Revised position Statement:

I’m interested in exploring the psychological effects of architecture. I believe that all architecture has the ability to affect people’s personality and state of being.  I’m focusing on the effects that living in a public housing building has on community. I believe that by changing how a public housing building physically looks and how it reacts to it occupants has that ability to improve the quality of life of the occupants.

Revised Methodology:

After researching the history of the neighborhood of Homewood so I know whom I’m designing for and what their needs are.  I plan on working in digital and physical model form focusing on developing a plan that can be replicated throughout the neighborhood. I plan on setting up the model as if I was working with the same financial constraints as the community. This is important because I’m not trying to change the building so much that the currents residents won’t be able to afford to live there. 

Bibliography, Read to Date:

Jack Williamson. Design and Cultural Responsibility. Design Michigan , 1997

Amos Rapoport. Culture, Architecture and Design. Locke Science Publishing Co. 2005

Juhani Pallasmaa. The Eyes of the Skin. John Wiley & Sons LTD, 2005

Fuller Moore. Environmental Control Systems. McGraw-Hill Inc, 1993

G.Z. Brown and Mark DeKay. Sun, Wind & Light. John Wiley & Sons, 2001

Bibliography in Progress:

D. Bradford Hunt. Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing. University Of Chicago Press,October 1, 2010

Architecture for Humanity. Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises Metropolis Books, January 15, 2006

Bryan Bell, Katie Wakeford, Steve Badanes, and Roberta Feldman. Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism. Metropolis Books, October 1, 2008

Cynthia E. Smith. Design for the other 90%. Editions Assouline, September 30, 2007

Jeffrey Hou. Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. Routledge, May 27, 2010

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1+3+9= changes the world, one child at a time

1

Architecture has the ability to have psychological effects of the people that occupy and observe it.

+3

Architecture is people and people are architecture. One cannot exist without the other and they both have a direct effects and influences on one another. Architecture is our past, present and future. Architecture will be our future, which is if we as a people still have one.

+9

To me architecture is a direct representation of people put into the built environment. The architecture of the past and present ends up taking on the characteristics of the architect that designed it and the client that wanted it built.After the architecture is built it begins to take on a life of its own. The ideals in that life have a direct correlation to the ideals and wants of the parents that raised it. Then when that child is exposed to other people, they start to affect their lives. The affects are both positive and negative. But if you continue to experience that child time and time again, that experience starts to have a permanent effect on you. Which in turn you pass on to someone else, the same way the child gave it to you. This child is architecture and there is no way of running from it. The only thing that we can hope to do is try to refine it in way that makes society better instead of separating it. Just because some architecture doesn’t have a lot of money put into it shouldn’t mean that the people who occupy it should feel like that they’re worth the same relative amount.

1+3+9= The World Is My Mirror

Architecture has the ability to leave psychological effects on the people that occupy them and witness it.

Architecture has the ability to intimidate and it also has the ability to uplift people. Architecture is capable of healing the minds of people after a tragedy but it also has the power to create a new one. Architecture has the ability to show the world what makes being human beautiful and what makes humans monsters.

As a child I was thought to judge the world by how it appeared because that was how the world was going to judge me. Everything from how I dressed to what I ate was a direct reflection on how the world saw me as a person and what I was worth. I one part of that identity that I had no control over, was the place I called home. When I was 10 my parents divorced and we left our house in the suburbs in the Northern California to an apartment complex out side of a very wealthy neighborhood. And when the quality of my housing had lowered so did the expectations on how I turned out as a person. The extended family I had that had been so close to me and visited quiet often simply stopped coming around. My “friends” at the high school I attended treated me as an outsider after the first time they came over and saw where I called home. And I always wanted to ask, “Why does it matter? What does a building or a place have to do with me as a person?” That’s exactly what I’m going to try to figure out. Is there a way to improve the image a lower income housing?