist independent of history, etcetera. But another big

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Speaker 1: problem is that architecture is an art form, a design medium,

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Speaker 1: and a product or practice. It's not just about form

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Speaker 1: and function and art since it is in part art

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Speaker 1: is not just about making you feel good. I'll admit

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Speaker 1: that most of my favorite visual artists have have you know,

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Speaker 1: typically not been concerned with making people feel good. Um,

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Speaker 1: I think of like Irving Norman or hr Geiger or

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Speaker 1: Brugal Bosch. You know, I love these artists and you

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Speaker 1: might love them too, But do you want them influencing

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Speaker 1: the power of your physical environment? I mean, I suppose

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Speaker 1: on some level you do. If you're a tempted to

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Speaker 1: frame a print of it on your wall. But are

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Speaker 1: then you But would you inflict it upon the neighborhood

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Speaker 1: which you looked at upon a whole city? Do you

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Speaker 1: want to live in a Bosch painting? Yea. So I

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Speaker 1: wanted to discuss a few examples of unpopular buildings, or

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Speaker 1: buildings that are at least have been very unpopular with

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Speaker 1: segments of the population. One of them, and I would

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Speaker 1: consider this an extreme example, is the House of Soviets

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Speaker 1: in Kaliningrad, located uh in Klein and Grad Oblast, an

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Speaker 1: exclave of Usha on the Baltic Sea. And this is

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Speaker 1: a historically Prussian area, but again is it was part

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Speaker 1: of the Soviet Union and is part of Russia today.

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Speaker 1: The House of Soviets is built on the grounds, but

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Speaker 1: not the exact site, of the former Koenigsberg Castle, which

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Speaker 1: was destroyed during the Second World War. But the House

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Speaker 1: of the Soviets, built in the seventies does not look

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Speaker 1: like a Teutonic castle. Uh. Instead, it looks It is

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Speaker 1: frequently described as looking like the head of a giant

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Speaker 1: robot that has been buried up to the neck in

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Speaker 1: the earth. It looks like almost kind of a gigantic

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Speaker 1: concrete battery. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe a huge concrete air

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Speaker 1: conditioning unit with eyes. Yeah, it does appear to have

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Speaker 1: eyes and kind of a mouth and even horns. Perhaps.

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Speaker 1: Some locals have also called it the monster in the past. Again,

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Speaker 1: it's the house of Soviets. If you look it up online,

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Speaker 1: you'll find plenty of pictures of it. I will note

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Speaker 1: that you will find two different versions generally, and that's

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Speaker 1: because it used to have more of a concrete dark appearance,

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Speaker 1: certainly more brutalist, like clearly brutalist in its appearance, because

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Speaker 1: it is often held up as a great example of

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Speaker 1: brutalist architecture. But it was in two thousand five, I believe,

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Speaker 1: which also coincided with a visit by Vladimir Putin, that

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Speaker 1: it was paint painted a new color. So now it

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Speaker 1: has this awful blue color, which is even worse because

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Speaker 1: it's like it's it's not even it's like you're hiding

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Speaker 1: the fact or covering up the fact that it's brutalist.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's like, it's not rock concrete anymore. It

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Speaker 1: is rack concrete that has been painted the color of

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Speaker 1: an easter egg. So again, critics consider it one of

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Speaker 1: the worst examples of Soviet architecture. Though it has also

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Speaker 1: been held up as a solid example of brutalist architecture,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's also I should add, it's a little

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Speaker 1: unfair to completely judge it, even based on the older

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Speaker 1: pictures you'll find of it, because it has never truly

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Speaker 1: been finished. It is technically an unfinished building. It fulfills

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Speaker 1: no purpose as a building to this day. Yeah. So um,

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Speaker 1: again we have to realize that architecture is business. After

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Speaker 1: Architecture does not exist uh in a vacuum. Um. It

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Speaker 1: doesn't exist in its own bubble. History, politics, and culture,

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Speaker 1: color are perceptions of them. Uh. In its conception, the

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Speaker 1: House of the Soviets was perhaps designed to be, you know,

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Speaker 1: either symbol of modernity or progress progress, but it might

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Speaker 1: also be viewed as a tombstone symbolizing Soviet or Russian

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Speaker 1: rule over historically German city, that sort of thing. Or

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Speaker 1: you might look at it and realize that does nothing.

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Speaker 1: There's nothing going on in there because this was never finished.

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Speaker 1: This is a testament to an unfinished project. But not

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Speaker 1: everything considered brutalist is like a monster level of of

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Speaker 1: of of ugliness, etcetera. One I think great example that

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Speaker 1: kind of you know, bucks the stereotype for brutalist architecture

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Speaker 1: is Montreal's Habitat sixty seven complex, which was designed by

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Speaker 1: motiona safety which you need to look up a picture

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Speaker 1: this as well, because I can only describe it so well. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It looks like a long horizontal row of randomly stacked

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Speaker 1: boxes at different angles. Um, and it it's it's quite

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Speaker 1: interesting to look at in my opinion, and was actually

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Speaker 1: designed with some of the problems of high density living

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Speaker 1: in mind. I think it actually looks kind of interesting.

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Speaker 1: I mean it, I mean to me, it's somewhat fulfills

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Speaker 1: that you know, it has some complexity on the exterior

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Speaker 1: surfaces it has it has a kind of organic nature

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Speaker 1: to it. It feels more like a natural environment. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's basically and I'm this is like a very crude

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Speaker 1: summary of it. I'm sure that the the the architect's

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Speaker 1: original words about it. We're far Uh, it's far better

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Speaker 1: expression of it. But it's kind of like, if I

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Speaker 1: have to live right on top of where someone else

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Speaker 1: is living, well, can't I live a little west, little

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Speaker 1: sideways or a little little after the little of the right,

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Speaker 1: And likewise does the person above me, could they maybe

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Speaker 1: be a little further back a little to the side.

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Speaker 1: Maybe there's some room uh in all of this for

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Speaker 1: a little courtyards, little porches, and so it does have

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Speaker 1: that kind of zigarat feel. It has this kind of

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Speaker 1: it looks kind of like it was made by by

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Speaker 1: space age insects. Uh. It turns concrete box living spaces

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Speaker 1: into something more like a you know, like a like

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Speaker 1: a bush of thorns, which that doesn't sound very inviting,

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Speaker 1: but it looks very cool. Actually, yeah, absolutely, um, And

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Speaker 1: I if I'm remembering correctly. I don't think it was

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Speaker 1: mentioned in the book Future Shock, but I think the

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Speaker 1: kind of campy television adaptation of Future Shock that it

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Speaker 1: was hosted by Orson Wells, I think they pictured they

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Speaker 1: used images or footage of Habitat sixty seven talking about

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Speaker 1: like living spaces of the future. Another quick example that

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Speaker 1: sometimes brought up concerning brutalist architecture from the nineties seventies. Uh,

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Speaker 1: the it's what Naive Nev Brown brutalist department in Rowley Way, London,

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Speaker 1: which has a kind of terrorist look to it, and

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Speaker 1: I think looks quite beautiful. It looks it looks kind

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Speaker 1: of like a stadium turned into apartments, you know. Um,

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Speaker 1: and and I rather like it. But again it's one

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Speaker 1: of these where it's not that stereotypical idea of brutalist architecture.

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Speaker 1: But again not everyone likes it either. Now a huge

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Speaker 1: example of detrimental modern but not brutalist architecture that is

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Speaker 1: often brought up was the is Is what was known

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Speaker 1: as the Pruitt Ego Housing Complex in St. Louis, Missouri.

