Buildings that work

Rather than dazzle and impress, an airport lounge must soothe and nurture. Here a weary traveller has to bide his time and prepare himself for his onward journey

For the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to inhabit many public utility spaces: city squares and streets, airports and airport lounges, train stations, railway compartments, dining rooms, hotels and restaurants in India and abroad.

And while doing this, I have often thought about design and how it engages with the human spirit. Why do some spaces work while others don't? The construction of a public space or building is done to fulfil a variety of agendas, some overt and many covert.

The sites of state authority, for instance, were often built with great pomp and pelf to make a statement about their constructors. Emperors, presidents and even garden-variety demagogues have all used the vocabulary of big imposing architecture to secure their position and legacy in the hearts and minds of their subjects.

Most buildings inspired by the simple impulse to impress are successful: be it South Block in Delhi, the Sistine Chapel or Versailles - all structures constructed to demonstrate solidity, power, wealth and invincibility.

It is when there are two or more agendas at play during the construction of public spaces that things go wrong. Take the case of airports and airport lounges. While designing an airport, one of the key factors must be that it displays modernity, efficiency and reliability. That it assures its inhabitants of its ability to deliver them on schedule and in the best possible condition.

An airport lounge, on the other hand, has to serve another purpose altogether: rather than dazzle and impress, it must, in fact, soothe and nurture. Here a weary traveller has to bide his time, gather his wits and prepare himself for his onward journey.

Here, instead of the bright lights and flashy decor and industrial chic of the airport check-in and security areas, what is called for are soothing lights, a comforting decor and a nurturing ambience.

The same is true of hotel private ad public spaces. Hotel lobbies might need to entice guests with their shock and awe ostentation, but a hotel room, on the other hand, must be an intimate setting, where a traveller feels comfortable enough to fall asleep at night.

In too many public utility spaces that I have visited, I have found that in spite of much money and time and energy expended on the project, the end result has been a failure, only because it has not been designed from a human end-user perspective.

I have sat in train stations where the placement of passenger benches has been so thoughtless that perfect strangers are required to spend long hours staring right into each other's faces. I have been in hospitals where the X-ray and pathology rooms do not have provisions for people to change in and out of their clothes, or to hang them up, even though this is part of their daily function.

And I have been in office blocks which so diminish the human spirit that imagining anyone could be inspired to work to ones optimum levels in them is unimaginable.

Central to the design of any space created for the inhabitation of humans I guess is the human element. Perhaps architects and designers should also be required to study human psychology, anthropology and sociology along with the rest of their disciplines. Or perhaps all they need to do is to picture themselves or their loved ones using those spaces.

The human element: cut through the brick and mortar and that's all that really matters!

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com