The switch
It has been long since I have been so grateful for stumbling across a book. Humanise by Thomas Heatherwick has flipped a switch, and made me perceive our built world differently. This post is my appreciation letter to the book.
Edinburgh was apt for finding this book
Edinburgh is one of my favourite cities. When someone asked me why, I said it looks very grand. But it wasn’t because of the castle. It was because of the 10,000 or so other ordinary buildings. They all have giant windows, and more importantly, giant bricks compared to London. The brick size makes us perceive Edinburgh differently. So it was apt that I stumbled upon a book on architecture in a city with beautiful buildings, inside Toppings, a beautifully done book shop.
Physical world matters
Ever since I started reading Humanise, I have started noticing the impact of architecture in our daily lives. I started scanning our neighbourhood in high fidelity. It’s like a switch has been flicked, and now every time I step out, I can’t turn it back off. It’s the freshness of perspective I needed. And I loved that book so much that I didn’t feel like speed reading it. It has a subtle 3D cover, and breaks its own pattern time and again to keep you engaged. It applies the very principles it argues for. I felt like cherishing it. It felt like a nice large cup of coffee that you drink at leisure. Not a flat-white you take away on your way to work while listening to a hustle-porn podcast.
The book’s core argument is this: modernist designs tend to be boring and reductive. This philosophy, combined with short term profits and misaligned incentives, leads to boring buildings. Boring and unsustainable buildings fail to inspire, make our cities lifeless and our environment worse. A thoughtlessly designed building that juts out air conditioning vents onto every passerby is worse than a thoughtfully designed building that has vertical vents and a dense canopy to reduce the heat island effect. I understand that boring might sometimes be the most economical option. But the author believes it is possible to design considerate, beautiful and economical buildings. After reading the book, I believe so too.
Even as I write this, I sit on a chair on a concrete footpath, trees opposite me, and a large steel building. I can’t help but notice all the things that are ugly about the street, and the things that are great. When I take walks, I pause more often around buildings to see which ones are more fractal, which ones are more “3D” than others. I now see a building and start reverse engineering the trade-offs and the philosophy behind it. I notice the intricacies of a venue like Wimbledon in much more detail, and am blown away by the thoughtful touches of green and purple plants to complement the branding. This book has made me feel more present.
Physical spaces and productivity
Thanks to this book, and then Tim Harford’s Messy, I have started noticing the impact spaces have on our productivity. As I write this paragraph in a cafe, there are people chatting around me, coming back from a hospital visit or trying to finish their work. I am part of the crowd yet dissociated. There’s a reason we work well in cafes. Same for the desk in my office, where people are working and chatting quietly. But if I work for too long in a sterile solitary office room, I feel like the walls collapse in on me, imploring me to push harder, do better. They take the shape of an unfriendly, lifeless manager who demands more, but fails to inspire. Harford cites research showing that workers in offices where they could arrange the space themselves got 30% more done than those in lean, tidy environments.
Tech community’s neglect of physical world
It’s odd that people within the tech and product community speak so much about design and user experience on a screen, yet neglect the permanent 3D designs around us - buildings, houses and rooms. So little attention is paid to this, yet it contributes more to our happiness than most digital designs. You spend a few minutes on an app, but you work in your office and you eat, sleep and contemplate life in your house. Steve Jobs knew about this, and obsessed over Apple’s buildings, stores and hardware with the same intensity he brought to software. We can’t be Jobs, but perhaps we should start by looking beyond our screens.