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Speaker 1: This was built in the nineteen fifties and designed by

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Speaker 1: Minoru Yamasaki of a World Trade Center fame, and the

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Speaker 1: complex consists of consisted of thirty three apartment blocks, each

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Speaker 1: eleven stories high, and uh, you know it, it actually

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Speaker 1: sums up a lot of the things that Habitat sixty

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Speaker 1: seven was trying to get away from. Like if you

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Speaker 1: look at an aerial picture of what this looked like,

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Speaker 1: I mean, it looked like a graveyard for giants. It's

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Speaker 1: just big labs of apartment buildings with these big empty

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Speaker 1: spaces in between, and uh, it's it's just, uh it's

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Speaker 1: it's just it's tough to look at. As described by

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Speaker 1: Michael Bond in The Hidden Ways that Architecture Affects How

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Speaker 1: You Feel, written for BBC Future, the complex quote quickly

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Speaker 1: became notorious for their crime, squalor, and social dysfunction. Critics

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Speaker 1: argue that the wide open spaces between the blocks of

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Speaker 1: modernist high rises discouraged a sense of community, particularly as

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Speaker 1: crime rates started to rise. As as a result, these bleak,

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Speaker 1: prison like slabs of housing were demolished in nineteen seventy two.

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Speaker 1: And this is an example that that is often discussed

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Speaker 1: when people talk about, like, what's an example of of

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Speaker 1: architecture that has a detrimental effect on the people that

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Speaker 1: have to live with it? Right? That not necessarily may well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to describe ill intentions to

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Speaker 1: the architect, but like that is that is not properly

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Speaker 1: tuned with the well being of its inhabitants in mind, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's as yeah, it's also worth pointing any of

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Speaker 1: the architect does not have sole power over like where

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Speaker 1: a building is constructed or white is constructed there you know,

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Speaker 1: certainly getting into critiques of segregation of course, involving us

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Speaker 1: aside like this, but yeah, it also just comes back

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Speaker 1: again that buildings do not exist in their in their

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Speaker 1: own bubble, They don't exist in a vacuum, and they

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Speaker 1: can certainly contribute to or antagonize existing social problems. So

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Speaker 1: these are just a couple of examples. There are certainly

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Speaker 1: loads of ugly and or joyless buildings in cities around

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Speaker 1: the world, and we keep building them. I mean, if

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Speaker 1: you look at the current skyline of New York City,

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Speaker 1: you'll see the full spectrum. You'll see uh, exciting buildings,

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Speaker 1: nostalgic buildings, modern buildings that are quite interesting to look out,

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Speaker 1: modern buildings that make you a little bit angry to

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Speaker 1: look at, and plenty of other buildings that you barely

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Speaker 1: see it all because they're they're just so lukewarm that

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Speaker 1: your mind cannot even hold them. But again, coming back

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Speaker 1: to something we talked about in our first episode, um,

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Speaker 1: the importance of having nearby access to green space with

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Speaker 1: natural vegetation. Uh there. I mean, you kind of can't

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Speaker 1: think about the architecture of New York City, or certainly

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Speaker 1: think about the architecture of Manhattan without thinking about Central Park.

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Speaker 1: Central Park. I mean, there's a reason that almost every

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Speaker 1: photo you see of Manhattan has something to do. You know.

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Speaker 1: You either get the skyline down from below, or you're

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Speaker 1: looking at part of Central Park, yeah, or you get

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Speaker 1: a shot that has the river in it like that,

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Speaker 1: you have to have that that natural element. And moving

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Speaker 1: water is another one that is sometimes factored into these

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Speaker 1: these studies, like it can a body of water be

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Speaker 1: seen by say, patients recovering in a hospital, etcetera. All right,

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Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take our first break,

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Speaker 1: but when we come back we will get further into

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Speaker 1: this question can buildings damage your mental health? Than? All right,

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Speaker 1: we're back. So we've been talking about brutalist architecture. Houses

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Speaker 1: that are in homes and buildings are architectural structures and

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Speaker 1: creations that some may criticize as being ugly or imposing.

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Speaker 1: So I would like to imagine imagine that you know,

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Speaker 1: you you take a walk in your own neighborhood and

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Speaker 1: suddenly you see that overnight, like the castle from Kral,

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Speaker 1: the monster, the House of Soviets, has has emerged in

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Speaker 1: your neighborhood. Um, and you might wonder, well, it is this?

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Speaker 1: This is this may be ugly. I may not like it.

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Speaker 1: I may have questions about what happened to uh, you

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Speaker 1: know the park that it that was formerly in that space.

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Speaker 1: But but is it going to actually damage my health?

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Speaker 1: Is it actually going to have some sort of tangible

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Speaker 1: effect on my mental well being. And UH, in looking

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Speaker 1: at this, we've discussed some of our sources here already.

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Speaker 1: I think I already mentioned Michael Bonds BBC Future two

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Speaker 1: thousands seventeen article The Hidden Ways that architecture affects how

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Speaker 1: you feel. But another source I was looking at is

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Speaker 1: a piece in The Guardian from sixteen by Emily Reynolds

428
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:04,480
Speaker 1: titled could bad buildings damage Your Mental health? Reynolds points

429
00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:07,600
Speaker 1: to some basic stats about urban living, and this came

430
00:24:07,640 --> 00:24:12,680
Speaker 1: from a meta analysis. First of all, UH, people living

431
00:24:12,680 --> 00:24:16,880
Speaker 1: in urban environments in large cities more likely to experience

432
00:24:16,880 --> 00:24:20,959
Speaker 1: an anxiety disorder and thirty nine percent more likely to

433
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:25,199
Speaker 1: experience mood disorders. UH. And then Reynolds also points to

434
00:24:25,280 --> 00:24:28,720
Speaker 1: a two thousand five study that said people who grew

435
00:24:28,760 --> 00:24:30,879
Speaker 1: up in a city where are twice as likely to

436
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:35,440
Speaker 1: develop schizophrenia as those who grew up in the countryside. Furthermore,

437
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:38,399
Speaker 1: a two thousand and eleven Central Institute of Mental Health

438
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:41,320
Speaker 1: at the University of Heidelberg study pointed to a link

439
00:24:41,359 --> 00:24:45,240
Speaker 1: between urban living and greater stress responses in the amygdala

440
00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:51,399
Speaker 1: and the singulate cortex linked to emotional regulation, depression, and anxiety,

441
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:54,520
Speaker 1: so this could have a lasting effect on brain development

442
00:24:54,840 --> 00:24:59,680
Speaker 1: and mental illness susceptibility, she writes. As Bond points out,

443
00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 1: this poin points to the idea that quote urban living

444
00:25:02,359 --> 00:25:05,959
Speaker 1: can change brain biology and some people, resulting in reduced

445
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:10,400
Speaker 1: gray matter in the right dorso lateral prefrontal cortex and

446
00:25:10,480 --> 00:25:15,199
Speaker 1: the paragineal anterior signulate cortex, two areas where changes have

447
00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:20,040
Speaker 1: previously been linked to early life stressful experiences. Now. Reynolds

448
00:25:20,080 --> 00:25:22,960
Speaker 1: also acknowledges the rather subjective nature of all of this,

449
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:26,840
Speaker 1: such as you know, drastically conflicting studies on open office

450
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:29,919
Speaker 1: spaces like we discussed in our first episode. You know,

451
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:32,840
Speaker 1: do they promote pro social working or are they bad

452
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:36,840
Speaker 1: for productivity and well being? Depends on which study you consult. Uh.

453
00:25:36,880 --> 00:25:39,119
Speaker 1: If you consult me, however, I'll tell you that that

454
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:43,159
Speaker 1: hell is an open space office now the way, But

455
00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:46,160
Speaker 1: I mean, don't you want to collaborate in hell? Don't

456
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:49,960
Speaker 1: don't you really get get your your Jimmy's uh collaborating

457
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:52,400
Speaker 1: with the other imprisoned souls. No, I mean I take

458
00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:54,480
Speaker 1: a more of a Dickensian view of hell, where the

459
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:57,280
Speaker 1: hell is where you experience the chain that you've forged

460
00:25:57,280 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 1: in life. It's not about sharing your chain with other people.

