How to Read Buildings: A Crash Course in Architecture

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Explore the functionality of a building. Look for clues that a building is fulfilling its functions well (or not), such as the amount of ease with which inhabitants seem to find their way through it. The designing process includes a variety of elements that are all connected and equally important individually. The way in which the building is approached, the way the light creates ambience, the scale and proportion of the building in relation to its user, and the way it is placed in its context all create a drama to be experienced. Through the use of space, enclosure, and structure, the architecture is explained. Our senses are enhanced by various thresholds and transitions designed to pause us and make us feel the surroundings. The transitions hold an element of curiosity moulded to form platforms, podiums, and spaces for people to observe the building. The narration of the building starts from an ambiguous concept transforming it into a liveable space with required functions and aesthetics.

The article ‘Architecture with the Brain in Mind’ (2004) by John Eberhard and Brenda Patoine covers some of the early modern history of scientific interest in the relationship between the brain and architecture. Eberhard was an early proponent of recognising the importance of this connection. Buildings are embedded in cultures, histories and narratives, and a complete understanding of how a piece of architecture ‘works’ requires us to dig into those levels of meaning as well. Sometimes, one’s primal emotional response to a building and its layers of meaning can intersect. Consider a building like Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin. It is a sharply angled, zig-zagging monster of discomfort and foreboding. Yet, understood as a reflection of Jewish life in Berlin after the Holocaust, the building is a brilliant response to its surroundings and their history. Mountain, stone, water – building in the stone, building with the stone, into the mountain, building out of the mountain, being inside the mountain – how can the implications and the sensuality of the association of these words be interpreted architecturally?” Peter Zumthor. Architects must learn to attune themselves to the way that a design influences their feelings. This can be a little bit like mindfulness meditation and can be practised with very simple objects – even something like a chair or a vase – before working up to things such as cathedrals or other architectural showpieces. Though a trainee architect takes years to learn how to do this, some practice with the basics will enrich your experience of architecture.urn:lcp:howtoreadbuildin0000crag:epub:a6af2ed8-1400-4c48-b98e-46ed6f24b17c Foldoutcount 0 Grant_report Arcadia #4281 Identifier howtoreadbuildin0000crag Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t34291p7q Invoice 2089 Isbn 9780713686722 As you walk around a building, try to notice how moving through the space affects you. In a way, you can think of this exercise as a graduation from the first one. But now that you are moving, there are many more opportunities to notice the effects of the design of a building on your body. Do you find yourself wanting to speed up or slow down? Does your posture change as you walk through different spaces? Do you notice anything special about where you want to stop and look around? What do you notice in the space around you? What features draw your attention? Do fine details draw you in? The contours of the space? Colours?

