QUANTIFIABLE ARCHITECTURE AND HISTORICISM

Buildings in historic districts have to be pretty.  As I have mentioned before, I am a small town architect.  And our entire village is on the National List of Historic Places.  As with any historical overlay district, you have to design things so that they fit in.  That is to say, they need to be pretty.  They need to make direct reference to historical styles.  We all know how this works and the constraints of this approach.

What we don’t realize is that historicism gives the building greater cultural importance than the humans who are sheltered by the building.  On the page Quantifiable Architecture, we used the example of interior natural light as something that needs quantification.  When a building’s design is under historical review, we pay very close attention to the proportion of the windows, the spacing of the windows, and the proportion of each lite within the window.  These sorts of window parameters are key component in the determinancy of whether the building fits into the historical context.

But what is the effect on the human who has to live inside the historically correct enclosure?  What is the effect on the human of light entering the building thru historically correct smallish windows, rather than, say a whole wall of windows admitting great pools of light?  With the small windows, from the outside, the house looks acceptable to the planning commission member who is driving by.  But what about the humans inside the house who have to live with this resultant historically correct light quality?  What is the impact on their lives?  What is the social cost?

We don’t know what the human cost is, but we need to.  By making the building more important than the humans, alas, humans have to live in rooms that are darker and have less views.  And we already have a seat of the pants sense that humans are happier if they have more natural light and open views to the outside.

This is why we need Quantifiable Architecture, as it would enable an objective understanding of the effects of a building that is historical compared with one that puts the human first.  That is to say, we are good at measuring the human enclosure to make sure that it fits in with the surroundings, yet we have no idea how to measure the effects on the human who actually lives within this precisely measured enclosure.

The societal costs would be demonstrated by comparing the biometric responses of humans who are in historical enclosures and humans that are in more open enclosures.  I absolutely believe that the biometrics would scientifically support more light not less.  Like I said, we intuit this already.

Can you imagine that if, in a historical district, you had a south facing street facade on a house.  And with the metrics of Quantifiable Architecture, you were allowed to put in a wall of glass, rather than small historically correct windows, because the cultural quanta of the human is more important  than the cultural quanta of a historical district?  This would throw the entire historically correct mindset onto it’s ear.

In short, wouldn’t you really like to know the biometric differences of humans who inhabit a well designed historical structure compared with those who inhabit structures that respond to the needs of a human?  This quanta would usher in a new age of architecture.

We need Quantifiable Architecture!