461
00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:02,879
Speaker 1: But of course things like this or it's often a

462
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:06,240
Speaker 1: careful balance, right. You know, consider co housing, in which

463
00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:09,920
Speaker 1: private homes are clustered around shared spaces. The idea is

464
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:13,120
Speaker 1: that unlike dreary apartment towers, they can foster a sense

465
00:26:13,119 --> 00:26:17,160
Speaker 1: of community through shared spaces. Uh. In some space studies

466
00:26:17,280 --> 00:26:20,520
Speaker 1: report this, others those say residents can lose their sense

467
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 1: of individuality and privacy. Uh. It kind of comes into

468
00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:29,120
Speaker 1: the ore varied demands for a natural environment. Right, Sometimes

469
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:31,520
Speaker 1: we want a place to hide away. Sometimes we need

470
00:26:31,560 --> 00:26:33,960
Speaker 1: a place to uh, you know, delight in the sun

471
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: and share with others. And the natural environment tends to

472
00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:41,479
Speaker 1: provide us such variety. But once you have a like

473
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:45,440
Speaker 1: an apartment complex plan in place like that is the environment.

474
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:47,479
Speaker 1: And I think this is again another area where you

475
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: have to take into account the careful balance. Uh. You know,

476
00:26:52,280 --> 00:26:54,600
Speaker 1: among the different types of personalities out there, the ups

477
00:26:54,600 --> 00:26:57,119
Speaker 1: and downs of human moods. You might want to stand

478
00:26:57,119 --> 00:26:59,040
Speaker 1: in the sun, rejoice in the sun one day, but

479
00:26:59,080 --> 00:27:01,119
Speaker 1: then you may need to hide in the shadows on another.

480
00:27:01,359 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 1: And as just the ups and downs of life, sure

481
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:08,159
Speaker 1: Reynolds also quotes Layla McKay, director of the Center for

482
00:27:08,280 --> 00:27:11,400
Speaker 1: Urban Design and Mental Health, whose think tank has tackled

483
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 1: the complex nature of this problem and you know, trying

484
00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:16,360
Speaker 1: to figure out what are some what are what are

485
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:19,119
Speaker 1: some basic tac coms we can we can acquire from it,

486
00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:22,160
Speaker 1: And she says the following are key uh to having

487
00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:27,080
Speaker 1: a quality architectural design in a living space. First of all,

488
00:27:27,119 --> 00:27:30,199
Speaker 1: access to nature or green spaces. We talked about that

489
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:31,879
Speaker 1: a good bit in the last episode. This is just

490
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:34,480
Speaker 1: a no brainer and just it just ties into to

491
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:38,840
Speaker 1: study after study after study. Also, she stresses public spaces

492
00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 1: that facilitate physical activity and encourage social interaction. Yeah, this is,

493
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:45,639
Speaker 1: for example, one thing people have talked about in the

494
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 1: history of city design when cars became ubiquitous and cities

495
00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:52,880
Speaker 1: suddenly that streets were no longer a place where people

496
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:55,479
Speaker 1: would gather and meet and talk, but instead there were

497
00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 1: places that were introversible because they were fast moving vehicles

498
00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:01,560
Speaker 1: going back and forth all the Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, just

499
00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 1: there needs to be a place where we can move

500
00:28:04,280 --> 00:28:06,920
Speaker 1: around and interact with people if we want to. Now,

501
00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:10,360
Speaker 1: another thing, she stresses living and working in spaces that

502
00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:14,240
Speaker 1: feel safe which on one hand, is obvious. We don't

503
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:15,919
Speaker 1: want to live or work somewhere where we do not

504
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:18,800
Speaker 1: feel safe. But that can apply to a lot of things.

505
00:28:18,800 --> 00:28:20,359
Speaker 1: You know. You can certainly apply that to say, a

506
00:28:20,400 --> 00:28:23,280
Speaker 1: whole neighborhood layout, but you can also apply to things

507
00:28:23,320 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 1: like in our own building, the building in which you

508
00:28:25,359 --> 00:28:27,960
Speaker 1: and I work, there is our office and then there

509
00:28:28,040 --> 00:28:32,040
Speaker 1: is an extremely long, largely featureless hallway that goes to

510
00:28:32,280 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: the elevator bank. It's sort of a John Carpenter hallway.

511
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:38,040
Speaker 1: I often think, when watching people walk down and ahead

512
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:40,720
Speaker 1: of me, that there should be a Carpenter soundtrack, kind

513
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:45,440
Speaker 1: of a doom doom me Me mean yeah, I mean,

514
00:28:45,520 --> 00:28:47,920
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that the whole way that hallway makes

515
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:51,520
Speaker 1: me personally feel unsafe or in danger, but it is

516
00:28:51,600 --> 00:28:55,120
Speaker 1: unnerving and I feel like it it does mess with

517
00:28:55,200 --> 00:28:59,000
Speaker 1: my my perceptions a little bit about potential threats, you know,

518
00:28:59,120 --> 00:29:01,640
Speaker 1: like like if someone else is coming down that hallway

519
00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:03,720
Speaker 1: and I don't want to interact with them, I have

520
00:29:03,840 --> 00:29:06,600
Speaker 1: no choice. I'm just I'm on a train and I'm

521
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:10,480
Speaker 1: gonna walk past them, and it makes me feel weird.

522
00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:12,920
Speaker 1: It makes me want to avoid that hallway because on

523
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 1: some level. I don't feel safe there. Maybe I feel

524
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 1: nine percent safe there, but I would rather feel on

525
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 1: safe if possible, in the building in which I work. No,

526
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:26,280
Speaker 1: I mean you're what you're saying sort of connects to

527
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:28,360
Speaker 1: what I mean. It feels like, you know, follow the

528
00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:31,520
Speaker 1: yellow line and escape from New York kind of hallway.

529
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:33,880
Speaker 1: I'm also reminded a friend of mine was telling me

530
00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 1: about this um the Atlanta based neo futurist architect John Portman,

531
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:44,400
Speaker 1: who is generally best remembered for very large, impressive atriums

532
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: in hotels, which they've said that this was also something

533
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:51,680
Speaker 1: was fairly controversial because you walk into a big hotel

534
00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:53,280
Speaker 1: and then someone would look up and say, look at

535
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:55,320
Speaker 1: all this wasted space. This is not how you build

536
00:29:55,320 --> 00:29:57,520
Speaker 1: a hotel. Hotel was supposed to be. Uh, you know,

537
00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:00,640
Speaker 1: wall to wall rooms, see get to get the maximum

538
00:30:00,640 --> 00:30:03,160
Speaker 1: out of the space and uh, and that's certainly not

539
00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:07,240
Speaker 1: what you find in his in his his buildings, these

540
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:09,960
Speaker 1: are the sort of atriums that you'll sometimes find, uh

541
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 1: in science fiction films where they they've clearly filmed it

542
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:17,280
Speaker 1: in a an enormous atrium in a hotel. I tend

543
00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 1: to think these things look really cool. Yeah, I I

544
00:30:19,840 --> 00:30:22,000
Speaker 1: love them as well. They are very This kind of

545
00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:25,360
Speaker 1: design is very much about the interior world. However, and

546
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: some apparently criticized John Portman for using like internal halls

547
00:30:29,880 --> 00:30:32,920
Speaker 1: and kind of tunnels to connect buildings to one another

548
00:30:33,080 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 1: rather than using open areas and exposure to nature. Even

549
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:39,520
Speaker 1: but that does make me wonder if there was true

550
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 1: nature to expose people too, or if it was a

551
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:46,560
Speaker 1: situation where you're cutting them off from like a dreary street. Yeah. Well,

552
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:48,959
Speaker 1: and one thing I like, you know, in in some

553
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:52,120
Speaker 1: of these big buildings, like hotels that have large atriums,

554
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes they will have vegetation within the atrium,

555
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 1: having like trees inside there, which is great. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah,

556
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:02,080
Speaker 1: there's certainly ways to bring nature into an indoor environment.

