Browsing tag: empathy

  • January 10, 2018

    Empathy in Architecture: The Kasungu Maternity Waiting Village by MASS Design

    In her recent essay “Designing with Empathy,” Slow Space founder and architect Mette Aamodt writes, “Empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and feeling the emotions they feel.”

    What if this “someone else” is a pregnant woman in Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries? As an architect, how do you put yourself in that pair of shoes, in which she walked the long journey from her village to the district hospital in Kasungu, where she hopes to receive essential medical services that will give her a better chance of surviving childbirth?

    Only slightly more than half of the children in this Southeast-African country are born under the care of a medical professional. Malawi has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world — 634 deaths per 100,000 live births (est. 2015).

    The University of North Carolina (UNC) had already been working with Malawi’s Ministry of Health on a larger initiative to help address maternal mortality through medical practices and protocols. As part of the project, the Ministry had quickly and with very limited resources created a prototype maternity waiting home; a bare-bones rectangle, housing 36 beds and a small bathroom at its core. Outside, a small, unshaded space for washing laundry. They planned to build 130 more maternity waiting homes across the country, based on that model.

    At the time, Boston-headquartered MASS Design Group (MASS) already had an office in Kigali, working on projects in Rwanda. The firm was invited to Malawi to contribute a design that could improve the mothers’ experience and help to mitigate that country’s unfathomably high maternal mortality rate. Women waiting until they are too close to labor for making the distance and women who had planned on giving birth at home in their village but encounter complications, far away from the nearest doctor, are at a particularly high risk. Thus, a maternity waiting home is a facility in the proximity of a hospital or health centre, where expecting mothers can stay toward the end of their pregnancy and await labor.

    MASS’ mission

    MASS Design Group’s mission is to design environments that promote health and dignity. The firm, founded as non-profit organization, aims to advance a movement that fosters public awareness of the way architecture can hurt or heal. Empathy in architecture, trying to understand the feelings of their design’s future users, is woven into the fabric of the firm. “It’s not just the Maternity Waiting Village for us that embodies empathy in design,” says Director Patricia Gruits, LEED. “That is really part of what we as a firm bring to all of our projects. We claim that entire process as an opportunity to ensure dignity and empathy across the continuum of design and construction.”

    We claim that entire process as an opportunity to ensure dignity and empathy across the continuum of design and construction.

    empathy in architecture

    Empathy in architecture: The Kasungu Maternity Waiting Village. Photo: © Iwan Baan, Courtesy of MASS Design Group

    Immersion first

    Before beginning to design, the MASS team traveled to the site of the future Maternity Waiting Village, set adjacent to Kasungu’s district hospital, where pregnant women from the surrounding villages came to deliver their babies. “We always start each project with what we call ‘immersion’,” Gruits notes. “It’s about immersing ourselves in the community, so we understand the needs, the context, any opportunities of the project — not sort of drop in a solution.”

    It’s about immersing ourselves in the community, so we understand the needs, the context, any opportunities of the project — not sort of drop in a solution.

    On his first site visit, her colleague Jean Paul Sebuhayi Uwase, design associate in MASS’ Rwanda office, was shocked to find these mothers under the rain, without shelter. Some stayed in tents, others slept outside under the trees. “What if this was my mother?” he remembers thinking. “For you to go through the experience of giving birth, you deserve to have this space that treats you well. That was pushing us to design, to go outside of the normal things, for this to be a special place for these mothers to give birth, but also a special space for people to change their mindset of not always delivering at their homes or in their villages.”

    During the immersion, the MASS team quickly observed how social the Malawian women were, spending most of the time gathered together outside, sitting on the ground, around a tree in the shade or under the overhang of another building. The current prototype design clearly was not responding to the Malawian way of life.

    The Kasungu Maternity Waiting Village, empathy in architecture

    The design of the Kasungu Maternity Waiting Village is inspired by the way of life in a traditional Malawaian village. Photo: © Iwan Baan, Courtesy of MASS Design Group

    Researching the setup of typical Malawian villages, the team found that even as younger generations start their own families, they all stay in the same area, near the houses of their parents and grandparents. The family life extends fluidly. “That creates a social cohesion within the family,” Uwase says. How could they recreate aspects of the mothers’ village life through design? By allowing empathy to influence their architecture. The common spaces in particular were designed to encourage gathering and interacting. “That creates a friendship that extends beyond the Maternity Waiting Village,” Uwase says. The hope for the Village is to encourage the women to carry on a social life and normal friendships. Gruits references the project’s main goal: “We really wanted to transform this maternity waiting experience from something that was seen as a negative experience for mothers, something that disempowered them, to something that was empowering.”

    We really wanted to transform this maternity waiting experience from something that was seen as a negative experience for mothers, something that disempowered them, to something that was empowering.

