At last, a villain! 

In the run-up to Christmas 2021, in yet another lockdown turmoil, I'd been enjoying the new BBC series The girl before. As one would expect, it's well made. It's also rather superficial and full of slick characters with vague butt successful careers, in elegant clothes and attractive surroundings. Sometimes they don't talk but make short speeches consisting of pithy soundbites, perfect for social media. As a thriller, it should be taken with more than one pinch of salt. The plot is rather predictable, the motives transparent and the inanimate protagonist, an AI-based, smart building designed to subtly yet persistently modify the behaviours of the occupants less than believable. 

Still, I enjoyed watching it for two main reasons. The first was that the four episodes were broadcast on consecutive evenings (who has the memory or patience to wait for next week's installment in our binge-watching days). The second was that the series was a funny satire on architecture (probably unintended because not fully exploited). 

First of all, the AI housekeeper is funny. One can take it seriously and analyse what should have been different but my point is that is nearly fulfils its comedic performance. I couldn't help laughing at the dramatic moments (including two shower scenes) when the AI housekeeper refused to obey occupants any longer before they answered some questions. With its insistence on questionnaires, it falls quite short of the menacing threat we associate with intelligent machines. HAL 9000 is probably turning in his grave with impotent rage at this bureaucratic descendent. 

Even more than that, I enjoyed watching a villainous architect in the male lead. There have been enough incompetent, devious and sycophantic architects in cinema and on TV but I don't remember an evil genius before. Finally, here's one we can all appreciate as a pinnacle of the profession. 

Having been raised on a positive, even heroic image of the architect fighting for his art (always his) or society, I'd accepted that it's a professional responsibility to design for the good of users, society, the environment etc. This could escalate into Fountainheads, Corbusian propaganda and other extreme or arrogant forms, even caricatures, but somehow even hyperbole remained excusable. After all, we are generally eager to forgive mistakes in architecture. 

It didn't take long to realize that this wasn't always the case. One cannot just ignore all those architects who have been designing for evil: dictators, unjust regimes, corrupt organizations or oppressive ideals. Still, the dipole of good-intentioned visionaries versus amoral mercenaries worried me with its neatness. It suggested that more is missing. Now at last -joy of joys- we have a clearly psychopathic villain who mixes things and uses his craft for direct and personal evil. 

Our architect is enjoyable as an exaggerated version of all those architects who know better and forbid users this or that, actually just imposing arbitrary beliefs, usually on questionable aesthetic grounds, promoting random lifestyles as universal truths. He's actually more complex and cleverer than them. For example, he shrugs off criticism of his manipulative, high-tech design by correctly pointing out that any building modifies users' behaviours, intentionally or not. Having spent time and energy on the affordances of buildings, I nodded at the screen in appreciative agreement when I heard him say things to this effect. 

He's also insistent (with a nice bit of indignation) that his designs are not minimalist but decluttered and liberated from trivialities. That was a nice touch. I could see the architect's sensitive nerves being stricken: who wants to be pigeonholed in an old tendency that obscures their rationale nowadays? Everyone is a special individual, not a representative of some vague ideas. 

I'd been enjoying a good part of the spectrum of architectural foibles in the series, from unfounded intentions to naive belief in novel technologies, as well as the twist of an architect doing that for personal, evil gain, when the last episode went and ruined it. Yes, the architect is a psychopath but no more than other male characters in the series, and moreover not the villain. He even gets the opportunity of redemption in the open end. 

Inevitably I feel cheated. The series came close to giving us a true villain of an architect but in the end failed to deliver. Let's hope that someone else will take over the task and further the cause of architectural evil in popular culture. 

 Lockdowns and solutions 

Yesterday, on October 13, 2020, seven months after the first lockdown in the Netherlands, the Dutch government announced the second, this time partial lockdown. To my surprise, the news was received generally positively. I guess people under such conditions want clarity, not choice and the responsibility and uncertainty that go with it. This could be a reason why we accept draconian measures with gratitude. Rather than having to interpret the basic rules of social distancing and protection from infections in our daily lives, we appear to prefer general restrictions and the consequent elimination of many situations in daily life. Why worry how having a meal at a restaurant can be made safe is there are no restaurants to go to? Remove the opportunity or temptation and the problem is gone - no need to solve it. 

