You Are Here (22 page)

In addition to intelligibility in the formal sense, some other factors influence the wayfinding friendliness of a building. One of the most complicated building designs, from the wayfinding perspective, is one that includes wings or hallways that intersect one another at oblique angles. Remember that because our minds are always looking for ways to simplify mental models of space, we have a tendency to align different regions, straighten curves, and smooth out jagged edges.

If you were to look down from above on the brain-shaped building where I work, you would see something like a doughnut-shaped structure with a ring of offices and laboratories organized around a central courtyard. Quite apart from the larger symbolism of the building, this is, in some ways, a lovely architectural idea. For one thing, it maximizes the number of offices that have windows, which can help to connect the building’s occupants to the outside world. For the wayfinder, though, the inner hallways can, quite literally, pose some treacherous curves. When I first took up residence in the building, I slowly learned the way from my office to various other locations around the ring, but my mental representation of the space was always as if the main central hallway consisted of one straight line, rather than a ring that circumnavigated the building. Using a simple route-based strategy, I learned that some locations required a left turn from my office door and others required a right (though truthfully, because the hallway was a ring, turns in either direction would eventually lead me to any destination on the floor). On one occasion, I followed a colleague from my office to his lab, but as he walked out the door he turned the “wrong” way. When I called out to correct him, he looked over his shoulder, eyes twinkling and eyebrow arched, and gestured for me to follow. When I arrived at his lab, having taken a route that
went against the grain of habit, nothing felt right. I was vaguely disoriented, as if I’d arrived at his lab through a peculiar wormhole in the fabric of space-time.

Although many architects are aware of the principles that underlie successful wayfinding in buildings, these principles must sometimes take a back seat to other architectural concerns, such as economics or even aesthetics. At a time when many cities are looking for architects who will design signature buildings that will produce recognizable landmarks or even attract curious tourists, the pragmatics of designing a building in which people do not become lost easily can be a minor consideration. Indeed, some of the most dramatic architectural creations in recent years, filled with either sinuous organic curves or the sharp angles of oblique, crystalline forms, though they make distinctive contributions to city skylines, do not admit of easy wayfinding. In such cases, the remedy is often to help to steer occupants of the building using carefully crafted signs and graphic aids such as “you are here” maps. These kinds of landmarks and spatial crutches can work well to remedy the psychological flaws of poorly designed configurations of space, and several companies specialize in crafting such navigational support systems for buildings, especially in the health care sector, where episodes of disorientation by patients or visitors could be stressful or even life threatening.

Understanding how our spatial cognition influences how we move and where we rest can often be used to exert a kind of social control. Many examples of this use of spatial design principles can be found in commercial buildings such as supermarkets, department stores, and shopping malls.
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In department stores, different sections can be placed as if to set the stage for a kind of story in which the
shopper plays the starring role. Cosmetics are placed carefully near other adornments, such as jewelry and purses. Men’s sportswear is kept respectfully apart from the tiny black dresses women wear to the fanciest parties.

The placement and design of food courts are also carefully managed to exert control over behavior. Unlike department stores, where mall owners hope that customers will linger for as long as possible with wallets in hand, food courts are designed to discourage lingering. Such areas are usually very open. Enclosing walls, and the refuge they offer, are avoided by arranging wide aisles around the outside of the seating area that are designed to draw people to the service counters. Food courts are brightly lit, often with skylights and high ceilings. Tables are arranged in such a way as to discourage groups of diners any larger than two. The effect, very much like trying to have lunch in the middle of an overdone foyer in a suburban McMansion, is artfully contrived to encourage people to slap down their money, wolf down their food, and plunge themselves back into the shopping fray.
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Perhaps a more apt metaphor would be to imagine primitive
Homo sapiens
sitting down for a nice lunch in the middle of a wide open stretch of savannah. He would undoubtedly run a great risk of
becoming
lunch, rather than
consuming
it, so would be unlikely to linger for dessert.

Shoppers might be corralled out of food courts and into highend jewelry sections by the subtle manipulations of space, but other contexts where the explicit use of the size and shape of space to exert social control on our behavior are even more extreme. In the gigantic gambling palaces of Las Vegas or Monte Carlo, shrewd designers understand that the placement of each hallway, crap table, or slot machine can influence the amount of money taken in by the casino.

Currently, there are two main theories about the best way to organize the space inside a casino in order to more quickly liberate the cash hiding in the wallets of visitors. One influential set of studies, carried out by longtime casino consultant Bill Friedman, emphasizes that the best way to maximize the yield of a casino is to focus the attention of visitors on the gambling equipment itself, especially the slot machines. To encourage this laser-beam focus, Friedman encourages the use of low ceilings, narrow aisles, and tight spaces so that the visitor is surrounded on all sides by the flashing lights and ringing bells of the slots. In addition, Friedman encourages spatial designs that explicitly work against good wayfinding—this is one context in which low spatial intelligibility would be considered a business asset. In general, Friedman’s philosophy seems to be one of doing all that can be managed to compel the visitors to spend as much time at the gambling machines as possible and to make it as difficult for them to leave the building as possible.
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Not surprisingly, given what we’ve already learned about how people use space, this approach may help to empty the pockets of gamblers, but it isn’t necessarily the most pleasant way to spend an afternoon, evening, or weekend.