557
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 1: Um in the summer, very extreme. Like I'm reminded of

558
00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:09,160
Speaker 1: the the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, where they have

559
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 1: that the one that's got the rainforest. Yeah, it's like

560
00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: silent running. It has the big, big Remember I went

561
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:16,360
Speaker 1: there when I was a kid. I loved it. Yeah,

562
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:18,360
Speaker 1: because it's also kind of like going to um A

563
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:22,560
Speaker 1: really Wonka's chocolate factory. I think I remember believing it

564
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:27,240
Speaker 1: possible that I could catch a poisoned dart frog. So

565
00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 1: in in this article by by Reynolds, Reynolds points to

566
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 1: a frequently studied example, Barbican estate in London. So this

567
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:40,920
Speaker 1: is a brutalist development of terrorist blocks and towers built

568
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 1: from the nineteen sixties through the eighties, and it's it's

569
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 1: barely frequently criticized for all the normal reasons people criticize

570
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:53,080
Speaker 1: brutalist architecture. But McKay points out that it actually checks

571
00:31:53,120 --> 00:31:56,240
Speaker 1: off all the boxes that we mentioned above, you know,

572
00:31:56,280 --> 00:31:59,200
Speaker 1: the nature in the green spaces, the public spaces, uh,

573
00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 1: living working in spaces that feel safe, etcetera. Uh. They

574
00:32:02,960 --> 00:32:07,000
Speaker 1: do mention, however, that darkness is sometimes a luxury in

575
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 1: in a place like this, which is also interesting to consider,

576
00:32:09,920 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: coming back to that idea that sometimes you want the shadows,

577
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:17,320
Speaker 1: sometimes you don't want the wide open spaces. And and certainly,

578
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:20,000
Speaker 1: I mean I I've certainly lived in places where I

579
00:32:20,040 --> 00:32:22,760
Speaker 1: feel like there's just way too much light pollution and

580
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to find that dark corner in

581
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:29,080
Speaker 1: which to actually just sleep at night. Still, one of

582
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:30,600
Speaker 1: the I think the keys here is this. All of

583
00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:33,600
Speaker 1: this suggests that a building can be ugly and still

584
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:37,040
Speaker 1: be good for mental health, but the design is still key.

585
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:39,480
Speaker 1: I think likewise, it sounds like it's very possible to

586
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 1: have an outwardly built a beautiful building that is would

587
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:44,960
Speaker 1: be depressing to live within. Oh well, this goes with

588
00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:48,320
Speaker 1: something that we were talking about. The Sarah Williams Goldhagen

589
00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:51,239
Speaker 1: emphasized in her book that we discussed a little bit

590
00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 1: in the last episode. It was that, um, you know,

591
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 1: architects often end up thinking most of all about the

592
00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: overall form of buildings, you know, like the broad sort

593
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: of like shape and profile of it. But that in fact,

594
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:08,680
Speaker 1: for people's direct enjoyment of buildings and you know, the

595
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:11,720
Speaker 1: their their emotional reactions to buildings, what are actually more

596
00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 1: important are smaller scale things like the surfaces and materials

597
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 1: and textures and features. So I think it's possibly you

598
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:22,520
Speaker 1: could actually have a building that a lot of people

599
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: would look at the overall form of from the outside

600
00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:26,960
Speaker 1: and think it's ugly, but it might be a better

601
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:30,120
Speaker 1: place to live in in terms of interior surfaces and

602
00:33:30,160 --> 00:33:32,520
Speaker 1: features and that kind of thing. In addition to the

603
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:34,520
Speaker 1: major points we were just talking about with like access

604
00:33:34,560 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: to green space and social interaction spaces and all that. Yeah,

605
00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 1: health advantage of having access to a scenic environment. M

606
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 1: Reynolds also points out that neglected environments contribute to mental

607
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: ill health, making us feel unsafe, and they may also

608
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:54,640
Speaker 1: quote contribute to anxiety and persistent low mood. Uh. That's

609
00:33:54,680 --> 00:33:58,480
Speaker 1: from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study by Jackson.

610
00:33:58,560 --> 00:34:01,160
Speaker 1: At All and others have pointed to the signs of

611
00:34:01,280 --> 00:34:05,400
Speaker 1: social ills such as graffiti and vandalism as potentially contributing

612
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: to this as well. So I think we have to

613
00:34:07,120 --> 00:34:10,319
Speaker 1: be careful not to veer directly off into the like

614
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:14,120
Speaker 1: the broken windows theory of policing in criminal behavior. Right. Well,

615
00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:17,160
Speaker 1: A lot of graffiti is fantastic. I mean, there are

616
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:19,760
Speaker 1: there are great graffiti artists. There are parts of Atlanta

617
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 1: that are known for their graffiti that it you know,

618
00:34:23,160 --> 00:34:26,000
Speaker 1: provides a beautiful kind of character to the place. There

619
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:29,520
Speaker 1: have been some fabulous public art programs that have been

620
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 1: aimed at at bringing like large scale murals to particularly

621
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 1: areas with problems as an attempt to just kind of

622
00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:40,279
Speaker 1: like beautify things and basically have the beneficial side of

623
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:43,279
Speaker 1: these effects we're talking about work their way on the

624
00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 1: inhabitants and they they're they're generally been very well received.

625
00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:50,040
Speaker 1: High rise living. Reynolds rights might seem like a great

626
00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:52,400
Speaker 1: idea because of course it can. It can afford that

627
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:54,560
Speaker 1: killer view right you can see the river, you can

628
00:34:54,600 --> 00:34:59,600
Speaker 1: see the park, you can see green spaces in the distance, etcetera. Uh.

629
00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:04,280
Speaker 1: You know, wealthy penthouses deliver this. But then also someone

630
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:06,840
Speaker 1: in community housing would be able to look out at

631
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:09,640
Speaker 1: the river as well in a high rise environment. But

632
00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:12,399
Speaker 1: the flip side of this is that locations like this

633
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:15,640
Speaker 1: can contribute to isolation. It's something where more it scen

634
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:18,480
Speaker 1: area where more study is needed. But again it shows

635
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:21,600
Speaker 1: that you you can't just have the view of nature.

636
00:35:21,719 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 1: You know that they're all these other factors as well. Uh.

637
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:26,880
Speaker 1: And if your view of nature is coming from an

638
00:35:26,920 --> 00:35:31,319
Speaker 1: isolated tower, uh, it's only going to do so much good,

639
00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 1: especially if you're you're you're not having the social interaction,

640
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:36,440
Speaker 1: you're not having any of these other boxes checked off

641
00:35:36,480 --> 00:35:38,799
Speaker 1: for you by the design. And of course this leads

642
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:42,520
Speaker 1: us to shopping centers and malls, which we might think

643
00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 1: of them as sole draining places, but according to the

644
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: restorative potential of shopping malls by Rosenbaum at all. Uh,

645
00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:54,720
Speaker 1: many of these actually have quote mentally restorative qualities because

646
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 1: think about it, they're safe, they're open, uh you know,

647
00:35:57,640 --> 00:35:59,480
Speaker 1: essentially there are a lot of them are like large

648
00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:02,759
Speaker 1: uh you know, enclosed environments, the sort of classic mall

649
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:08,000
Speaker 1: um which hopefully people are still getting to experience outside

650
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:11,160
Speaker 1: of just viewings of stranger things and shopping mall. I mean,

651
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:14,040
Speaker 1: so I actually have greenery in them, vegetation, yeah, and

652
00:36:14,160 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 1: there they may be well maintained. But then the flip

653
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:18,600
Speaker 1: side is that is that there are also places that

654
00:36:18,640 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 1: are highly controlled and obviously there are places where uh

655
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:26,319
Speaker 1: retailers are using all of their tricks to try and

656
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:29,759
Speaker 1: control your behavior influence your behavior as well, and so

657
00:36:29,800 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 1: that can have ultimately an effect on anxiety and other factors.

658
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:35,920
Speaker 1: I also can't help but imagine. I mean, when you

659
00:36:35,960 --> 00:36:38,280
Speaker 1: go to a shopping place, you're going there to engage

660
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:41,640
Speaker 1: with decision fatigue, like whatever your mental state is going in.

