Buildings can make people feel happy or miserable because they [...] reflect the life state of the architects and planners who are responsible for them. Thus, if these men and women regard people merely as "units" to be housed, they will design and build accordingly, and the people who then live in those houses will inevitably sense that they have somehow been dehumanized. Consequently, they will feel oppressed and depressed by their surroundings and may even feel the urge to vandalize them or cover them with graffiti. Indeed, it is possible to interpret even these acts as attempts to humanize the environment, as they can at least be considered signs of a human presence, albeit a negative one. Good architecture has the opposite effect, of course, and reflects a sensitivity to the need of people to feel "spiritually" comfortable within their environment, just as much as they need to be physically comfortable.
It's "nice" but it is not particularly unique to Buddhism. One can also say the the large scale trends in architectural and physical planning styles reflect the broader sense of wellbeing/prosperity in the society. I would definitely like to know how Buddhist thought has a special impact on spatial planning and architecture, but I don't find it in this blog. "Buildings can make people feel happy or miserable..." for many reasons. I suspect that no building always makes everybody feel happy - there are other circumstances that affect human mood. I can, on the other hand, imagine buildings that more often have the opposite effect - brutish, dark, monolithal buildings surrounded and surmouted by barbed wire and other obvious technologies meant to exclude people or keep them in against their will.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there is the anthroposophic (Waldorf Steiner) impact on architecture...also keen on promoting "humanising" architectural forms, colours and surroundings.
By Tim Greenhow
Thank you for your comment, Tim.
ReplyDeleteSadly enough I already heard of Rudolf (but not Waldorf) Steiner, and his "anthroposophy", because he had "fucked up" (pardon my French) the head of a few people I met. But, you know, any religion or belief can become extremely dangerous when “absorbed” by people with a weak personality and/or conceived as a dogma.
Anyway, my blog is not about religions, but about my professional interests, and spatial planning is among them. That is why there you cannot find anything else on Buddhism.
I don’t think I can share your sentence “the large scale trends in architectural and physical planning styles reflect the broader sense of wellbeing/prosperity in the society”, but in any case I believe it doesn’t centre upon the purpose of my post. I probably didn’t make myself understood, because my goal was to focus on the fact that also within a Buddhist vision it clearly emerges that architecture and urban planning problems arise from the “base”, ie it is architects and urban planner who create “hells”, those very people who claim to provide “solutions” and “living areas” for the well-being of people.
This is what I read in that extract.
Buddhists know who we have to blame for our disastrous cities ;)
Thanks Fabrizio. I have a personal history from communities in which there were no architects or planners. And still in many cities today the worst living conditions are those where there is no planning or overall design, but so called "organic growth" and in the worst cases spurred on by greedy landowners who create places for occupationi (hardly "living") and whose main purpose is financial profit. The fact that we can have very luxurious villas in the same city as squalid slums is precisely because of "the broader sense of wellbeing/ prosperity in the society" - i.e. very uneven. Many large cities today do not have one community (of shared values) but many. The prosperous claim a right to shape their living environment the way they want, and can afford to realise it. The poor do not have that opportunity. I know many planners and architects who are very active in trying to redress this situation to favour the poorer segments of the population; the resistence does not come from other planners or architects but politicians, business people, land owners and financiers.
ReplyDeleteAnd as to the buildings themselves, an enormous number of buildings (especially residential ones) are not designed by architects or planners.
By Tim Greenhow