21st Century Architecture Manifesto

Loneliness Loneliness Loneliness Loneliness Loneliness in Architecture Architecture Architecture Architecture Architecture Tianyu Liu 980346 Tutorial 18 Shyn Cheah

Content

Introduction

Loneliness in urban context

The Built Environment Impact on Loneliness and Mental Health Under COVID-19 and In the Post-pandemic Future Construct social connections to weaken loneliness Appreciate solitude Moving Forward Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Architecture is where most human activities take place.

Architecture triggers emotions. Do we feel unbearably lonely living in today’s world?

Can loneliness be enjoyable?

In this manifesto, I divide concept of loneliness into two types, namely negative loneliness and positive loneliness.

Negative loneliness:

A depressive sense usually passively felt by people. People isolated, with little connections with others are vulnerable.

Especially, people who live in crowded world but whose personal values are unseen are easier to feel lonely.

Positive loneliness: A state that people need to get alone and enjoy solitude. It is usually initiative. In this chaos world, people all need individual spaces to reflect and meditate in order to be more determined. People can enjoy loneliness, but must be enclosed with proper circumstances.

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Fig. 1. Edward Hopper, Hotel Window, 1955

Loneliness in urban context

In today’s society, being alone passively is unavoidable. Particularly, the condition of the built environment even worsens this situation.

Back in twentieth century, loneliness in urban area was depicted by artists.

In Edward Hopper’s artworks, characters are exposed in isolated statuses.

Physical proximation does not promote connectivity among people. The characters usually separated from unseen walls. The walls are set by the tension on character’s face, their outfits and body gesture. 1 In the same era, a type of low-cost, high-density apartment called Khrushchyovka appeared in the Soviet Union. This type of apartment was hatched in collectivistic environment. The facilities were shared, and the unit size was very small. The corridors are narrow and depressed. Although the residences lived together with their neighbours, they felt lonely. People’s personal values were weakened in the apartments and their living style was not decent.

Khrushchyovka then set an economical construction typology for other countries including China. Many of this type of buildings are occupied to date.

Living with numerous neighbours but lack of communal activities due to the lack of communal spaces, negative loneliness descends upon the inhabitants.

The dilemmas in Khrushchyovka and Hopper’s paintings are similar. The indifferent individuals are bounded in walls and isolated from others.

Fig. 2. Seanzwiki, Khrushchyovka, 2019

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In Delirious New York by Koolhaas and Vriesendorp, the concept of ‘culture of congestion’ was introduced. Koolhaas observed great potential of skyscrapers as they could have vertical movements and allocate programmes on different floors. The cities’ horizontal congestion would change into vertical blocks.2 This idea keeps influential to Koolhaas’s later works.

Seattle Central Library is a representative work having humanistic programmes in 3-dimension. To a certain extent, Koolhaas eliminated both the formalist physical boundaries and the unseen walls in the congestions. The blueprint helps to reduce negative loneliness of the citizens.

Fig. 3. OMA and LMN, Seattle Central Library Diagram, 2004

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The Built Environment Impact on Loneliness and Mental Health Under COVID-19 and In the Postpandemic Future Outbreak During the COVID-19 outbreak, when lockdown or quarantine comes mandatory, people are forced to do all activities at home, which include sleeping, eating, working, exercise and even socializing. Poor housing conditions are closely linked with depressions. Limited views, small living space per capita and insufficient indoor activity spaces all result in negative psychological effects.3 Meanwhile, the social interactions only online are actually ineffective. People still feel isolated and prolonged isolation may eventually cause a decrease of social ability.4 We have many facts that we cannot control, such as outbreaks, wealth disparity, the individual health condition, the changing world. From the built environment aspect, what positive actions can designers take?

Co-housing

Co-housing as a housing popular mode in recent decades, has a key feature of connection among the residents. The coronavirus outbreak undoubtedly weakened the socializing lifestyle, but co-housing still has the advantage to lower the negative impact on loneliness and other mental aspects of the pandemic.5 People have built the communal connections in the past years, and they tend to maintain the connections. The connections are remained fewer

Fig. 4. Sudhir Patwardhan, Inside (Window), 2009

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for the people outside the co-housing community. In such communities that people could feel sense of belonging, they believe co-housing could reduce difficulty when facing emergencies.6

Open air spaces should be a future development direction. At a variety of scales open air spaces are required. Within a building or a small community, they act as glue of community, strengthen the sense of belonging and minimise the sense of isolation.7 They are also needed in civic scales. In some circumstances people cannot have close physical contact, while the large-scale open air spaces offer the socializing opportunities even with the requirement of social distancing.