661
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:45,240
Speaker 1: No matter how nice the greenery, no matter how cool

662
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:51,359
Speaker 1: the architecture is, uh, no matter how pleasant the music is. Maybe, uh,

663
00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:54,040
Speaker 1: You're still going to potentially find yourself in that situation

664
00:36:54,040 --> 00:36:55,760
Speaker 1: where like I have no idea what to buy anymore,

665
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:58,799
Speaker 1: my brain is depleted, and the shopping mall almost by

666
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:03,120
Speaker 1: definition for provides a lot of buying options, and having

667
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:06,319
Speaker 1: a lot of buying options often contributes directly to those

668
00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 1: negative feelings associated with shopping exactly. So Reynolds, ultimately, you

669
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:14,000
Speaker 1: know rights that with increased awareness of mental health issues

670
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:16,520
Speaker 1: and more work in this design area, quote, buildings and

671
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:19,560
Speaker 1: public spaces are being designed or at the very least

672
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:23,840
Speaker 1: critically analyzed with mental well being in mind. Now In

673
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:28,800
Speaker 1: Michael bonds seventeen piece, it's not maybe that doesn't quite

674
00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:31,440
Speaker 1: echo as much optimism for the present, but does seem

675
00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:34,759
Speaker 1: hopeful about the future, writing the quote, urban architects have

676
00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:38,440
Speaker 1: often paid scantic attention to the potential cognitive effects of

677
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:41,319
Speaker 1: their creations on a city's inhabitants. But he did point

678
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:45,120
Speaker 1: out that there's a h every year. The Conscious Cities

679
00:37:45,120 --> 00:37:48,320
Speaker 1: Conference takes place. In seventeen it took place in London.

680
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 1: I read that in twenty nineteen place in New York City,

681
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:55,120
Speaker 1: with a focus on building resilient communities, healthy child development

682
00:37:55,120 --> 00:38:00,480
Speaker 1: and parenting, reshaping later life, and urban design for mental health. Uh.

683
00:38:00,480 --> 00:38:02,120
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more, you can check them

684
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:05,359
Speaker 1: out at the c c D dot org that's the

685
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:09,920
Speaker 1: Center for Conscious Design. Yeah. So Bond points out that

686
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:13,359
Speaker 1: the recent studies have used actually wearable devices such as

687
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:19,520
Speaker 1: bracelets that monitors monitor skin conductivity, a marker of physiological arousal,

688
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:23,880
Speaker 1: and smartphone technology. Just see how we're responding and where

689
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:26,920
Speaker 1: we're responding to architecture. And so this makes sense. You

690
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:28,920
Speaker 1: can strap people up, send them out in the city

691
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:32,880
Speaker 1: and you can see like what's spiking their activity? Yeah, right,

692
00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 1: where are people walking when they're getting stressed and stuff

693
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:38,120
Speaker 1: like do they tend to be walking past this one

694
00:38:38,239 --> 00:38:41,719
Speaker 1: horribly ugly featureless building and that's making them more kind

695
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 1: of uh yeah, the factor, And that's that's exactly what

696
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:50,359
Speaker 1: they were looking for. Colin Ellard, who researches the psychological

697
00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:53,160
Speaker 1: impact of design at the University of Waterloo in Canada,

698
00:38:53,520 --> 00:38:56,480
Speaker 1: is one of the researchers that's using this kind of technology.

699
00:38:56,520 --> 00:39:00,640
Speaker 1: And they found that building facades had a huge, huge impact.

700
00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:03,920
Speaker 1: And they specifically pointed out a quote dead zone of

701
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:07,880
Speaker 1: quote long smoked glass frontage of a Whole food store

702
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:10,400
Speaker 1: in Lower Manhattan. All Right, so this Whole Foods is

703
00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:15,080
Speaker 1: directly ruining people's quality of life's sadness from the never

704
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 1: ending story. Not so not solely, but yeah, so they

705
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:21,799
Speaker 1: walk past this storefront with the frosted glass and like

706
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:27,279
Speaker 1: the you are detecting physiological signs of stress and anxiety

707
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:30,440
Speaker 1: and unhappiness. Yeah. And it's not because it's like crazy

708
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:33,799
Speaker 1: weird architecture. It is not brutalist, it's not it's not

709
00:39:33,840 --> 00:39:37,319
Speaker 1: covered with graffiti or anything. It's not like you feel unsafe.

710
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:40,279
Speaker 1: It's just it's just there and it's dreary, and it's

711
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:42,560
Speaker 1: it's like what you see everywhere. It's it's been pointed

712
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:45,440
Speaker 1: out as one of the potential threats of of you know,

713
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 1: the loss of you know, mom and pop stores for sure,

714
00:39:48,239 --> 00:39:52,439
Speaker 1: but also just places with individual identity. As street level

715
00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:56,040
Speaker 1: at any rate cities turn more and more into you know,

716
00:39:56,160 --> 00:39:59,799
Speaker 1: chain chain restaurant here, and here's the big box store here,

717
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:04,000
Speaker 1: and there's the sameness to everything and the lack of variety. Uh,

718
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:05,880
Speaker 1: you know, it takes us out of the sort of

719
00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:08,600
Speaker 1: variety that we would need in the natural world and

720
00:40:08,640 --> 00:40:13,720
Speaker 1: would also historically find in a more vibrant city environment. Certainly,

721
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:16,440
Speaker 1: Like that's what you think of when you think of

722
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:18,640
Speaker 1: of walking the streets of New York, right right, that's

723
00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:22,759
Speaker 1: the cliche, not seeing a block of of storefront for

724
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:24,920
Speaker 1: you know, whatever your big box store happens to be. No,

725
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:28,600
Speaker 1: you you're expecting to see weird thing here, weird thing here,

726
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 1: strange little store here. Uh, something up and coming over here.

727
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:34,680
Speaker 1: You know, it's we want that kind of experience. We

728
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:37,560
Speaker 1: want the same sort of height through the wilderness experience

729
00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:40,600
Speaker 1: even in our urban environments. Of course, again we're living

730
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:42,600
Speaker 1: in a time though where you know, there's more and

731
00:40:42,600 --> 00:40:46,440
Speaker 1: more consciousness about mental health though, and we have decades

732
00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:49,880
Speaker 1: now of of studies about the impact of design and

733
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 1: things we can do to to to help to have

734
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 1: like a you know, an actual benefit on our mental

735
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:59,560
Speaker 1: well being, for instance, when it comes to social interaction

736
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:04,239
Speaker 1: human interaction. UH. Sociologist William White was a key advocate

737
00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:07,480
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies of design that pushed people closer

738
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:11,520
Speaker 1: together and encourage social interaction, and one of his colleagues,

739
00:41:11,560 --> 00:41:15,359
Speaker 1: Bond Rights, founded the Project for Public Spaces, which made

740
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:18,480
Speaker 1: key moves such as deploying benches to make certain public

741
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:22,160
Speaker 1: spaces more inviting to the public. Put some benches there,

742
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:24,319
Speaker 1: make it seem like people are supposed to be here,

743
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:27,160
Speaker 1: and then by being here they will interact with one

744
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:31,960
Speaker 1: another uh in various ways. And another important aspect of

745
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:35,560
Speaker 1: city design, brought up by Kate Jeffrey, a behavioral neuroscience

746
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 1: scientists at the University College London, is that more the

747
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:42,520
Speaker 1: more lost you feel in a city, the more out

748
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 1: of sync, isolated and potentially afraid you feel. And this

749
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 1: is also important inside of a building. So when you

750
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:51,960
Speaker 1: walk into the building, do you feel lost? Do you

751
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:55,359
Speaker 1: feel like you're in a maze? Because that's not good

752
00:41:55,360 --> 00:41:59,120
Speaker 1: because the interior of space should be more like a labyrinth,

753
00:41:59,120 --> 00:42:03,000
Speaker 1: the place that is maybe complex, that is interesting to

754
00:42:03,040 --> 00:42:06,160
Speaker 1: behold and experience, but there is not a sense of

755
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:08,640
Speaker 1: anxiety about where you were going. When you enter a

756
00:42:08,680 --> 00:42:11,600
Speaker 1: true labyrinth, you will always go to the center of

757
00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:13,680
Speaker 1: the labyrinth and back out again. You will always go

758
00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 1: exactly where you need to go. A maze is the

759
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:20,480
Speaker 1: edifice in which you become lost and possibly consumed by

760
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:23,560
Speaker 1: a minotaur. I don't think I was aware of that distinction.

761
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: I've just used them so they're often used interchangeably, even

762
00:42:27,120 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 1: by the best of writers, so I don't I try

763
00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:31,960
Speaker 1: not to get a bit out of shape when I'm

764
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:35,600
Speaker 1: reading something and they say maze when they need labyrinth, etcetera.

