Boring buildings

There could be more than an economic or nostalgic price to impersonal retail and high-rise construction; boring architecture may take an emotional toll on the people forced to live with it

A  A growing body of research in cognitive science illuminates the physical and mental toll bland cityscapes take on residents. Generally, these researchers argue that humans are healthier when they live surrounded by variety or work in well-designed, unique spaces, rather than unattractive, generic ones. Urban policy professor Justin Hollander and architect Ann Sussman review scientific data to help architects and urban planners understand how, exactly, people respond to their built surroundings, particularly at work. People, they argue, function best in intricate settings, not ‘big, blank, boxy offices’.

B  Indeed, that’s what Colin Ellard, a neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, has found in his work. Five years ago, Ellard became interested in a certain building -- the gigantic Whole Foods Market ‘plopped into’ a notoriously textured part of lower Manhattan in New York. Ellard partnered with the Guggenheim Museum to analyze what happens when someone walks out of a tiny neighborhood restaurant and encounters a full city block with nothing but ‘the long, blank facade of the Whole Foods Market’ building.

In 2011, Ellard led small groups on Lower East Side walks to measure the effect of the urban environment on them. Participants recorded their response to questions at each stopping point and wore sensors that measured skin conductance, a response to emotional excitement. Passing the monolithic Whole Foods Market, people’s state of arousal plummeted. Physiologically, Ellard explained, they were bored. To describe this place, they used words like ‘bland’ and ‘passionless’. In contrast, one block east at the other test site -- a ‘lively sea of restaurants with lots of open doors and windows’ -- people measured high levels of excitement, and they listed words like ‘lively’ and ‘socializing’. Ellard explains that the main objective of urban design should be to produce some kind of novelty or change every few seconds; otherwise, we become cognitively disengaged.

C  The trick, it seems, is to design a world that excites but doesn’t overload our faculties with a constant barrage of information. ‘We are, as animals, programmed to respond to thrill,’ said professor Brendan Walker. In Walker’s ‘thrill laboratory’ at the University of Nottingham in the UK, devices measure heart rate and skin conductance to see how people respond to adrenaline-producing experiences such as a roller-coaster ride. A thrilling encounter moves us quickly from a state of equilibrium to a desirable ‘disorientation’. ‘Humans want a certain element of turmoil or confusion,’ he said. ‘Complexity is thrilling whether in an amusement park or architecture.'

D  Psychologists have found that awe-inspiring moments can potentially improve our well-being. One study conducted by Melanie Rudd, Kathleen Vohs and Jennifer Aaker of Stanford University in the US showed that the feeling of ‘awe’ can make people more patient and less materialistic. In an experiment, the researchers showed students 60-second clips of waterfalls, whales, or astronauts in space. After only a minute of virtual images, those who said they were awed also felt less pressed for time. And in another variation, people made hypothetical choices between physical and experiential goods of equal monetary value. Those who had just ‘felt awe’ were more likely to choose an experience over a possession, a choice that is linked with greater satisfaction in the long run. In other words, a visual buzz -- whether architectural or natural -- might have the ability to change our frame of mind, making modern-day life more satisfying and interactive.

E  It’s important to note, however, that architectural boredom isn’t about how pristine a street is. People often confuse successful architecture with whether an area looks pleasant. On the contrary, when it comes to city buildings, people often focus too narrowly on aesthetics, said Charles Montgomery, author of Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design. Some of the happiest blocks in New York City, he argues, are ‘kind of ugly and messy’.

In 2014, Montgomery’s Happy City lab conducted an experiment in which he found a strong correlation between messier blocks and pro-social behavior. Montgomery sent researchers, posing as lost tourists, to places he coded as either ‘active’ or ‘inactive’ facades. He concluded that the former had a high level of interest, that is they were messy, while the latter had no special features such as long warehouse blocks. Pedestrians at active sites were nearly five times more likely to offer assistance than at inactive ones. Of those who assisted, seven times as many at the active site offered use of their phone.

F  Fortunately, it’s not necessarily a dichotomy -- new architecture can achieve the optimal level of cacophony and beauty. Take the 2006 Hearst Tower in midtown Manhattan. Designed by architect Norman Foster, Hearst Tower is a glass-and-steel skyscraper, 40 stories of which are designed in a triangular pattern, differing in style from the 1920s Art Deco base. From the outside, the facade jolts city dwellers from their daily commutes, while energizing employees who enter it each morning. For many who walk by, Hearst Tower’s design may not be the easiest to understand; it’s both sleek and old. The top looks like it traveled from the future. Inside, workers travel upon diagonal escalators, up a three-story water sculpture, through the tower’s historic atrium, flooded with light. Few New Yorkers who pass by would find this building boring. And they’re likely to be happier -- maybe even nicer to each other -- because of it.

