I don't walk like that

I don't walk like that 

Some time ago I was testing a fire egress calculation program and was quite shocked by the routes it calculated: the lines seemed to bounce from one wall to another, generally moving in the right direction but rather blindly or perhaps drunkenly. It was comical in its deviation from what we consider normal behaviour. My immediate reaction was to think: I don't walk like that, do I?

It's undeniable that our movement in space is not as smooth and purposeful as we want to imagine. One only needs to observe how people walk in a crowded public corridor, e.g. in a train station. It's a matter we should address in architecture and allow for more fuzziness and chaos in human interaction with buildings. Textbooks are full of certainties and crisp, tight values for everything. More room for error and uncertainty would arguably make the built environment more humane.

On the other hand, computer analyses and simulations have to become more meaningful and reliable. At the moment it seems that anything goes. Much from what I see is based not on scientific knowledge but derives from basic, often outdated textbooks and easy, unsupported assumptions. With simulations of natural phenomena (light, air, temperature etc.) one requires validation but with human interaction anything plausible is just accepted.