765
00:42:35,680 --> 00:42:39,520
Speaker 1: It's not as elegant to say pans maze, pants Mazen's

766
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:42,920
Speaker 1: not as good. Labyrinth feels more appropriate. All Right, we're

767
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:44,839
Speaker 1: gonna take one more break, but when we come back,

768
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:52,200
Speaker 1: we're going to explore the world of hostile architecture. Than alright,

769
00:42:52,200 --> 00:42:54,560
Speaker 1: we're back now, Joe, you're the one who turned me

770
00:42:54,600 --> 00:42:57,440
Speaker 1: onto this idea of hostile architecture. I was, I was

771
00:42:57,680 --> 00:43:00,319
Speaker 1: blissfully unaware of this. Well, it's not something I ever

772
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:03,319
Speaker 1: had a deep knowledge about. It's just something i'd I'd

773
00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:05,319
Speaker 1: seen in a few places, and I, you know, I

774
00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:07,640
Speaker 1: was just reading a little bit about it online. The

775
00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:14,000
Speaker 1: idea that sometimes architectural designs that you would use us, say,

776
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:18,840
Speaker 1: defending a fortress against invading army, can be turned inward

777
00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:22,759
Speaker 1: and can be used within a society itself, even within

778
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:28,120
Speaker 1: the city itself, in ways that are both interesting and sad. Right, yeah,

779
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:33,640
Speaker 1: using these features against residents of the city itself, especially

780
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:36,880
Speaker 1: the homeless. So one of the older examples of this

781
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 1: sort of thing, uh is probably the flint cone. A

782
00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:41,800
Speaker 1: number of you've seen this. I'm going to describe it,

783
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:43,400
Speaker 1: and a lot of you will go, Okay, I know

784
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:45,440
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. This is just deployed in the

785
00:43:45,520 --> 00:43:49,360
Speaker 1: nineteenth century in Norwich, England, along with other designs to

786
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:53,759
Speaker 1: curb public urination in the city because basically and then

787
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:56,000
Speaker 1: walking about through the city wouldn't need to urinate, and

788
00:43:56,040 --> 00:43:58,480
Speaker 1: having few options, they would turn to you know, a handy,

789
00:43:58,560 --> 00:44:02,279
Speaker 1: dimly lit corner in the exterior of a stone building, right,

790
00:44:02,640 --> 00:44:06,320
Speaker 1: and that's where they would pee. But such urination course

791
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:09,280
Speaker 1: creates an odor and it even damages materials. So building

792
00:44:09,280 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 1: owners employed a few different strategies against public urination, such

793
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:16,360
Speaker 1: as gates around such little corners and nooks and crannies,

794
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:20,880
Speaker 1: or even more drastically filling those corners in with brick

795
00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:24,120
Speaker 1: and mortar, sometimes in the shape of a cone. Right,

796
00:44:24,200 --> 00:44:26,400
Speaker 1: So where you would have a recess that would normally

797
00:44:26,440 --> 00:44:28,799
Speaker 1: just be a little corner where you could face into

798
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 1: the corner and no one would see what you were

799
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:33,200
Speaker 1: doing with the front of your body. Instead there's a

800
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:37,640
Speaker 1: you know, human height shaped cone of bricks and stuff. Right,

801
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:39,640
Speaker 1: there's gonna, I guess cause your urine to flow back

802
00:44:39,680 --> 00:44:42,279
Speaker 1: towards your feet, right, But also just doesn't give you

803
00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:45,760
Speaker 1: any privacy Whereas normally this corner would have allowed privacy,

804
00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:48,359
Speaker 1: Now there is no way to be private there. Right,

805
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:50,680
Speaker 1: of course, you might not have much of an issue

806
00:44:50,680 --> 00:44:52,759
Speaker 1: with this, right, you're probably not a huge fan of

807
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:56,720
Speaker 1: public urination. But here's the thing, it does not address

808
00:44:56,800 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 1: the root problem. There are people in the city with

809
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:03,440
Speaker 1: nowhere to p public toilets were not readily available. Transforming

810
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 1: these corners didn't actually solve the problem. It just redirected

811
00:45:07,560 --> 00:45:10,840
Speaker 1: it to other places, like other other corners that didn't

812
00:45:10,920 --> 00:45:14,680
Speaker 1: have cones implanted in them, and and it, you know,

813
00:45:14,760 --> 00:45:19,400
Speaker 1: ultimately made life even more miserable for the Norwich wanderers

814
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:23,040
Speaker 1: who had full bladders. Now, the city eventually made public

815
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:26,320
Speaker 1: restrooms more available, but many of these structures still remain,

816
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:31,879
Speaker 1: especially the cones, because they are rather permanent in their construction. Sure, now,

817
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:34,440
Speaker 1: lack of a place to leave oneself can still be

818
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:37,480
Speaker 1: a problem for the urban homeless today, though this is

819
00:45:37,520 --> 00:45:39,640
Speaker 1: a problem that is addressed to a large extent by

820
00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 1: public restrooms, which are deployed with varying degrees of success

821
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 1: depending on which city you're looking at and where you

822
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:48,640
Speaker 1: are in that city. But like just yesterday, I was

823
00:45:48,640 --> 00:45:53,120
Speaker 1: outside our own city zoo, and in an individual walked

824
00:45:53,160 --> 00:45:55,719
Speaker 1: up and asked me where the nearest bathroom was, And

825
00:45:55,840 --> 00:45:58,200
Speaker 1: naturally there's one inside the zoo, but that requires a

826
00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 1: membership or a tick it to get into. And I

827
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 1: said there was one at the instance to an adjacent park,

828
00:46:03,719 --> 00:46:06,279
Speaker 1: but I wasn't sure if renovations were affecting it. And

829
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:08,040
Speaker 1: then he said that he tried that one and he

830
00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:10,320
Speaker 1: couldn't get into it. And then my only suggestion was

831
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:12,560
Speaker 1: said to tell him, well, there's a coffee shop across

832
00:46:12,600 --> 00:46:14,600
Speaker 1: the street. And of course a coffee shop is the

833
00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:17,759
Speaker 1: sort of place where one usually encounters a customers only

834
00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:20,640
Speaker 1: policy for restrooms, and in some areas even have to

835
00:46:20,680 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 1: have a key or the receipt code off of receipt

836
00:46:23,239 --> 00:46:26,120
Speaker 1: to get in there. So the problem still remains. The

837
00:46:26,160 --> 00:46:28,400
Speaker 1: homeless also need a place to sit and to sleep,

838
00:46:28,480 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 1: a situation addressed to some extent by shelters and other initiatives.

839
00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:35,279
Speaker 1: But what about these public spaces, these green spaces we've

840
00:46:35,320 --> 00:46:38,399
Speaker 1: been discussing that have such a benefit for all of us,

841
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:41,880
Speaker 1: Like these these places have an important impact on our

842
00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:45,640
Speaker 1: mental wellness and UH and certainly access is even more

843
00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:48,759
Speaker 1: vital for individuals on the margins who may also very

844
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:52,360
Speaker 1: well be struggling with depression, anxiety, and or mental illness.

845
00:46:52,760 --> 00:46:55,360
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, there's often an effort then to prevent the

846
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:58,680
Speaker 1: homeless from using such areas, and to be fair, of

847
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:01,600
Speaker 1: a public spaces is over run by homeless individuals that

848
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 1: you know, I guess it can certainly become less desirable

849
00:47:04,360 --> 00:47:08,200
Speaker 1: for some members of society. Uh, But the result is

850
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 1: we see other examples of what critics have dubbed hostile

851
00:47:11,800 --> 00:47:16,440
Speaker 1: architecture also known as defensive design in our modern cities.

852
00:47:16,600 --> 00:47:19,160
Speaker 1: And here are just a few examples. First of all,

853
00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:23,279
Speaker 1: park benches with arm rests down the middle right, so

854
00:47:23,360 --> 00:47:25,799
Speaker 1: they the goal there is to make a bench that

855
00:47:25,880 --> 00:47:28,520
Speaker 1: you can sit on, but you can't really lay down on.