Yawning

How and why we yawn still presents problems for researchers in an area which has only recently been opened up to study

When Robert R Provine began studying yawning in the 1960s, it was difficult for him to convince research students of the merits of ‘yawning science’. Although it may appear quirky to some, Provine’s decision to study yawning was a logical extension of his research in developmental neuroscience.

The verb ‘to yawn’ is derived from the Old English ganien or ginian, meaning to gape or open wide. But in addition to gaping jaws, yawning has significant features that are easy to observe and analyse. Provine ‘collected’ yawns to study by using a variation of the contagion response. He asked people to ‘think about yawning’ and, once they began to yawn, to depress a button that would record from the start of the yawn to the exhalation at its end.

Provine’s early discoveries can be summarized as follows: the yawn is highly stereotyped but not invariant in its duration and form. It is an excellent example of the instinctive ‘fixed action pattern’ of classical animal-behaviour study, or ethology. It is not a reflex (short-duration, rapid, proportional response to a simple stimulus), but, once started, a yawn progresses with the inevitability of a sneeze. The standard yawn runs its course over about six seconds on average, but its duration can range from about three seconds to much longer than the average. There are no half-yawns: this is an example of the typical intensity of fixed action patterns and a reason why you cannot stifle yawns. Just like a cough, yawns can come in bouts with a highly variable inter-yawn interval, which is generally about 68 seconds but rarely more than 70. There is no relation between yawn frequency and duration: producers of short or long yawns do not compensate by yawning more or less often. Furthermore, Provine’s hypotheses about the form and function of yawning can be tested by three informative yawn variants which can be used to look at the roles of the nose, the mouth and the jaws.

i) The closed nose yawn

Subjects are asked to pinch their nose closed when they feel themselves start to yawn. Most subjects report being able to perform perfectly normal closed nose yawns. This indicates that the inhalation at the onset of a yawn, and the exhalation at its end, need not involve the nostrils -- the mouth provides a sufficient airway.

ii) The clenched teeth yawn

Subjects are asked to clench their teeth when they feel themselves start to yawn but allow themselves to inhale normally through their open lips and clenched teeth. This variant gives one the sensation of being stuck mid-yawn. This shows that gaping of the jaws is an essential component of the fixed action pattern of the yawn, and unless it is accomplished, the program (or pattern) will not run to completion. The yawn is also shown to be more than a deep breath, because, unlike normal breathing, inhalation and exhalation cannot be performed so well through the clenched teeth as through the nose.

iii) The nose yawn

This variant tests the adequacy of the nasal airway to sustain a yawn. Unlike normal breathing, which can be performed equally well through mouth or nose, yawning is impossible via nasal inhalation alone. As with the clenched teeth yawn, the nose yawn provides the unfulfilling sensation of being stuck in mid-yawn. Exhalation, on the other hand, can be accomplished equally well through nose or mouth. Through this methodology Provine demonstrated that inhalation through the oral airway and the gaping of jaws are necessary for normal yawns. The motor program for yawning will not run to completion without feedback that these parts of the program have been accomplished.

But yawning is a powerful, generalized movement that involves much more than airway manoeuvres and jaw-gaping. When yawning you also stretch your facial muscles, tilt your head back, narrow or close your eyes, produce tears, salivate, open the Eustachian tubes of your middle ear and perform many other, yet unspecified, cardiovascular and respiratory acts. Perhaps the yawn shares components with other behaviour. For example, is the yawn a kind of ‘slow sneeze’ or is the sneeze a ‘fast yawn’? Both share common respiratory and other features including jaw gaping, eye closing and head tilting.

Yawning and stretching share properties and may be performed together as parts of a global motor complex. Studies by J I P deVries et al. in the early 1980s, charting movement in the developing foetus using ultrasound, observed a link between yawning and stretching. The most extraordinary demonstration of the yawn-stretch linkage occurs in many people paralyzed on one side of their body because of brain damage caused by a stroke. The prominent British neurologist Sir Francis Walshe noted in 1923 that when these people yawn, they are startled and mystified to observe that their otherwise paralysed arm rises and flexes automatically in what neurologists term an ‘associated response’. Yawning apparently activates undamaged, unparalyzed limbic connections between the brain and the motor system, causing the paralyzed limb to move. It is not known whether the associated response is a positive prognosis for recovery, nor whether yawning is therapeutic for prevention of muscular deterioration.

Provine speculated that, in general, yawning may have many functions, and selecting a single function from the available options may be an unrealistic goal. Yawning appears to be associated with a change of behavioural state, switching from one activity to another. Yawning is also a reminder that ancient and unconscious behaviour linking us to the animal world lurks beneath the veneer of culture, rationality and language.