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Many architects are familiar with psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. Far fewer are aware of the final version, however, completed more than two decades after the first, or of the precise meaning of the need at the top of that final hierarchy, “transcendence.” In the absence of deliberate built expressions of Maslow’s notion of transcendence, this paper uses parallels with the Zen-inspired Japanese tearoom as a means of exploring its potential architectural implications. It shows how four fundamental ideas that Maslow’s transcendence called into question, the separate self, the material body, space, and time, can all be effectively challenged through the design of built environments. Based on these findings, it is argued that Maslow’s examples of transcendence represent a potentially significant and under-explored source for built environments to serve the human need that he placed above all others. The paper concludes that Maslow’s particular interpretation of transcendence—as essentially moving beyond commonly accepted ideas—is potentially applicable to many if not most aspects of our lives and hence also to the built environments that accommodate them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans have been described as a "forward-looking" species in more than simply physiological terms. We are, it seems, unusually concerned with the future. This essay explores how built environments can be designed to evoke positive anticipation of future events. It suggests that there are three primary means of achieving this: (1) the visible display of valued resources, (2) signs of readiness, and (3) views that encourage mental exploration. It is observed that while resources tend to elicit hope of their future use, readiness and visual prospects seem to evoke a more general sense of optimism. Given the large proportion of our lives that most of us now spend in buildings, it is suggested that these design strategies might be helpful in maintaining and improving occupant morale in the indoor spaces where we live and work, and even more so for those who, for one reason or another, are unable to venture out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely believed that traditional Japanese buildings differed fundamentally from those of the West in actively responding to time. This article examines that notion by analyzing five arguments, based on language, history, and architectural elements respectively, that have been used to suggest that the traditional Japanese room was designed to respond to time. It suggests that the arguments based on language are logically questionable, that those based on history are plausible, although impossible to prove, but that those based on the physical evidence of the room itself seem irrefutable. It is argued that the Japanese room clearly was designed to respond to the changing needs of the moment, but that in this it reflected greater sensitivity to and differing means of accommodating change, rather than a fundamental difference in values from other cultures. It is suggested that for the purposes of drawing attention to such differences, claims of Japanese uniqueness may actually have been counterproductive, tending to distract attention from alternative ways of implementing what in many cases seem to be shared human values, and implying that other cultures cannot learn from Japanese architecture, when there is plentiful evidence to suggest that they can and frequently have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports the results of a series of experiments examining the potential psychological link between spatial and temporal prospects, specifically between variations in the degree of foreground obstruction and spatial depth of external window views and an observer's sense of connection to the future. It was found that external views from indoor spaces were strongly associated with a sense of the future, that partially obstructing such a view significantly reduced that association, and that replacing a real view with a pictorial representation removed most of its association with the future. A less extreme change in the spatial depth of a real view, however, appeared to have no significant effect on association with the future. These results suggest that the configuration of external views from inside buildings could directly affect feelings about the future, and in particular levels of optimism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports the results of an experiment intended to test the effects of increasing the use of perspective visualizations in the early stages of building design. Compared to environments designed using plans and models, those generated using perspective views were found to have significantly greater variety in form, materials, light, and occupant movement. Although the results of the pilot study have still to be confirmed under controlled conditions, they suggest that shifting the emphasis of the early stages of building design away from representations of whole buildings and toward the way they will be experienced could help to improve built environments. The article discusses how such a change might be integrated into a contemporary digital design process, and how the process of building design relates to the reconciliation of the objective and subjective underlying phenomenology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ARCHITECTURE AND ITS ETHICAL DILEMMAS Edited by Nicholas Ray. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis. 2005. £75 hardback, £25 paperback While not pretending to be exhaustive, this collection of essays based on [...]