Architectural Design

1) When I think of epic architectural flaw, I think of my dorm room. Living in a corner room in Harmon couldn’t be much better. My roommate and I have two rooms to ourselves and our own bathroom, but there’s one little thing that brings it all down- our windows. Providing a great cross wind during the hot days, our three windows let a lot more in than just air. For some reason the designer of the windows thought it would be a good idea to put the blinds inside the windows. This might not seem like a big deal, but when it’s hot and you’re looking to take a nap, it’s either no light or cool air, not both. Because the blinds are in the windows, if the window is open the blinds can’t be shut. So, despite our bountiful in-room options, a cool, daytime nap is not one of them.
2) Harmon Hall- Harmon Hall displays some of the best and worst aspects of architecture. Let’s starts with the good. The visceral design of Harmon is one of its top attributes. As with all the buildings on K’s campus, the building is very eye-catching with its outer walls made completely of brick and laid out in the early 1800’s style that is synonymous with Kalamazoo College. Surrounded by green grass and flower beds, one is sure to notice Harmon located front and center on Academy Street. Turning to the bad, we’ll take a look at the interior of Harmon. Mostly, the visceral design of Harmon’s interior is acceptable, but it’s the behavioral design where it fails. A couple things immediately come to mind: the exit doors and the laundry room. For some reason, someone decided that walking out a door was just too easy of a process and needed to be more difficult to challenge the studious minds of those who exit. Instead of just pushing the door to open it, one must first press a button to exit, just a fun little challenge right? With the laundry room, it’s a case of escaping a maze. Throughout Harmon there are many staircases, but only one, secluded stairwell leads to the laundry room. Hidden in the far back corner of Harmon and leading to the few rooms in the basement, this stairwell is not an easy find. Both of these failures clearly break the rules of behavioral design. Could someone come to Harmon for the first time and walk right out the door or straight to the laundry room? The answer is, “no.” This lack of simplicity and difficult to understand design can make for a great amount of confusion and frustration for a first time visitor to Harmon.
3) The problem with the current architectural design process starts at the beginning and finishes at the end. The idea behind programming is difficult to understand. It doesn’t seem to make much sense that the architect is not at the forefront of developing the requirements for the project. As much as that doesn’t make sense, it makes even less sense that architects are seemingly clueless to the results of their creations. These problems seem to be very basic, thus their solutions do too. It makes sense that the owner chooses how his building looks, but it would make sense that the architect is at his side throughout the process, critiquing the owner’s ideas and giving her own suggestions. Though this may be an expensive process, one would have to think that it would be worth the sacrifice. Turning to the feedback process, one wouldn’t expect the architect to do too much research on his final design, but someone should. A job like this would be perfect for a social scientist. A study of how and why people use a building the way they do would not only be an interesting study but beneficial to architects and buildings users across the globe.