Rituals of access

Rituals of access

In Andrea Camilleri's Paper Moon, following frustrating experience with a secure bank entrance, inspector Montalbano considers writing a text on the ceremony of access and how it is intended to make you feel secure while there is no guarantee that you actually are. This is something more and more people realising with various security measures, including the demanding ones at airports. However, such rituals predate current security issues and are built in the affordances many entrances. For example, revolving doors are intended to restrict air flow and reduce drafts between indoors and outdoors. They also regulate pedestrian flow, making us slow down and go in or out in small numbers, ensuring that we've paid a ticket or that we don't go in the wrong direction (as with turnstiles). They manage to constrain our behaviour so effectively that we seldom rebel against their tyranny; we accept them as part of the experience and even welcome the adjustment they offer. When I see unobtrusive yet major design successes, I realise how natural the built environment can be.