Construct social connections to weaken loneliness

Loneliness is longing for the sense of belonging. In fact, both acceptance and integration are beneficial to weaken loneliness.8 There is distinction between accepted and integrated. The latter has a sense of unified and a stronger sense of belonging. For instance, it is good if the special characters of minorities like different race and having different sexual orientation are widely accepted in public. However, being integrated is more meaningful for the minorities. Though architecture could not interfere this social ideology, it has the ability to create spaces to make people feel accepted and integrated. We could design spaces for solitary individuals in bigger public spaces.9 People here look like separated from each other; they are indeed integrated within the urban public spaces. People would feel connected, not only with other people but also with the urban context.

This is opposite to the characters in Hopper’s artworks, where people might even physically close to each other, they were defensive, desireless and covered with unseen walls.

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Appreciate solitude

Architecture cannot completely eliminate loneliness, so why not embrace it?

Here, I call it positive loneliness. Personal feelings and thoughts are valued. If a place offers space for people to reflect, meditate by their own but not totally disconnected from the outer world, then they would not feel sense of negative loneliness like unwanted. The process of reflection and meditation indeed is a process to experience positive loneliness, or so-called solitude.

We can embrace solitude by approaching the following three aspects: nature, memory and art.10 Nature: Away from city, it is easy for people to embrace solitude in nature. People in untamed nature would be very relaxed so that they can think intently. However, nowadays urban areas are increasingly encroaching on nature. A buffer might be a subtle blend of nature and man-made structures.11 Memory:

When living in a city, people always depict mental maps that picturing places and routes according to their personal preferences.12

Memory about culture helps people to enjoy solitude. Please be aware that fast fashion is not beneficial to memory. That is ‘fleeting and easy forgotten’.13 It is more likely to map a place where people stop for a long time. For instance, places related to religious, the small nooks in public spaces, places with beautiful views, places relate to deaths.

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Art: Adolf Loos asserts that places for loneliness should arouse right emotions.14 The right emotions indeed denote to serenity. In classical art and classical form of architecture, the atmosphere of serenity is easy to achieve.15 Moreover, people always feel familiar with classical architectural expressions. The enhances memory as well.

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Fig.5. Vector Architects, Seashore Library, 2015

Fig. 6. Vector Architects, Seashore Chapel, 2015

Aranya Gold Coast Community is a harmonic resort in Qinhuangdao, China. The community appreciates emotional and spiritual values. It consists of housing, hotel, public facilities and cultural destinations. The Seashore Library and Seashore Chapel by Vector Architects are located in Aranya, on the same beach next to the boundless sea. After they were put in use, the public gave the library a new label: the lonely library and the chapel of loneliness, which is beyond the architects’ intention, but draws wider attention. It is understandable why the public give those labels. Firstly, the buildings are set in nature, far from the teeming city. Secondly, they are designed with clean, poetic, and monumental architectural languages, which helps people to form memory. Thirdly, the library shows an art of tectonic, and the chapel is set in beautiful symmetry.

With the embrace of nature, people could find their contemplation destination in any smaller sectors of the library or the chapel freely. They would enjoy tranquillity and loneliness, and fill the emptiness inside.

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Moving Forward

One reason that the Seashore Library and Chapel being successful is its advantaged site location. In urban cities, it is not always easy to find a place next to the sea or other natural spots like mountain. Hence what can we bring to the urban context?

In the competition of Parc de la Villette, Tschumi deconstructed the original urban landscape organisation. He raised a system on the basis of points, lines and surfaces. The dispersed follies have independent functions, while the lines and surfaces bring complex interaction into the park.16

The Tokyo Loneliness Tree Hole Plan by Cais has a similar logic. Nevertheless, the ‘tree holes’ were not planned on a new layer of rigid grid, they were inserted to the existing urban fabric, on different heights. Whilst embracing solitude in the nooks, inhabitants would not feel negative loneliness as they do not lose the external connection.

Points, lines and surfaces act well as layers, yet they are considered more in 2-dimension in Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette. Architects shall utilise this thinking vertically, or indeed, 3-dimensionally as well. Critically, the design failure of Khrushchyovka and some of the modern skyscrapers is that the floors are just repetitively added on one and another. In section, neither spaces for different program nor movements are considered.

Here, I would bring another logic of designing for architects, which follows points, lines, and atmosphere. Atmosphere involves physical boundaries of spaces and invisible properties of the space. It significantly impacts the emotion and relationship of the human inside. We shall be determined as knowing what atmosphere we want to create while designing. Besides, we shall approach our purpose by curate its characters, namely moods, synaesthesia, movement, intersubjective atmospheres and culturally conditioned projects.17 Atmosphere is crucial in both the smaller spaces like the dispersed points or nooks, and the larger environment as a whole.

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Fig. 7. Bernard Tschumi Architects, Parc de la Villette, 1982

Fig. 8. Gandong Cai, Mingjie Cai, from Eliminating to Elevating: Tokyo Loneliness Tree Hole Plan, 2019 This project looks into the loneliness in modern busy city, Tokyo. Creating urban tree holes to celebrate natural elements like sky and trees in the city. Generating solitary nooks for urban dwellers.