856
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:34,440
Speaker 1: Another one, spikes or bolts installed on stairs or on

857
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:37,399
Speaker 1: areas of the pavement itself. This is something I've only

858
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 1: seen photos of. I don't think I've seen this in

859
00:47:39,640 --> 00:47:42,879
Speaker 1: real life, but yeah, just the idea of like, well,

860
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:45,480
Speaker 1: here's a place where one could lay here's some stairs

861
00:47:45,480 --> 00:47:48,000
Speaker 1: someone could potentially lay on, but we're gonna put spikes

862
00:47:48,040 --> 00:47:53,520
Speaker 1: there instead, which which is a drastic solution. Another one

863
00:47:53,600 --> 00:47:58,319
Speaker 1: gates around various fountains specifically around the the the edge

864
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:00,000
Speaker 1: of the lift of the fountain where one might normally

865
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:04,799
Speaker 1: set uh, the placement of boulders or other objects such

866
00:48:04,840 --> 00:48:08,080
Speaker 1: as bike racks or other structures in place of benches

867
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:11,080
Speaker 1: or in spots there were previously popular gathering places for

868
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:14,640
Speaker 1: the homeless. Or here's another one, sprinklers that at least

869
00:48:14,680 --> 00:48:19,600
Speaker 1: allegedly been placed to deter squatters, like in parks. Yeah,

870
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:22,239
Speaker 1: so some of them. And then as far as benches go,

871
00:48:22,600 --> 00:48:24,560
Speaker 1: we mentioned the bench with an arm rest down the middle,

872
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:27,839
Speaker 1: but some of the designs that have been utilized are

873
00:48:27,880 --> 00:48:30,680
Speaker 1: really quite elaborate and you might not even recognize their

874
00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:34,600
Speaker 1: true purpose at first glance, as with the South Philadelphia

875
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:38,799
Speaker 1: Transit Authorities, modern chrome ribbed like benches that that look cool.

876
00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 1: They look they look like, I said, like this weird

877
00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:46,279
Speaker 1: space curvy rib thing. But as I read in What's

878
00:48:46,320 --> 00:48:50,040
Speaker 1: behind the Uptick and Hostile Architecture by Elizabeth Wallace published

879
00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:53,720
Speaker 1: an architectural digest, the intention here is to create benches

880
00:48:53,800 --> 00:48:57,000
Speaker 1: that are difficult to sleep on. They're not flat, they've

881
00:48:57,040 --> 00:48:59,560
Speaker 1: got these ridges in them that will sort of cut

882
00:48:59,600 --> 00:49:02,200
Speaker 1: into you if you try to lay down. Yeah, so

883
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:05,359
Speaker 1: it's probably a worthwhile exercise, especially for anyone out there

884
00:49:05,360 --> 00:49:08,840
Speaker 1: who uses like public transportation and visits urban public spaces.

885
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:10,920
Speaker 1: Like the next time you see a weird bench or

886
00:49:10,960 --> 00:49:14,600
Speaker 1: even a beautiful bench, ask yourself, could could I sleep

887
00:49:14,680 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 1: on this? Could I lay down and sleep on this?

888
00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:19,279
Speaker 1: Could I even set up and sleep on this? And

889
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 1: then what does that say? Um? Another example, London's concrete

890
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:27,600
Speaker 1: Camden benches have often been criticized for this. Uh. And

891
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:30,520
Speaker 1: you can there just again this kind of like weird

892
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:33,600
Speaker 1: bench design that is like you look at it and

893
00:49:33,640 --> 00:49:35,320
Speaker 1: you ask yourself, could I lay on that? And the

894
00:49:35,360 --> 00:49:38,399
Speaker 1: answer is not not comfortably at all. And you also

895
00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:40,879
Speaker 1: see variations of this sort of design when it comes

896
00:49:40,880 --> 00:49:44,560
Speaker 1: to anti skateboarding uh features as well that have been

897
00:49:44,640 --> 00:49:47,200
Speaker 1: retro fritted fitted on things I've noticed the others I've

898
00:49:47,200 --> 00:49:52,480
Speaker 1: never noticed anti skateboarding stuff. Yeah, I wonder what that's like. Um. Basically,

899
00:49:52,520 --> 00:49:55,959
Speaker 1: it's like like little like metal ridges, metal bars, things

900
00:49:55,960 --> 00:49:58,440
Speaker 1: that are added to and I don't have any skateboarding

901
00:49:58,880 --> 00:50:01,319
Speaker 1: lingo uh in brain, I'm sorry, but the thing was

902
00:50:01,480 --> 00:50:04,680
Speaker 1: called everything ali that the okay, the thing where they

903
00:50:04,719 --> 00:50:08,160
Speaker 1: ali along the side of the like the yeah, or

904
00:50:08,200 --> 00:50:11,000
Speaker 1: the bench of the concrete by the fountain. Uh put

905
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:14,120
Speaker 1: a metal bar somewhere there to disrupt such activity you

906
00:50:14,120 --> 00:50:19,160
Speaker 1: can't al Yeah. Uh so obviously, hostile architecture has angered

907
00:50:19,239 --> 00:50:22,000
Speaker 1: quite a lot of people, inspiring social media campaigns and

908
00:50:22,040 --> 00:50:25,399
Speaker 1: even sticker and graffiti efforts against the features. Because these

909
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:29,880
Speaker 1: effects are, by their very nature, uh, not only anti homeless,

910
00:50:29,920 --> 00:50:32,360
Speaker 1: but just anti human. As critics point out, you know

911
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:35,879
Speaker 1: what about older members of society, homeless or not, who

912
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:39,360
Speaker 1: simply might need to sit down more often? What if they,

913
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 1: they or anyone else you know, has a health episode

914
00:50:42,080 --> 00:50:43,520
Speaker 1: you need to lay down, But oh, you can't lay

915
00:50:43,520 --> 00:50:45,880
Speaker 1: there because there are spikes coming out of the concrete

916
00:50:45,960 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 1: for no reason. Like you're like you live in a

917
00:50:48,520 --> 00:50:51,640
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat game. Yeah, there's a really depressing lack of

918
00:50:51,680 --> 00:50:54,680
Speaker 1: compassion evident in those though at the same time, I mean,

919
00:50:55,280 --> 00:50:57,359
Speaker 1: to be fair to I guess the people who would

920
00:50:57,400 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 1: install things like that, I mean, like, the problem is

921
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:03,400
Speaker 1: that there, you know, there are people without a place

922
00:51:03,440 --> 00:51:05,720
Speaker 1: of their own to to lie down or to sleep

923
00:51:05,800 --> 00:51:08,920
Speaker 1: or something like that. And like the one owner of

924
00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:12,839
Speaker 1: a building or something can't individually solve the problem, right,

925
00:51:12,960 --> 00:51:16,000
Speaker 1: give everyone a place to live? Uh? And so like

926
00:51:16,040 --> 00:51:19,840
Speaker 1: they're just forced to individually deal with their own problem,

927
00:51:19,880 --> 00:51:22,640
Speaker 1: which is that people keep laying across the doorstep of

928
00:51:22,680 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 1: my building. But it's sad to see that problem dealt

929
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:27,960
Speaker 1: with by just like trying to make things even harder

930
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 1: for the people who end up sleeping there. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

931
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 1: certainly to your point that the individual store owner is

932
00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:37,080
Speaker 1: not going to solve the wicked problem of homelessness. We

933
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:38,920
Speaker 1: call it a wicked problem because it's something with a

934
00:51:39,280 --> 00:51:41,960
Speaker 1: number of different factors involved, and it's very difficult to

935
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 1: address and to solve. It's the kind of effort that

936
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:48,440
Speaker 1: people devote their lives to trying to deal with. Oh

937
00:51:48,480 --> 00:51:50,640
Speaker 1: but I mean, I think there there are clearly things

938
00:51:50,680 --> 00:51:53,120
Speaker 1: you can do to reduce homelessness. I think I think

939
00:51:53,120 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 1: the evidence is there, certainly. But but in terms of

940
00:51:55,600 --> 00:51:58,400
Speaker 1: the individual store owner, right, they can't. They can't do

941
00:51:58,440 --> 00:52:01,680
Speaker 1: it themselves. But ultimately the issue is, you know, benches

