Think how depressing it is to spend our time together with sad people, who stand there with a long face without saying a word. Of course anyone would prefer to be with cheerful, nice, interesting people, no matter if they are beautiful or ugly, because it is not an aesthetic issue. Some actors were successful even though they were not top beauties; however, they were nice.
The same can be said about buildings around us in our daily lives. Look out the window: maybe you see beautiful facades and picturesque landscapes, but even if the aesthetic look would not be satisfactory you would still be happy if you see spaces pulsating with life. A friend of mine, forced to work locked inside an isolated, silent office, often telephoned home for someone to go with the phone to the window so he could listen to the shouts of kids playing ball in the courtyard.
In short, to a beautiful but unwelcoming environment one may prefer another that is not beautiful but cozy.
Many environments are not only ugly, but hopelessly sad and depressing too, and when a new building is to be made, all designers strive to improve its aesthetics and demonstrate how able they are. All that is fine, but wouldn’t it also be desirable to try to make something welcoming, nice, positive? Because in addition to taking care of forms, a designer can also try to include in his works some chance for politeness, that is, to create something to solve, alleviate or avoid the situations in which users might fall for some difficulty or potential discomfort, even if they wouldn’t fully realize that he was aware about.
Courtesy can be expressed in an infinity of design occasions with an infinity of inventions, ways and ideas. A few examples: invitation, shelter, orientation. Invitation: suggesting ‘welcome’ in a lobby, or at the beginning of a lane or of a staircase by shaping steps, doors, handrails, ceilings, or accompanying the path with sinuous, soft and continuous forms, shaded surfaces, precise lights. Shelter: canopies and porches under which to linger away from rain or sun, or storing an umbrella or looking for key are forms of courtesy that let you feel you’re welcomed, while it is sad to see doors that propose only an in or out. Orientation: complaints are frequent from people who cannot find their way in a public building, a hospital, a courthouse, an office complex. That can mean a project failure, with huge waste of time. Often these design cues arise at the beginning of a path, where communication design themes are proposed. Today you see in environments frequented by the public a plethora of signs to orient people. Many are necessary, but if too many they disorient, or if badly placed they serve little purpose because people, being often in a hurry, do not read them preferring to ask, or follow others, or try to guess. Wayfinding concepts should be applied, but not only as signage, because the more signs are needed the less communicative architecture is.
More generally, we can find kindness design occasions by thinking about the perceptual or behavioral sequences in which people may find themselves. For example, we can identify a succession of user actions to match with the design of a succession of spaces and functions, and we study whether in this succession some hitches may occur due to situations in which the user may find himself in difficulty. It is there that the designer can fit in with the design by creating something with skill and imagination.
It would be nice if some university courses taught applied courtesy, that is, how to plan what can put people at ease.
Other opportunities are offered by thinking about how to avoid situations of conflict (typical case, disputes in apartment buildings, due to poorly done designs) or the occasions of nuisance or embarrassment, often caused by the wrong placement of noisy devices or toilets.
By applying some kindness concept in our designs we could achieve amazing results. And if a designer is good, he will be concerned not only with solving the problems of a normal use, but of marginal cases too, such as children, elderly, foreigners, or those who are in a kind of behavioral trap because missing a train, or need a bathroom, or cannot see a transparent door, or lost in the crowd. An infinity of design opportunities.
A remarkable application of these concepts was given by Charles Garnier in the design of his Paris Opéra, a true masterpiece in matter of user assistance. He studied down to the smallest detail everything he could do to provide his users with the positive experience of a pleasant evening at the theater: that is, to create meetings opportunities in the foyer, to avoid cab lines on the way out, to take shelter from the rain while waiting for a rendezvous, to make it easier for those arriving late, and even to get a good reverb to make faces take on a warm color if pale, or eat ice cream without the annoyance of smokers, or make the emperor admire up close the ballerinas.
To all this Garnier responded not with signs and signals, but with architecture. Apart from aesthetics, so far from today’s preferences, it was a great lesson.
Garnier designed the Opéra thinking of everything he could do to make the public have a nice evening at the theater.