Welcome to Your World

February 6, 2017
Architecture critic Goldhagen (Anxious Modernisms) makes a passionate, persuasive plea for better design—a built environment that places humans before the “short-term or parochial interests” that typically drive construction and renovation of human habitats. This generously illustrated volume takes readers on a tour of the built environments in which most of us live, work, and play, using concrete examples in each chapter to anchor the author’s arguments. The first two chapters describe the status quo and introduce the concept of “blindsight,” a cognitive condition the author employs as a metaphor to explore the complex role built environment plays in an individual’s experience and internal world. She also discusses the human need for nature and the ways that social environments shape and are shaped by spatial design, and concludes with suggestions for design that supports, rather than works against, human thriving. The author has an educator’s conviction that bad design is grounded in ignorance, and that if “people understand just how much design matters, they’d care... they’d change.” Yet much of our built environment is the result of policy and investment decisions that remain opaque to the average resident of a city apartment complex, visitor to a public park, or employee in an office building. Because of this, more examples of grassroots organizing for change would have strengthened the work’s final chapters; readers will be justified in wondering whence the political and economic will to change might spring. Color photos.

A look at how new research in urban space, the built environment, and city planning stresses the importance of well-designed architecture for the betterment of society. No art form has a more profound and lasting affect on the public than architecture. As the most widespread and practical artistic medium, architecture is experienced by virtually everyone no matter their location or background, yet there is often little consideration, not least among the public, about how the built environment shapes human experience. For Goldhagen, architecture critic and former professor at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, this is a critical oversight. As the author points out, new research in cognitive science proves that human interaction with the built environment profoundly affects our ability to understand ourselves and others, particularly how place and memory are connected and how environments shape our understanding of memory and the past. Therefore, the need for thoughtful, human-centered design is an essential component to social progress and the betterment of humanity. But, good design does not simply imply access to resources and wealth. As Goldhagen points out, from a design perspective, there is not much separating a slum dwelling from a McMansion. Richly illustrated with photography supporting Goldhagen's examples, which range from classical architecture such as the Parthenon to contemporary stadium design, her analysis is practical and accessible, synthesizing scientific research with architectural theory about space and design. Focusing on how the built environment shapes social relations, both public and private, Goldhagen discusses how views of nature and natural elements are essential to good design, as well as breaking down how variable surface types affect human perceptions, among other topics. At times dense and verging on academic, Goldhagen has provided a valuable compendium to design analysis and the benefits of progress in contemporary design. An eye-opening look at the ways in which carefully planned and executed design and architecture can expand cognitive faculties and improve daily life. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 1, 2017

Architecture critic Goldhagen explores the effect of urban design and the built environment on our psyches. She offers a set of observations on subjects as ancient as the caryatid porch on the Acropolis in Athens and as modern as the flying staircase of architect Oscar Niemeyer's Itamaraty Palace at Brasilia. Her abiding interest is the capacity of cities, public spaces, and places for people to nurture community and sustain healthy human interaction. In seven chapters with abstruse titles (e.g., "Designing for Humans"), the author's admiration for architect Louis Kahn fuels an illuminating search for timeless qualities in the canon of modern architecture. Occasional platitudes ("human beings are strongly drawn to bilateral symmetry") are wisely supported by original and engaging speculation. That fresh perspective, however, would have been more accessible with classified chapters, as in Steen Eiler Rasmussen's Experiencing Architecture, Witold Rybczynski's How Architecture Works: A Humanist's Toolkit, and Robert Venturi's seminal Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. VERDICT With neither a chronological nor typological order, this otherwise important book is a welcome addition to libraries with comprehensive collections of architectural theory. Undergraduate students are unlikely to find their way through it.--Paul Glassman, Yeshiva Univ. Libs., New York

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