Dream, Design, Define

Personal privacy is a key component of every person's everyday life. Privacy can be exemplified in physical and psychological aspects. For example, you can physically have privacy in the comfort of your bedroom while having psychological privacy by not making eye contact with other individual's walking around a shopping mall. The General Data Protection Regulation calls for "privacy by design". What "privacy by design" means is that personal privacy is taken into full consideration throughout the engineering/design of a building. There are generally four faces of privacy- solitude, intimacy, anonymity, and reserve. Solitude would be spending time on your own in a peaceful state. For me, solitude can be achieved by taking a run in the evenings/ early mornings when no one is around. Intimacy is another form of privacy that includes a couple or tight nit group of people. Some intimate moments can be achieved in dimly lit restaurants with private booths like ...

Similar to anthropometrics, ergonomics also uses human measurements to design spaces. The only difference with ergonomics is that its main purpose is to create a workspace using knowledge on human abilities/limitations to improve a persons interactions with that space. This can vary from the design set up of work desks to where the location of a hairdryer's handholds are placed. Dohrmann Consultings article on ergonomics states that the economic cost of work related injuries and illnesses is estimated to be $60 billion dollars. So how does ergonomics work? Ergonomics is fully based off anthropometric data, biomechanics of the human body, environmental physics, applied psychology, and social psychology in order to successfully apply all aspects that could impact an individual in order to design toward the end user. Ergonomics aims to create a safe,  comfortable and productive workspaces by bringing human abilities and limitations into the design of a workspace by including the ind...

When walking into a room, how many times have you hit your head when walking through the doorway? The likelihood is slim to none. This is because of Anthropometric use within design! Anthropometrics are basically the study of the human body and it's movements along the use of human measurements within a space to design specifically for the end user. When walking through an everyday doorway, the height of it is on average 6'8". This measurement is taken from anthropometric data from thousands of individual's varying heights to create a door way entry that is as user friendly as possible. Racquetball doors often don't meet the average height requirements (usually 3'6" tall) for a normal doorway. This is the door to our training room which has never been changed to a standard sized door since being repurposed as the triathlon training room. This is an example of bad anthropometric use! Photo taken by me at ETSU Anthropometrics were not only used for d...

Balance is an extremely important factor when analyzing the space were in, especially when it comes to our perception of open and closed environments. Prospect is identified as an open environment with broad views, bright and open space with "perching" to overlook outside activity from the comfort of your safe space. Refuge is identified as a closed environment which provides refuge, narrow views, and overall protection from the outside world along with it's stressors. It is important to find a balance between prospect and refuge when designing a space to not only provide the ability to look out and see what is going on in the open space around you but also provide a safe, private space for your client. This balance is known as the prospect-refuge theory. Prospect-refuge theory was developed by English geographer, Jay Appleton. In his book, Experience of Landscape, Jay proposed that humans seek out to review the space around them based on two factors- to have opportuni...

Have you ever been in a space that made you feel uncomfortably close to others? Or felt like someone invaded your personal space? Or even enjoyed the close embrace of a hug from a loved one? All of these are examples of personal space, which is basically a bubble between ourselves and others. This bubble known as personal space is constantly expanding and contracting as we meet/see different people, move through/enter different spaces, and on overall emotional state of mind. How designers can help with making people feel as in control and comfortable as possible about their amount of personal space is through the use of proxemics! As a family, we don't mind our personal space being invaded! Photo taken off my iphone, Disney Land, CA Proxemics is the use of distancing people through design, discovered by American Anthropologist and linguist, E.T Hall. The use of proxemics can be utilized in many ways from changing ceiling heights to feel larger, orientation and division of s...

How do normal, everyday individuals travel throughout their world? How do people cope with stress? And why does everyone deal with these various situations within their environment differently? The answer is James Averill's Control Theory (1973). Averill suggested that individuals have three types of control over their environment: behavioral control, cognitive control, and decisional control. The British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology (2010) even states that all individuals use these three types of control over their environments to cope with stress, especially in the use of decisional control. Overall, Control Theory means that individuals are able to institute control over their environment to ultimately induce a sense of well-being, safety, and comfort. Now, what do the three types of control theories mean? Behavioral control is considered to be an individuals way to modify the environment around them. An example of behavior control could be choosing to...

Dream to Design, Design to Define, Define to Discover. 44 year old Danish Architect, Bjarke Ingels ,  has reached international fame with his architectural designs that defy conventional standards and incorporate bold statements consisting of emphasis, function, and sustainability. ArchDigest cited him as "One of the most inspirational architects of our time!" after receiving many awards including being named Wall Street Journal's innovator of the year , achieving architectural feats after designing New York's first twisting skyscraper known as the Twisting High Line Towers, and designing large scale pieces of architectural art like the ORB featured at Burning Man 2018. Bjarke Ingels' 30 ton inflatable ORB makes debut at Burning Man 2018 www.cnn.com/burningman   Bjarke Ingels quotes,"Architecture is about trying to make our world a little more like our dreams".  Bjarke Ingels' perspectives on design has truly changed how I vie...