As an example of this exploratory approach, look at the building called the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. This structure earned a place on many ‘world’s worst architecture’ lists, its appearance derided as ugly and alien. The glass pyramid addition to the Louvre in Paris, designed by I M Pei, was similarly reviled when it was first unveiled in the 1980s. Countless public consultations dealing with proposed new designs encounter protests from stakeholders that a building ‘just doesn’t fit the neighbourhood’. So, at all levels, from giant new urban skyscrapers to more modest new buildings in the suburbs, we are preoccupied with the way a building fits into its setting. Move through a building and observe how you react. See how different parts of a building draw you in or push you away. Note any effects of transitions, such as turning a corner or descending a staircase.What’s going on in the neighbourhood? There’s rarely a better option than exploring the area on foot to get a better sense of this. Who is here? What are they doing? What is the vibe? Go beyond your own exploration, though, to dig into the history of the neighbourhood, starting with an online search. Take a look at a map of the building’s surroundings as well. A couple of other tips as you embark on your architectural adventures: it’s completely fine to explore buildings by yourself. In fact, much like solo movie-going, it can be liberating to be freed from the duty to talk to your friends about your experience. On the other hand, there’s much pleasure to be drawn from comparing notes. You’ll learn that our responses to buildings are hardly universal. Also, don’t feel that you have to visit the Louvre or the Sistine Chapel to practise these exercises. Indeed, there are benefits to exploring your responses to highly familiar spaces, even your own home (see the first exercise below). How old is the building? Architecture is, of course, not static. Tastes change and so does the world. Transportation networks, the economy and lifestyles all evolve and, as they do so, architectural fashions adapt. It’s very common, for example, for two adjacent buildings to have been constructed in different eras and to embody different architectural styles. In the best cases, the later buildings will still relate stylistically to the earlier ones in some way. Exploring the temporal relationships between a building and its surroundings can provide fascinating insight. Though some of this might seem like it has little to do with architecture, there is abundant evidence that the details of your surroundings exert a powerful influence on the patterns of your thoughts, your nervous system, and even the state of your heart and your skin. You might find yourself attending to the world in a different way while immersed in a space with lots of natural features, with less sharply focused attention. If you’re in a tightly constrained space, you might find yourself responding with anxiety and its attendant increase in heart rate and sweat gland activity. With your observational toolkit tuned up, take your sensibilities on the road. You should be able to conduct the same kinds of procedures in any architectural space or, for that matter, as you behold any building’s exterior. What is your thinking like when you’re standing on the steps of a courthouse, gazing up at the details carved into its stone facade? How does your heart behave in an art gallery? What’s your mood like in an unfamiliar restaurant? As with your learner exercises in the home, try to tune in to the elements that speak to you. What are they saying? With time and practice, this kind of assessment of a built space can start to become automatic. Those responses have always been there. You are now just training yourself to be attuned to them.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-07-29 15:00:44 Boxid IA40195308 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier D' Angelo, M., 2022. Neri Oxman Takes Her Interdisciplinary MoMA Exhibition Online. [online] Architect. Available at: [Accessed 5 June 2022]. Pillsbury Hall offers a rich reading experience both up close and from a distance. All photos by Farm Kid Studios. You can also ask yourself: besides the actions of other inhabitants, what features of the spaces of your home contribute to your thoughts and feelings? Consider shape (including the shape of a particular room), patterns, colour, and form. For example, higher ceilings may promote abstract thinking, and people tend to find curvature attractive. You might even think about how you could change design elements within your home to shape it to your needs and desires.Understanding how a building works in this more practical sense takes a little time to do well. If you have the chance to spend an hour or more in a building such as a courthouse or a library, you can take up a variety of positions, watch the buzz of activity, and get a feel for how things are working (or not). Design inspiration came from this stone, which was treated with great respect and dignity. Guests can enjoy the antique advantages of bathing in this space designed to help them relax and enjoy a relaxing experience. Combining light and shade, open spaces and enclosed areas, and linear elements yields an intensely sensual and restorative experience. Essentially, the interior space has an informal layout that follows a carefully modelled path of circulation, leading bathers to predetermined points while letting them explore other areas on their own. In constructing the landscape, the architect was primarily influenced by his fascination with the magical qualities of stones within the mountain, with darkness and light, with light reflections on water or in the steam saturated air, with the unique acoustics of the bubbling water, with feelings of bare skin and warm stones, and with bathing rituals. What about sensations of touch? Even if you aren’t touching anything at the moment, you can have a sense of how something would feel if you were touching it (the Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa calls this sense ‘the eyes of the skin’). Look at the textures of the walls and floors. Does it seem as though you are feeling them with your fingers? What does it ‘feel’ like? A great way to better appreciate the impact of your surroundings is to experiment with different locations within your home. How do things change when you go from your quiet, happy place to a more dynamic, active location? For many people, the location within the home that sees the most dynamism is the kitchen. What happens when you try the same exercise there? One approach you can use is to go through the spaces of your home systematically and compare them. You could even make an annotated map on paper, jotting down what you sense and how you feel in each room.

For this exercise, it would make less sense to learn the ropes in your own home. Unless you live in a large estate or castle, the affordances for movement are probably restricted. Instead, go out into the world and find a place that interests you. A shopping mall, city hall, hotel, museum or any other large architectural space will work. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the 19th-century German poet-scientist, reportedly described architecture as ‘frozen music’. It’s a compelling idea, but it might also be misleading. In spite of what I asked you to do in the previous exercise, it isn’t common for us to sit still when experiencing architecture, observing it from a single, fixed perspective. Instead, we are frequently in motion. If we are using a building for whatever it is designed to do, then we are moving through it from one useful place to another. If we are simply enjoying or appreciating a building, then we are still moving, but now driven mostly by what attracts or repels us. In other words, if architecture is music, then the moving observer is the conductor. There are ways to avoid falling into the trap of com- place-ency. They resemble the contemplative practices that human beings have used for millennia to find more direct connections with themselves and their surroundings. The methods of the contemplative sciences are also commonly used by architects and designers to tune their own designs. As we will see, being still and being receptive to your surroundings – letting a scene wash over all your senses with as little analytic interruption as possible – while not an easy thing to do, can, with practice, enrich your experience of places.

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This handy book takes you on a guided tour of modern architecture through its most iconic and significant buildings, showing you how to read the hallmarks of each architectural style and how to recognise them in the buildings all around.