Architecture for ordinary people

In 2004, Elizabeth Burton founded the Wellbeing In Sustainable Environments (WISE) research unit at Oxford Brookes University.  The unit's plan was to investigate how the built environment affects people's health, physical and mental. 

Burton says 'there isn’t much of this kind of research within architecture and urban design - particularly in architecture - because it’s not an evidence-based or a research-based profession.  I’m quite unusual in being trained as an architect and urban designer but interested in the evidence for what works and what doesn’t for people.'

Burton argues that modern architects have been in retreat from social interventionist design.  She points out that the often disastrous high rise blocks of the sixties were built by people trying to generate social good.  'You could argue that a lot of the modernist architects were thinking about people and a lot of the ideas behind modern buildings are very social.  So the idea of freeing women from the drudgery of housework and raising people up into sunlight, these were all quite social ideas.  The problem was there was no evidence base, there was no knowledge of what would work and what wouldn’t.'

Since then there's been a refocusing of architecture as an art - the creation of 'special buildings' like galleries, museums, landmark cityscaping.   Architects are less likely to get involved in the bread-and-butter new housing developments that millions of people actually live in.

'When I trained as an architect, you had to put your designs up on the wall and have what are called ‘crits’, where  staff and visitors come and criticise your design.  Practically the worst thing you could say as a reason for designing something the way you did was "this is the way people like it" because then you were seen as being like a Barratt House developer, which is an anathema to the whole architectural profession.'

Burton hopes that the work of WISE will challenge that.   'We want to say "no that's wrong, we should be designing for people".  In the past we got it wrong because we didn’t have the knowledge that we needed, so we need research to provide that knowledge.'

There are strong overlaps between this agenda and the health world.  As chronically ill people tend to live out a large part of long illnesses at home, neighbourhood design has an important effect.  Initiatives such as 'dementia friendly neighbourhoods'  can make it possible for people to cope.

I'dgo

One of their recent collaborative projects is Inclusive design for getting outdoors (I'DGO), a project looking at housing for older people.  For sound environmental reasons, government wants to build older people's housing at quite high densities - near to the shopping and health services that they will need.  But research indicates this isn't how older people want to live - most preferring low density greener spaces.  Burton's team are looking at how to marry up these conflicting needs.

'It seems that for older people the amount of greenery makes a big difference.  But it doesn’t have to be a huge amount of greenery.  If you can maximise the amount within higher density neighbourhoods then you are likely to improve the wellbeing of people living there.  The other way you can maximise wellbeing is to use traditional housing forms - to have small terraced houses rather than flats is a better option, if space will allow.  We found that living in very mixed use areas didn’t seem to be good for wellbeing, but living in an area that was mainly residential that had occasional other uses, such as a GP or a newsagent, corner shop, that did make a difference.'

People don't even have to be living in traditional housing themselves for it to improve their sense of wellbeing - seeing traditional housing from your medium-rise flat seems to gives neighbourhoods a more relaxed feel.

But people's needs are complex and it's not always the case that lower densities are an automatic ticket to happiness.  Burton points to mental health research done in the 1950s and 60s.  'They were relocating families from city centre slums to new suburbs and social housing estates on the edges of towns and cities.  They found that women, for example tended to be more depressed when they moved out.  They often didn't have a car and were isolated in their homes with young children.'

Built environment for obesity?

Another example of this complexity is the built environment factor in the 'obesity epidemic'.  Many have suggested that more walkable neighbourhoods will fight the fat epidemic.  Burton argues for a more complicated picture 'If you look at American cities you can see where the belief about obesity and neighbourhood design comes from, because they are totally built around the car - you can’t walk even if you wanted to. Here it’s complicated because the reasons why people are not walking are not just to do with the design of your neighbourhood.  It’s lifestyle and dual income households, with busy mothers dropping children off at school on the way to work.' 

WISE hopes that its measured research will help planners avoid running after attractive but oversimplified ideas about cause and effect.

Finding proofs

WISE's research centres around wellbeing rather than traditional schematic 'quality of life' measures.  Burton says 'you can measure health quite easily but it's very difficult to measure a built environment.  You’ve got 500 variables affecting 500 different outcomes. So what we've done is develop a couple of tools for defining environments'.

These are very objective ways of describing neighbourhoods - noting things like the density and mixes of use.  They don't say whether a place is good or bad.  Then, says Burton 'we use it to compare with outcomes like health and look for a big sample of people statistically and judge whether there are relationships between living in an area that has these design features and these wellbeing outcomes.'

'There are about 30 different variables which we explore, but I think we’re getting an idea of which are the most significant in terms of  connecting wellbeing with built environment.  So, for example, satisfaction with the neighbourhood as a place to live has come out, which you might expect, but also how attractive people think the neighbourhood is, how safe they feel before dark, safety from non-motorised traffic, the amount of community spirit.  There are about eight of them which have come up again and again.'

Virtual worlds

WISE are exploring how to use virtual environments to do more controlled experiments. 'We're hoping to put people in virtual place where we can carry out tests on them.  It does overcome a lot of the problems of previous research but it will only give us an understanding of the immediate effect of an environment and not a longer term effect that living in a place has on you.  So we’re also bidding for research money to do one or two other things that will look at the longer term.

Burton argues that the changes they are working towards need not be more expensive, but instead just call for a more informed kind of architecture that devolves back to what people really want.  The need for nature and a human-scale environment are obviously a big factor.  Abandoning the arrogance of some architectural practice and asking people what they like is another important component.  But above all, WISE are mapping out an ecosystem full of complex and sometimes contradictory factors.  By looking at neighbourhoods in a patchwork of ways, socially interventionist architects may get it right this time around.