I do not share the apparently general acceptance and approval of how the corona pandemic is handled in the Netherlands. This does not imply I'm against anti-corona measures, that I find them unnecessary or contrary to my human or civic rights. On the contrary, I support the need for change and accept the principles underlying them, as well as the inevitable effects and the resulting necessity for social cohesion and solidarity. These are part of my human and civic responsibilities. In fact, I see the pandemic as an opportunity to improve our habits and environments, to make our lives healthier and happier. 

What I doubt is the sufficiency of general principles and total restrictions. A lockdown is a very temporary solution. We have experienced how tricky getting out of a lockdown can be, as well as how easily we can then end up in the same problematic situation that seems to call for another lockdown - a vicious circles of binary options. Imposing a second lockdown, even if it's a partial one, indicates a fundamental failure, not only of the people and their behaviours but also of the approach to solving the problems caused by the pandemic. Have we learned so little in these seven months? That seems inconceivable. Unfortunately, too much attention goes to new measures, such as the use of face protection, and too little to how different principles, measures and devices apply to different situations, how they are interpreted, related to each other and other factors, refined and improved thanks to knowledge generated by the applications. 

This is my main objection: general principles and measures are meaningful only in context. By working out what they do in different situations we can evaluate their effectivity and cost, appreciate the complexity of these situations before and after, and generally improve awareness and the ability to find practical solutions in daily life. 

This brings me to what I consider a major failure of the governmental approach: we have been hearing how this theatre or that restaurant have successfully implemented the general principles and so managed to adapt their operation and environment, making them safe and keeping them profitable. Have such best practices been analysed and evaluated? Have we learned from them, have we worked on templates and elements that can be adopted by others, too, have we developed platforms for sharing knowledge and solutions? Rather than indiscriminately closing all restaurants, we should have rewarded and showcased those that have achieved the goals we aspire to and used them to educate the rest and stimulate general improvement. This is something we have to do, an inevitable stage towards safer environments and activities, which is only delayed by the second lockdown. It is moreover something we need to do even if medicine manages to produce the cures for COVID 19, so that we can be same from future pandemics with different causes. 

In summary, we need to work out the necessary changes with more specificity and in more detail, so that they become applicable to any context and meaningful to all, learn from best practices and try to generalize them. 

One could say this is a design approach and I'd take that as a compliment. Design can actually contribute much to the solutions required because by changing the environments within which we operate, it can also change our behaviour. That's what affordances are about: you can demand that people observe social distancing but putting markers on the floor makes it not only easier to understand what one should do but actually part of our interaction with the environment: a constraints that's easy to observe. It's the same magic as with a flimsy piece of tape that cordons off an unsafe pavement or the foam lines football referees use to position the defensive wall at a free kick: physically they may be insignificant but culturally we tend to obey them. 

Of course, its is even better not to annotate but physically change the environment, taking into account the anti-corona principles. This is often seen as a long-term development because it may require wider or multiple entrances to rooms or buildings, wider corridors, better ventilation etc: costly and difficult modifications. This, however, should not stop us from starting already now. There are enough cases where adaptation is directly possible and we need to start producing the best practices from which we can learn. All we need is willingness to invest and to share. 

Social distancing and design

Social distancing and design

We are constantly reminded to keep others at a distance of 1.5 or 2 metres. Most people try to do so, some ignore the advice to the irritation of the rest and others behave as if everybody is a threat, even at a great distance. Beyond personal reactions, the overall effect is spectacular: in contrast to other times, public space is heavily underused, with lots of space for everyone. It's a joy to be out and about with such low densities of people and vehicles.
I wonder what will remain after the scare is over. Will we revert to the old habits and tolerances, squeezing into every bit of space available to go as fast as possible to our destination? It seems probable that we will forget. I remember cycling through the Dutch countryside during a previous epidemic and coming close to or under flocks of birds. Wondering if they were infected, I gave them a wide berth, trying to hold my breath as long as possible. I no longer do so.
Even more important than user behaviour is the design and management of the environment. We naturally try to keep an appropriate distance at all times, as Edward T. Hall and others have observed. Unfortunately, the affordances of many environments force us to come closer than desired to others. Sometimes a distance of a few centimetres from a stranger is all we achieve in a bus, train or metro, as well as in a air terminal, cinema theatre or classroom. When the pandemic is over and current measures are relaxed, we might be forced to accept the same congested situations once again. Will we react with the indignation such poorly designed and managed environments deserve? Will we demand safe and comfortable distances at all times? How will authorities and designers react? In many respects, such a pandemic is a wake-up call: to invest not only in adequate care when something goes wrong but also in designing environments that can prevent the worst. We deserve public transportation and public space that are generous, comfortable and safe. They come at a cost but that cost seems a wise investment.

