I've been asked to help a group of people working in the SISI (agreed: not the nicest possible acronym...let's move on, people), or Strathclyde Interdisciplinary Solutions Incubator (see why we have the lame acronym?), to come up with a way of measuring happiness (and not just any old got-a-bar-of-chocolate-and-I'm-not-afraid-to-unwrap-it kind of happiness), and making happiness one of the aspects we think about when we aim for sustainability. Collective Architecture want to build us happy, and keep us that way, in buildings we love and take care of. What makes you/us happy, in and around buildings?
What do you need in the built environment you go in and out of, sleep and eat in, do your work in? Please give me one word, the word that best describes your top priority, in happiness terms, for the following:
1). your personal environment/building (e.g., your home or flat); and
2). the public environment/ building (e.g., the store you go to most often, the post office, the library).
My two words, by the way, were 'light,' as in natural light, for my personal building, and 'functionality' for my public building, because I *hate* having to join multiple queues (lines), or retrace my steps, or wrangle a badly designed trolley (basket) around a grocery store that is waaaaay too big for its britches.
Please feel free to tweet me your words; you can find me @maryfmcdonough on Twitter. You can also leave me a note in the comments section of this blog. Thanks for your help.
For 1) I put Light
ReplyDeleteand 2) Space
Buildings do have an impact on how we feel when we get in them. It's interesting that this is being taken on board by architects mxx