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Conclusion

Connection and positive isolation are not mutually exclusive. They happen in every corner of the world.

More open air public spaces shall appear in urban spaces in post-pandemic future. Interdisciplinary cooperation is needed among architects, landscape architects and urban planners. From urban scale, when considering public spaces, designers shall not merely think of large scale spaces. We shall ensure that as a public space it is open for everyone, whereas it offers places for individuals being alone.

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Endnote

1. Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (London: Canongate Books, 2016), 16.

2. Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York : A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New ed. (Monacelli Press,1994). https://search. ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=cat00006a&AN=melb.b7575725&site=eds-live&scope=site.

3. Andrea Amerio et al., “COVID-19 Lockdown: Housing Built Environment's Effects on Mental Health.” Int J Environ Res Public Health, (2020),17(16):5973. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17165973.

4. Giada Pietrabissa and Susan G. Simpson, Psychological Consequences of Social Isolation During COVID-19 Outbreak.” Front.

Psychol. 11:2201 (2020) doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02201.

5. Emanuele Giorgi et al., "Co-Housing Response To Social Isolation Of COVID-19 Outbreak, With A Focus On Gender Implications". Sustainability 13 (13): 7203. (2021) doi:10.3390/su13137203.

6. Giorgi et al., “Co-Housing Response”.

7. Giorgi et al., “Co-Housing Response” 8. Laing, The Lonely City, 94.

9. Urša Komac, “Public Space as a Public Good: Some Reflections on Public Space to Enjoy Solitude.” Athens Journal of Architecture 3 (2): 138. (2017) doi:10.30958/aja.3-2-2 10. Komac, “Public Spaces”.

11. Komac, “Public Spaces”, 144.

12. Laing, The Lonely City, 11.

13. Komac, “Public Spaces”, 145.

14. Komac, “Public Spaces”, 147.

15. Komac, “Public Spaces”, 148-149.

16.Peter B Jones, "Parc de La Villette in Paris, France, by Bernard Tschumi." The Architectural Review. Published 2012. https:// www.architectural-review.com/buildings/parc-de-la-villette-in-paris-france-by-bernard-tschumi.

17.Gernot Bohme, "The Theory of Atmospheres and Its Applications," Interstices 15, (2014): 94.

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Bibliography

Amerio A, Brambilla A, Morganti A, Aguglia A, Bianchi D, Santi F, Costantini L, Odone A, Costanza A, Signorelli C, Serafini G, Amore M, Capolongo S. “COVID-19 Lockdown: Housing Built Environment's Effects on Mental Health.” Int J Environ Res Public Health. (2020), 17(16):5973. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17165973. PMID: 32824594; PMCID: PMC7459481. https://www.ncbi.nlm. nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7459481/ Bohme, Gernot. "The Theory of Atmospheres and Its Applications," Interstices 15, (2014): 94.

Giorgi, Emanuele, Lucía Martín López, Ruben Garnica-Monroy, Aleksandra Krstikj, Carlos Cobreros, and Miguel A. Montoya.

"Co-Housing Response To Social Isolation Of COVID-19 Outbreak, With A Focus On Gender Implications". Sustainability 13 (13): 7203. (2021) doi:10.3390/su13137203. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/13/7203/htm Jones, Peter B. "Parc de La Villette in Paris, France, by Bernard Tschumi." The Architectural Review. Published 2012. https:// www.architectural-review.com/buildings/parc-de-la-villette-in-paris-france-by-bernard-tschumi.

Komac, Urša. “Public Space as a Public Good: Some Reflections on Public Space to Enjoy Solitude.” Athens Journal of Architecture 3 (2): 137–50. (2017) doi:10.30958/aja.3-2-2. [5] Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York : A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New ed. Monacelli Press, 1994. https://search. ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=cat00006a&AN=melb.b7575725&site=eds-live&scope=site.

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Laing, Olivia. 2016. The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone. London: Canongate Books. https://ebookcentral. proquest.com/lib/unimelb/reader.action?docID=6634152&ppg=9..

Pietrabissa, Giada and Simpson, Susan G. “Psychological Consequences of Social Isolation During COVID-19 Outbreak.” Front.

Psychol. 11:2201. (2020) doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02201. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02201

Images

Fig. 1. Edward Hopper, Hotel Window, 1955 Fig. 2. Seanzwiki, Khrushchyovka, 2019

Fig. 3. OMA and LMN, Seattle Central Library Diagram, 2004 Fig. 4. Sudhir Patwardhan, Inside (Window), 2009 Fig.5. Vector Architects, Seashore Library, 2015 Fig. 6. Vector Architects, Seashore Chapel, 2015

Fig. 7. Bernard Tschumi Architects, Parc de la Villette, 1982

Fig. 8. Gandong Cai, Mingjie Cai, from Eliminating to Elevating: Tokyo Loneliness Tree Hole Plan, 2019

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End.