Book review by Ar.Garima Grover Ian Bentley et al. on Responsive Environments
Book Ideology- The author of the book Ian Bentley holds a deep concern for the need of regenerating the run-down cities over time. Also, he is found developing new solutions and strategies to overcome these issues not only trying to meet the aesthetical needs of the town but also keeping in mind the social complexities of a city. Ian Bentley focuses more on developing robust cities, so as to make our cities more adaptable and accommodating to continuous increasing needs of human. He emphasizes on existing examples around the globe so as to be more realistic in our approach.
Book Review The teachings of the book if implemented mindfully can help you create a responsive environment, which means it in itself is so user-friendly that there won’t be any requirement of forced instructions. The book is practical to attempt to show how this can be done. We start from the same ideas as that which has inspired most Socially conscious designers: the idea that the built environment should provide its users with an essentially democratic setting, enriching their opportunities by maximizing the degree of choice available to them. and such places are called responsive . It has seven chapters which step by step are a guide towards a successful design. None of them can be used without understanding the needs of your site. Each chapter of this book is a step forward to environment responsive design. 1. Permeability The amount of area to which access is permitted to people, keeping intact the public and private space of a building. Alongside allowing the people to move around the place with complete ease and flow is known as permeability. It is very well explained with a nice example and exercise to elaborate further the concept and its application. 2. Variety Permeability would not be of much interest if there is not much of variety offered in different areas. Variety of uses is a second different quality. ‘the range of uses available to people the quality we shall call variety’.
Firstly, we assess the level of demand for different type of uses on the site, and establish how wide a mix of uses it is economically and functionally feasible to have. Then the tentative building volumes already established as spatially desirable are tested to see whether they can feasibly house the desired mix of uses, and the design in further developed as necessary.
3. Legibility At this stage the design’s Permeability and variety are checked for its Legibility, how easily people can understand its layout. This is considered in this third stage of design. Here comes the differentiation between routes and junctions by designing them with different spatial enclosures. The tentative network of links and uses already established now takes on three-dimensional form, as the elements which give perceptual structure to the place are brought into the process of design.
4. Robustness
The places/designs which offers multiple choices to their end users than places whose design is fixed to one single use are said to be robust in nature. This quality is further known as Robustness. Now we focus more on Individual building and outdoor places. Hereby we understand the individual spaces in much detail and focus on making them more available for a flexible use in different activities to be carried out within or outside the building, both in short and long term .
5. Visual Appropriateness the detailed appearance of the place makes people aware of the choices available. The first interaction of people with the building is through the visual aspect, thus making it a very important factor, the whole point here is to discuss the Visual appropriateness of the building which means not only taking care of the aesthetics but also to consider the end use of the building, like the building in itself should depict its use i.e. a residence should not appear like a dockyard or vice versa. As the Visual interaction is the first interaction of people, and is a very important factor for building’s responsiveness.
6. Richness People’s choice of sensory experiences Here we discuss and study in detail about the rich experience a building can provide whether visual or non – visual, it can be achieved by going in further details with appropriate materials and constructional techniques for achieving it. 7. Personalization the extent to which people can put their own stamp on a place." The stages of design already covered lead us to create environment responsive designs. But the best design seems to have the personalization effect i.e. it should connect to the individual user as much as possible. As a designer, it is important that we make it possible for users to personalize places: this is the only way most people can put their own stamp on their environment.