It seems there are architectural design heuristics for things like width of hallways and number of elevators, but not for “number and layout of dining areas for optimal social mixing.” I realize the latter kind of design goal is a higher level objective, but given the huge variety of buildings in existence along with modern understandings of human behavior, is it possible such higher order design heuristics are within grasp of the architecture profession?
In theory, yes, and it would certainly be interesting to see more controlled studies!
However, I think it's extremely difficult to do effectively because of the nature of the variables. "Social mixing" may be measurable across large populations with Facebook data, but measuring social mixing at the finer scale of an architectural intervention is tricky. I think in the open office studies I mentioned above, everyone wore somewhat elaborate trackers. I guess they could try that in other settings, but it would be hard to do on large scale, so, unlike with the Facebook data, it'd be harder to control for externalities. Plus, architectural interventions are relatively few and far between, and almost always come with associated policy changes...again, a slew of other externalities. Perhaps there is a more creative approach that would involve temporary interventions like furniture layouts or partitions. But again, the ethical issue of using children as test subjects is there.
And even if behavioral changes are associated with architectural changes, there is something that doesn't sit right about the idea of acting on those conclusions along the lines of: design X this way, so people will do Y. I simply cannot accept that human behavior, especially complicated behavior like social mixing, is *caused* by architecture, except in the most very basic obvious sense. Like, hallways connecting rooms (that happen to contain people!) that are free and open to movement will lend themselves to social mixing. Even then, I'm tempted to rebut by saying something like: "but if the rooms are full of introverts..." (I could go on) (Can you tell I'm an introvert too? :-) )
The point about higher order heuristics reminds me about the idea raised in another great Substack article (https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/why-arent-smart-people-happier) which articulated the difference between poorly-defined and well-defined problems. I suppose the inherent tension here is that any scientific study by necessity needs to clarify an issue to the point where it's a well-defined problem. But because of its complexity, architecture tends to operate in the "poorly defined problem" space a lot more. (Incidentally, solving "upward mobility" is certainly a poorly defined problem too.)
I think part of what led me to write this post is that the NYTimes excerpt could leave one with a sense that the issue of upward mobility could be partly solved by the supposedly "well-defined" problem of open architecture design. And that, I think, is absurd. However inconvenient this fact may be for architects, architecture is not a well-defined problem solver for a poorly defined social problems.
It seems there are architectural design heuristics for things like width of hallways and number of elevators, but not for “number and layout of dining areas for optimal social mixing.” I realize the latter kind of design goal is a higher level objective, but given the huge variety of buildings in existence along with modern understandings of human behavior, is it possible such higher order design heuristics are within grasp of the architecture profession?
In theory, yes, and it would certainly be interesting to see more controlled studies!
However, I think it's extremely difficult to do effectively because of the nature of the variables. "Social mixing" may be measurable across large populations with Facebook data, but measuring social mixing at the finer scale of an architectural intervention is tricky. I think in the open office studies I mentioned above, everyone wore somewhat elaborate trackers. I guess they could try that in other settings, but it would be hard to do on large scale, so, unlike with the Facebook data, it'd be harder to control for externalities. Plus, architectural interventions are relatively few and far between, and almost always come with associated policy changes...again, a slew of other externalities. Perhaps there is a more creative approach that would involve temporary interventions like furniture layouts or partitions. But again, the ethical issue of using children as test subjects is there.
And even if behavioral changes are associated with architectural changes, there is something that doesn't sit right about the idea of acting on those conclusions along the lines of: design X this way, so people will do Y. I simply cannot accept that human behavior, especially complicated behavior like social mixing, is *caused* by architecture, except in the most very basic obvious sense. Like, hallways connecting rooms (that happen to contain people!) that are free and open to movement will lend themselves to social mixing. Even then, I'm tempted to rebut by saying something like: "but if the rooms are full of introverts..." (I could go on) (Can you tell I'm an introvert too? :-) )
The point about higher order heuristics reminds me about the idea raised in another great Substack article (https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/why-arent-smart-people-happier) which articulated the difference between poorly-defined and well-defined problems. I suppose the inherent tension here is that any scientific study by necessity needs to clarify an issue to the point where it's a well-defined problem. But because of its complexity, architecture tends to operate in the "poorly defined problem" space a lot more. (Incidentally, solving "upward mobility" is certainly a poorly defined problem too.)
I think part of what led me to write this post is that the NYTimes excerpt could leave one with a sense that the issue of upward mobility could be partly solved by the supposedly "well-defined" problem of open architecture design. And that, I think, is absurd. However inconvenient this fact may be for architects, architecture is not a well-defined problem solver for a poorly defined social problems.