The ups, downs and… sideways of elevators
This week we have a look at, yes, elevators. But also at tech companies trying to make urban shared spaces their own and cities as open air classrooms. Enjoy!
Architecture has an impact on how we feel. As this recent article from the BBC describes it:
“We now know that buildings and cities can affect our mood and well-being, and that specialised cells in the hippocampal region of our brains are attuned to the geometry and arrangement of the spaces we inhabit.”
In the recent years, designers have started to move this knowledge to the education field, in order to explore the process of learning in relation to the spatial qualities of a classroom. Action oriented research have led them to test and document the effects of “outdoor classrooms”, where regular teaching takes place in nature or in cultural surroundings.
There has been a long tradition for outdoor school education in Denmark and urban design studio Arki_lab is for example prototyping different settings for teaching out of traditional classrooms. While studies show that varying learning environments is beneficial for students’ cognitive development, other benefits are worth noting as well. When teachers and students move out to the public areas, they gain a greater local knowledge, which may incentivise them to play an active role in their neighbourhood. For the Municipality of Copenhagen, using some of the city’s existing outdoor spaces is also a way to tackle the increasing need for space in schools (link in Danish).
“Public space is hot,” explains Jerold Kayden, an urban planning and design professor at Harvard University, commenting on tech companies’ rhetoric to sell themselves to the public. A perfect example of that, is Apple’s senior vice president of retail, Angela Ahrendts, who compared the company’s store to “town squares”. She argued that:
“(…)they’re gathering places for 500 million people who visit us every year — places where everyone’s welcome, and where all of Apple comes together.”
However, adding a dose of urbanism to private spaces — such as malls, cafés or other convenience stores, such as Apple’s stores — may turn them into inviting places, but it is not enough to transform them into public spaces. The reason is simple: private space is private and property owners run them with their own rules. This is worth giving a thought when we see tech giants getting involved in urban planning — and twitter users are already on it:
Until the 19th century, the rich lived on the lowest levels, while the poor had to carry themselves all the way up to the attic. The game changer was the elevator, which turned around the social hierarchy in buildings. Andreas Bernard, a German academic and author of the book Lifted, describes:
(…)(the lift) “gave way to the penthouse, the roof garden, the chief executive suite.”
Another picture that comes to mind is the the old futuristic movie The Fifth Element, where the lowest part of the city resides in darkness and accommodates those who can’t afford to be in the light…
This is of course an extreme example, but we see it as a good way to trigger discussions about how technologies shape urban life. It resonates with recent news in Denmark, where the Danish Housing Minister, Ole Birk Olesen, has requested a higher skyline in Copenhagen in order to keep up with the flow of new inhabitants (link in Danish). The suggestion was met with a lot of concerns about the impact on city life as we know it.
Back to our elevators, it is interesting to see that the technology in itself has not changed much since the 1950s. But that seems to be in development now. SidewalkLab, the author of the series “15 innovations that shaped the city”, gives us a glimpse of what the future could bring in terms of new architecture and needs for other ways to transport its inhabitants:
If Otto Studio’s Big Bend comes to life, it will probably collaborate with the leading elevator company Thyssenkrupp, who is now finalising a model called Multi, which goes sideways. The new lift is planned to launch in ever hip Berlin, when they have passed their safety certification.
If elevators start travelling along curves and loops, how is that going to impact our cities?
We hope to leave you with food for thoughts!
See you next week,
Caroline
Say hi: caroline@ourhub.dk