At the office

At the office

If Were to catalogue comedy taking place in an office, it would result into a huge list relating to the social aspects of office life. Tati's Playtime also focuses on the physical aspects of the modern office and the alienation it may cause. The enormous, purpose-built set that contributed to Tati's bankruptcy following the making of this film is quite often not the background but the subject to the comedy. The only problem is that while Tati once again points out the absurdity of what we take for progress, his solution seems to be just regression to earlier patterns of life. He may have been right, though: office life hasn't improved much since the making of this film, despite repeated promises, including recent attempts and informality and playfulness.

This is evident in a more recent film, where physical aspects also play a prominent role: Office space. It's a film primarily about bullying: how office layout can be used to oppress people. It is quite different from Playtime but it too makes clear how the peripersonal space that dominates human activities and interactions in an office never fails to affect us. If one wants to harm us, they'll find many opportunities in our peripersonal space.

So, I come to the idea that Tati, despite his masterly grasp of affordances, couldn't give us an alternative because Playtime was less about peripersonal space and more about architectural style and the wider cultural changes associated with it. As for architects, this space remains a major challenge. Until they manage to focus on it and find some solutions, comedy will make thankful use of office spaces.

A study in affordances

A study in affordances 

I say Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle as a young teenager and have since remained ecstatic about it. It's a masterpiece and a comedy - all I need to make me feel happy and full of admiration. Interestingly, much of the comedy is about human interaction with buildings. It bears many similarities with Gibson's theory of affordances and was made around the same time that Gibson was publishing his books on the subject. It might be a coincidence but I suspect that there are underlying reasons for the wider interest in human interaction with the world: the modernisation of the world and the emphasis on the individual following the Second World War. But even if it's a coincidence it's a film architects should study to understand how easily things can go wrong if one insists on one's one vision and forgets what the vision is about and for whom. In fact, I've been using extracts of the film to introduce affordances to designers. Comedy provides the best view to the human condition, a distorted and exaggerated one, but exactly for this reason the clearest I know of. Philosophers may give us transparent argumentation but comedy is so immediate that it can tell the same in a much shorter space. Thinking and discussing comedy, moreover, tends to be much more pleasant, too.

Architecture and meaning

Architecture and meaning 

Is it so that architecture can express ideologies and cultural attitudes? They say that Le Corbusier's villa's encapsulated the attitudes of their early 20th century-urbanites that occupied them: their mechanised environment, their detachment, their god-like overview. They also say that the Renaissance villa was a connection between its agricultural setting and the urban culture of its occupants (retaining some form of ecological balance or "consensus" according to Back to the garden  - b.t.w. in both cases it's about villas: could it be that the type holds some special appeal?).

I find such claims hard to accept for two kinds of reasons. The first is that they are not inclusive. For example, despite their charm, modernist villas didn't become a huge success, even if one adds blocks of flats with similar morphology to the tally. Suburban semi-detached and row housing with more traditional forms and a closer contact to the ground have an enduring popularity that disproves many of the modernist arguments.

The second reason is that ascribing a particular meaning to an architectural form seems like a scholarly invention: isn't it possible to attach various meanings to them, e.g. link them to the aspirations of a social class? In the end, one could have any kind of connotations, as the frequent a-historical revivals suggest. Drawing from affordance theory, one might even claim that user activities can change the meaning of any environment.

Jevons's paradox

Jevons's paradox

For some time I'd been worried that the extension of the recent extension of the A4 motorway next to my home in Delft would disprove Jevons's paradox but I can sleep easily now: increased capacity has led to more traffic jams. Initially, having the A4 next to the A13 on the other side of Delft seemed to work. Motorists on both motorways seemed delighted, as they had few problems with the traffic jams that used to plague the A13. Still, it didn't take long for probably worse jams to develop on the A4, which have now become an acknowledged problem. Some even suspect that the initial reduction had less to do with yet another motorway in the Netherlands and more with the effects of the credit crunch. So, once again, a new motorway and increased capacity mean increased affordances to create the same old problems.

One could view a different news item from today in a similar manner: hospitals appear to overspend on their accommodation. This conclusion is based on the ratio of production to square meters, so one should be cautious about it but I wonder if it's also related to Jevons's paradox. In recent years many hospitals had the opportunity to renovate or even make completely new buildings. It would be interesting to see if building activity created some capacity to spend more on accommodation. It often seems to be the case.

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.