Architecture has always been about people. The way people use the space determines the way it is designed. Architecture has evolved from just providing shelter to what we see today. Not only are all details based on anthropometry, but the space planning also needs to revolve around function. The past pandemic months have been grueling for the entire world. Being able to see other people or even venture out into green areas has been limited if not none.
Being forced to stay indoors has bought an array of psychological discomfort and a global increase in depression rates. Most architecture creates rigid boundaries between the inside and the outside, between public and private, and the pandemic forced the inhabitants as well as the designers to realize the need to dissolve this tautness. This would call for architecture that is fluid and flexible and this need has become more prominent thanks to the pandemic.
The world is changing at an unprecedented rate, especially since the pandemic. The virtual world has practically lost all its boundaries and the real world has gained a few more. It has become possible to be a designer living in Visakhapatnam, India, and participate in a webinar conducted by a German institution featuring African and Brazilian Architects, but not be able to visit your parents 2 towns over. The innate rhythm of our bodies notices the absence of nature and the comfort of seeing other people, working with them in person or just being outside.
Neither the certainties of modernism nor the carefreeness of postmodernism can address the current shift in outlook, in terms of our relationship with nature. As a result of this, the rigidness of boundaries in architecture is going through some extreme scrutiny and hopefully, changes.
These boundaries don’t necessarily apply only to buildings but to neighborhoods, and even cities as a whole. The boundary between the countryside and the urbanscape is becoming irrelevant due to the hybrid territory. Under these circumstances, architecture needs to be defined by words like blurry, vague, ambiguous, or even open-ended. So how does one create an open-ended flexible space? When creating a vague relationship between the inside and the outside, one needs to understand the context and the user. If the building’s relationship with its context is boundless then it’s potential to accommodate more solutions increases. This in turn helps create a space that can be interpreted beyond its visual and physical boundaries, thus creating the most optimal transitional space.
In these times of uncertainty and global change, we need to embrace architecture against the basic binary logic. One needs to set aside the preconceptions of inside and outside, Public and Private, natural and made, and design a space that lives in the ‘in-between’ of these binaries. A blurred boundary forces a new perspective from the user as well, thus creating another previously unexplored experience of the designed space. To fully understand the potential of blurring boundaries, one needs to understand architecture as one would poetry. A poem uses metaphors and analogies to enhance the author’s thoughts, but at the end of the day, it is up to one’s own interpretation.
By the means of blurred boundaries, one must present a cognitive challenge for the user, not allowing them to fully comprehend the work at first glance. Thus creating an environment that is open to individual inspection and interpretation without forcing a change in perspective. The blurring of boundaries has the potential to add an ambiguous nature to a structure that otherwise has none. These entities force the user to go through a multiple perception and experience journey through the space, allowing them to play an active role in the process of mapping the space.
An architect can create a space that engages the user and the context if they pay attention to all the senses. The blurring of boundaries becomes easier to achieve when one engages the inhabitants of the space. Architect Nilanjan Bowal the principal architect of The Design Consortium is a pioneer in this field. His designs are known to blur the boundaries even before the pandemic. He and his team truly understand how to enchant the inhabitants by bringing in greenery and openness into the building. The world needs architects to look at buildings as not just shelters but as an experience involving all senses thus allowing for personal interpretations and fluid transitions, like The Design Consortium, is doing right now.