Places of the Soul: Architecture and Environmental Design as a Healing Art / Edition 2

A Primer on Sustainability and Humanism

Are you looking for a book that recognizes the need for designing buildings to meet lofty sustainability goals, but that also places human needs on an equal or superior plane? Do you look at new mechanistic buildings of steel, titanium and low-e glass and wonder how it¿s possible to feel inspired, or even comfortable, when you¿re in them? If you answer yes to these questions, then perhaps you would benefit from reading the second edition of Christopher Day¿s book, Places of the Soul, Architecture and Environmental Design as a Healing Art (Grammarians might suggest ¿as Healing Arts¿). Day wrote the book in 1988, long before the birth of LEEDS, to address his perception of a growing lack of concern about human needs for variety in the form of spaces, the connection of spaces to nature and natural processes, and craft in the production of habitation. From his concerns one would assume that he was a student of the work of Christopher Alexander, particularly ¿A Timeless Way of Building¿. However, he moves beyond Alexander in citing the results of empirical studies that support his theses. In the chapter Architecture: Does It Matter? Day discusses how good design adds value, increases productivity, reduces health care costs, and accelerates healing. He cites the work of Dr. Roger Ulrich that demonstrated faster healing of patients in ICU¿s with views of nature. Important to architects struggling with limited budgets is the cited research that demonstrates how a 6.5% increase in productivity can justify a building four times as expensive! This book takes a broad-brush look at regionalism, vernacular architecture, the art of architecture, human and planetary health, quality versus quantity, making spaces livable, and even design as a listening process. Responding to criticism from clients that listening is a problem with some architects, the National Architectural Accrediting Board has made a recent change in its student performance criteria that emphasizes listening as a required skill. From listening, Day moves to making buildings with soul, building as a health-giving process, silence and peace in architecture, and the creation of appropriate spaces for children. He concludes with an important chapter on the urban environment, the conflict between sustainable values and urban pressures, the needs of urban life, cities as places for people and for life, and whether eco-cities might be utopian or practicable. Places of the Soul is an excellent primer for students of architecture seeking a balance between design for sustainability and for human needs, between a mass-produced machine aesthetic and one that includes hand-craftsmanship, and between sterile mind-numbing sameness and invigorating variety. It is illustrated with photographs and drawings of buildings and places in Great Britain that, while relevant, could be supplemented with more recent global examples. This book raises challenging questions about the buildings and places we will design and build, and the affect they will have on us as people and as a society.

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