942
00:52:01,760 --> 00:52:03,440
Speaker 1: that you can actually sleep on are not going to

943
00:52:03,520 --> 00:52:08,080
Speaker 1: fix anything. But but neither does the presence of hostile architecture,

944
00:52:08,120 --> 00:52:10,680
Speaker 1: even though it may allow some people to better ignore

945
00:52:10,719 --> 00:52:13,719
Speaker 1: the underlying problems in society. And and that's the thing,

946
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:17,080
Speaker 1: Like it's about making Ultimately, it makes the problem less

947
00:52:17,200 --> 00:52:21,880
Speaker 1: visible two segments of the population and without actually solving

948
00:52:22,000 --> 00:52:25,040
Speaker 1: the actual problem. Yeah, it wouldn't make any sense to

949
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:28,440
Speaker 1: to blame the the homelessness problem to begin with on

950
00:52:28,560 --> 00:52:32,799
Speaker 1: the individual store owner or homeowner or whatever that's putting

951
00:52:32,840 --> 00:52:35,480
Speaker 1: these measures in place. But I mean it does seem like,

952
00:52:36,080 --> 00:52:37,479
Speaker 1: I don't know, this is the kind of thing where

953
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:40,879
Speaker 1: you really need collective action, the action through large nonprofits

954
00:52:40,920 --> 00:52:43,600
Speaker 1: or through the government to try to intervene to solve

955
00:52:44,120 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 1: homelessness more systemically and like actually connect people with places

956
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 1: to live, rather than than trying to come up with

957
00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:56,000
Speaker 1: ways to make the problem less visible. Right. Yeah, Ultimately

958
00:52:56,040 --> 00:52:58,120
Speaker 1: I would I would say that metal spikes are never

959
00:52:58,840 --> 00:53:02,000
Speaker 1: the perfect answer to any given problem. So we we

960
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:04,719
Speaker 1: bring all this up not to not to end this

961
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:07,280
Speaker 1: two parter or on a really negative note, but ultimately

962
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:11,879
Speaker 1: again to think about the power of architectural design and

963
00:53:12,239 --> 00:53:15,879
Speaker 1: the power of architectural objects in our environments. Well, yeah,

964
00:53:15,920 --> 00:53:18,440
Speaker 1: and to emphasize again one of the many ways I mean,

965
00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:20,880
Speaker 1: this is what we've been exploring throughout these episodes, is

966
00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:24,200
Speaker 1: that um is that the designs of cities and the

967
00:53:24,239 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 1: designs of buildings and the designs of public spaces are

968
00:53:27,160 --> 00:53:31,680
Speaker 1: not necessarily neutral neutral, not necessarily in a moral sense,

969
00:53:31,719 --> 00:53:34,800
Speaker 1: and not necessarily in uh in a public health sense.

970
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:38,680
Speaker 1: They're not just a matter of aesthetic preferences. The design

971
00:53:38,719 --> 00:53:41,960
Speaker 1: of buildings in public spaces in many ways have public

972
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:49,160
Speaker 1: health outcomes, they have cultural outcomes, and they have moral implications. Yeah. Absolutely,

973
00:53:49,280 --> 00:53:51,200
Speaker 1: And we live in these environments. So if it is

974
00:53:51,239 --> 00:53:53,920
Speaker 1: an environment where they are spikes on the stairs, I

975
00:53:53,960 --> 00:53:57,080
Speaker 1: mean imagine like growing up seeing that every day and

976
00:53:57,080 --> 00:53:58,839
Speaker 1: that being is part of your world and you have

977
00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:01,760
Speaker 1: to like an asking why are there spikes on the stairs, mom,

978
00:54:01,800 --> 00:54:03,520
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, that's so people don't sit on

979
00:54:03,520 --> 00:54:06,960
Speaker 1: the stairs. That is a weird message to drive home.

980
00:54:07,320 --> 00:54:10,840
Speaker 1: So hopefully these episodes we've explored, you know, the various

981
00:54:10,920 --> 00:54:15,480
Speaker 1: ways that that that's certainly design can make an environment

982
00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:19,400
Speaker 1: and artificial environment uh more imposing and more negative, but

983
00:54:19,440 --> 00:54:21,400
Speaker 1: also the ways that they can make make it more

984
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:24,439
Speaker 1: positive and ultimately more in line with the natural world

985
00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:27,520
Speaker 1: that we evolve to thrive in. Totally, my take is

986
00:54:27,680 --> 00:54:32,560
Speaker 1: less spikes, more trees. Yes, less spikes, more trees. Big

987
00:54:32,600 --> 00:54:35,120
Speaker 1: atriums are great, um as long as they don't have

988
00:54:35,160 --> 00:54:39,200
Speaker 1: spikes all over. I don't know, it's some atrium type

989
00:54:39,239 --> 00:54:42,440
Speaker 1: type spikes can be cool, like like if they're like

990
00:54:42,480 --> 00:54:45,319
Speaker 1: spikes within the vegetation. Want to go back to Mortal

991
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:47,719
Speaker 1: combat and stuff. It was that one stage in the

992
00:54:47,719 --> 00:54:49,600
Speaker 1: second game where they had the spikes on the ceiling

993
00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:52,600
Speaker 1: and you would punch someone up into the spikes. But

994
00:54:52,640 --> 00:54:54,920
Speaker 1: that's a much better design because if someone can still

995
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:56,919
Speaker 1: lay on the floor, it's fine, You're not. No one's

996
00:54:56,920 --> 00:54:59,799
Speaker 1: gonna trip over something and fall on the spikes much

997
00:55:00,080 --> 00:55:03,560
Speaker 1: or design. Let's let's do a finishing move on this episode. Yes,

998
00:55:03,719 --> 00:55:06,440
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to call it here obviously. You know,

999
00:55:06,560 --> 00:55:09,120
Speaker 1: there's so much we could have talked about additionally, concerning

1000
00:55:09,280 --> 00:55:13,080
Speaker 1: architecture and the different styles of architecture, the way different

1001
00:55:13,560 --> 00:55:16,480
Speaker 1: things impact our mind from you know, you know, sharp

1002
00:55:16,600 --> 00:55:21,279
Speaker 1: angles to spirals, uh and so forth, but we only

1003
00:55:21,280 --> 00:55:23,480
Speaker 1: have so much time in the meantime. We'd love to

1004
00:55:23,520 --> 00:55:26,120
Speaker 1: hear though from is certainly any architects out there that

1005
00:55:26,160 --> 00:55:28,080
Speaker 1: happened to be listening to the show, or people have

1006
00:55:28,160 --> 00:55:32,759
Speaker 1: experience with any of the architectural styles, features, or those

1007
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:36,520
Speaker 1: specific sites that we've mentioned on these episodes. We we

1008
00:55:36,600 --> 00:55:40,560
Speaker 1: invite listener feedback all the time right in. We'd love

1009
00:55:40,600 --> 00:55:43,239
Speaker 1: to hear from you in the meantime. If you want

1010
00:55:43,239 --> 00:55:45,000
Speaker 1: more Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over the

1011
00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:46,879
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mother ship.

1012
00:55:46,960 --> 00:55:49,279
Speaker 1: That's where you will find the episodes. You'll also find

1013
00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:51,960
Speaker 1: us anywhere you get your podcasts and wherever that happens

1014
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:54,399
Speaker 1: to be. Leave us some starts, leave us a nice

1015
00:55:54,400 --> 00:55:57,520
Speaker 1: review that really helps us out. Huge thanks as always

1016
00:55:57,560 --> 00:56:00,839
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth nicolist Johnson. If you'd

1017
00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:02,440
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us for any of

1018
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:04,920
Speaker 1: the reasons we talked about in this past couple of episodes,

1019
00:56:05,000 --> 00:56:07,279
Speaker 1: just to say hi, or to suggest a topic for

1020
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:10,360
Speaker 1: the future, you can email us at contact at stuff

1021
00:56:10,400 --> 00:56:20,120
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

1022
00:56:20,120 --> 00:56:22,320
Speaker 1: Mind is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.

1023
00:56:22,480 --> 00:56:24,640
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1024
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:27,319
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1025
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