Another model of casino design, championed by David Kranes, is based on the notion of a casino as a playground. In contrast to Friedman’s approach, which almost seems designed to snare visitors in the way a spider might lure a fly into its web, Kranes’s design philosophy is that casinos ought to be places where people not only want to come to have fun but also want to return again and again. Kranes argues that casinos should present large, vaulted spaces with beautiful textures and objects in addition to all the paraphernalia of gambling. Quite apart from the excitement of the games and the risks they involve, we should feel
that we are in an inviting, spatially intelligible, and perhaps even restorative environment. As Kranes puts it, “Gambling is a curious activity. We want to relax—and we want our blood to boil … all at once. Want to be both fully
in
and
out
of control—without contradiction.”
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So what do the scientists have to say about these different approaches to social control of space in casinos? Some of the best work in this area has been conducted by Karen Finlay’s group at the University of Guelph. Supported by the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre, one of the main objectives of the group is to understand how context effects can contribute to the tendency of some individuals to spend more money in casinos than they can afford. Is it possible that the very shape of a gambling space can encourage us to give away our next mortgage payment? Finlay’s work suggests that it is. By placing volunteers into virtual mock-ups of parts of casinos, or even by simply showing them photos or videos of casino interiors, Finlay tries to duplicate the contexts of actual casinos. She and her team administer psychological tests to the viewers of such materials to assess their feelings, moods, levels of arousal, or sense of restoration. Finlay’s research suggests that there are distinct differences between the effects of casino designs inspired by Kranes or by Friedman. But she has also found evidence to suggest that people with certain types of personalities might be more inclined to gamble beyond their limit depending on the context in which they find themselves. Specifically, playground-type casinos appear to be more likely to precipitate risky gambling behavior, especially in individuals whose normal temperament inclines them to be generally difficult to arouse.
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Findings such as those of Finlay and her co-workers suggest that the effects of the arrangement of space on our behavior might at times be so strong as to cause us to engage in activities that put our
lives and the lives of our families at risk. Given the enormous social costs of problem gambling, such issues deserve our close attention.

In addition to the time we spend in large buildings to shop, for entertainment, or perhaps to interact with government officials, most of us spend many hours in such larger inner spaces because of our occupations. The many ways in which the design and configuration of space can influence worker behavior, productivity, and job satisfaction are both fascinating and complex.

At a basic level, the organization of space can be used to control access and regulate privacy within the workspace. One simple example can be found in many office buildings, where there is a correlation between the position of an executive in the power hierarchy and his or her spatial position in a building. Receptionists, almost by definition, are going to be useful only if they are placed where they will be easily discovered by visitors who are unfamiliar with the building. Executives may want to be cloistered in corner offices with limited access in regions of low spatial integration. A more subtle example of the use of space to regulate privacy can be seen in many health care facilities such as hospitals, nursing homes, and chronic care facilities. Distinctions between public space and space designated for staff members can be indicated with explicit signs and locked doors, but it is also possible to engineer the manner in which people will flow through a building using the principles of point-and-stick spatial analysis or computer-simulated agents. Buildings can be designed to minimize confusion, discourage contact between public visitors and those working behind the scenes, and maintain orderly flow of visitors through a setting. Think of the last time you visited a hospital. Such buildings are filled with rich combinations of areas that are accessible to the public and areas such as examining
rooms, surgical suites, and physician lounges and offices that are clearly off limits. Though visitors are sometimes kept out of sensitive areas by lock and key (or code and touchpad), it is surprising how often such private areas are unlocked yet largely left undisturbed. Usually, this is not an accident but rather the result of the careful design of space.

Apart from privacy, the artful (or scientific) design of workspaces can be used to promote desirable workflow patterns, to enhance contact between particular groups of employees, or, in the argot of modern designers, encourage the creation of spontaneous “thirdspaces,” those areas of spatial convergence, the “water-coolers” where people gather spontaneously to discuss last night’s television shows and, hopefully, to exchange ideas.

Economics will always be an important determinant of workspace design. When offices are placed in the standardized footplates of expensive urban real estate, the tendency is to pack as many desks as possible into a small space. In conventional cubicle arrangements, workers are sometimes set up in arrangements like Manhattan city blocks, with straight lines, narrow corridors, and an unrelenting geometric grid underlying all of it. Though this might allow an office to reach high population density, and may also help to minimize the distances between workers (which would seem to be an efficiency of a type), it will result in a space that is low in intelligibility. Not only will employees feel little sense of place in such an environment (new employees will become lost easily and may have unusual difficulty learning how the workflow in an office is organized if it is not signalled by the shapes of spaces), but desirable traffic in ideas and information might be impeded as well.

The classic hive of cubicles is decreasing in popularity these days, as progressive companies work hard to find ways to maximize retention of workers, especially in the knowledge industries
that form an increasing part of the economy of the Western world. The basic cubicle design is still often a mainstay, though the manner in which its enclosing walls encourage or inhibit interactivity, and the effects of cubicle organization on workflow management, are garnering more attention than in previous times. Yet there is much work to be done to understand how space can be utilized to maximize productivity, economy, and job satisfaction. Some offices have tried moving to completely open designs in which employees are not provided with dedicated workspaces at all but are left to organize their own spaces using open tables and mobile technologies, perhaps with a few specialized walled areas to enhance privacy for smaller face-to-face meetings. Though such an open plan might work well for certain types of activities, especially for very small companies, it is less likely to be satisfactory for larger institutions, unless those institutions can rely heavily on mobile communications and are willing to encourage telecommuting. Both Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard have adopted such workspace plans; employees are encouraged to work from home (or Starbucks) whenever possible, and when their presence in the office is required, they simply put themselves in whichever part of the building requires their services. These companies report that they have realized efficiencies both in worker interactions and in the economic gain that comes of having smaller office footplates.
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