    The architect speaks of a local nurse’s vision for these women to come and learn a skill, so they can return to their villages not only with a healthy baby but with new potential and opportunities. Classes on gardening, nutrition, cooking and family planning are crucial to the program. “All of that is about really impacting and empowering her to make better and different life decisions that are right for her and her family.”

    empathy in architecture: The Kasungu Maternity Waiting Village. Photo: © Iwan Baan, Courtesy of MASS Design Group

    The Kasungu Maternity Waiting Village. Photo: © Iwan Baan, Courtesy of MASS Design Group

    Empathy in architecture: Design for dignity

    36 women sleeping in one big room was not the right answer to fostering solidarity. Based on their research on social interactions and social networks, MASS instead designed small huts that sleep four women each. Clusters of three huts surround a core of washrooms, showers and a laundry area 12 mothers share. A total of three clusters is complemented by a room for classes, several outdoor areas and a kitchen.

    The local nurses and UNC saw additional opportunity to pair experienced mothers with first-timers, so they can coach each other along and answer questions. “There is now this much more communal approach to giving birth and to the pregnancy process,” Gruits says. Her colleague agrees: “The way it has been designed really helps to facilitate all of those relationships and connections.” The team even renamed their maternity waiting home Maternity Waiting Village, for its many chances to encourage relationship building through design.

    The designers also had to address Malawi’s extreme climate of very strong rain seasons and very hot dry seasons. The mothers needed protection from the rain throughout the village, including covered walkways. But they also needed shaded areas where they would be protected from the sun. “So we really focused on the roof of the project,” says Gruits. “We looked at the roof to create those overhangs to shade and to protect from the rain.” Ample outdoor spaces now facilitate education programs and cooking classes or simply for the women to cook and gather together more comfortably.

    What’s more, the mothers are typically accompanied by family members, who cook for them, keep them company and help them through the delivery process. So the designers doubled the number of toilets and added large benches under the overhangs. “If we couldn’t provide a bed for the guardians, at least we could provide protection from the rain and the sun,” Gruits says.

    In the quest to combat maternal mortality beyond the Village, a key design objective had been to inspire the mothers to return to their villages and in turn encourage other pregnant women to make their way to the Maternity Waiting Village in Kasungu.

    Building for a future

    Malawi suffers from extreme deforestation, and high-quality building materials are hard to come by. “When you fire bricks, you use a lot of wood,” says Uwase. “So on this project, they were interested in us testing alternative building materials that would be more sustainable and would be solutions to combat deforestation.” The group implemented CSEBs — compressed stabilized earth blocks, which use very small amounts of cement and no firewood. Local laborers made the bricks onsite.

    Uwase speaks passionately about the opportunity to train the local carpenters in reading technical drawings, and to influence them to think differently about materials. “Part of our model at MASS is that we are not just designing a building and dropping it off,” Gruits adds. “We train wherever we can, which not only ensures the stewardship or the repair or the maintenance of our own buildings but also that those same workers may go off and use that skill on another job and make more money.”

    Uwase has returned to Kasungu three times since construction finished and women have moved into the Maternity Waiting Village he helped to build. One of the doctors told him that word-of-mouth is spreading about “one of the best places to wait when you are attending the maternity services.” If anything, too many mothers from the area surrounding Kasungu are coming. “It’s a good sign,” says Uwase. “It shows a response to one of the concerns we had when we studied the design, and how the design can change the mindset and attract more mothers. And that’s happening now, which makes me happy.”

    The Kasungu Maternity Waiting Village. empathy in architecture

    The design aims to encourage more women from the surrounding villages to come to the Kasungu Maternity Waiting Village. Photo: © Iwan Baan, Courtesy of MASS Design Group

    More mothers are waiting

    The MASS team knew from interviewing mothers beforehand that there would be more than 36 mothers at a time wanting to come. “There is a bigger demand for this Maternity Waiting Village,” Gruits notes. “Part of it being well designed is that we’ve been successful in encouraging more mothers to come, but we need more of these facilities to actually accommodate the demand.” The district hospital itself is currently adding on to their maternity ward. “It’s a huge success that they would invest in that infrastructure.”

    The Malawian Ministry of Health is now considering implementing the MASS-designed Maternity Waiting Village prototype on a larger scale. “We’ve had conversations as well with NGOs and other leaders in Zambia and even in Uganda about maternity waiting homes,” Gruits says. “People are interested in using our model, and we see this as an opportunity for other countries that are also looking at maternity waiting villages as a solution to their maternal mortality issues.”

  • November 7, 2017

    Architecture as Experience: Peter Zumthor’s Thermal Baths

    This article is part of an installment of essays and examples illuminating the essence of good architecture, which, as Slow Space founder Mette Aamodt defines, comprises the three fundamental qualities of empathy, experience and beauty. The exploration of Peter Zumthor’s thermal baths in Vals, Switzerland, represents a paragon of architecture as experience — as an extraordinary sensory experience.

    Zumthor's thermal baths

    Photo by Jonathan Ducrest

    Solitude of space

    To share a taste of this experience, we caught up with Swiss photographer Jonathan Ducrest, who explored Peter Zumthor’s thermal baths from a distinctive angle — from behind his sly camera lens — shot without special lighting. Ducrest, who says he’s “not big on taking pictures of people,” also minimally edited the photographs to give a more authentic sense of the place’s raw simplicity. It is the solitude of space that fascinates the photographer.

    Ducrest now calls Los Angeles home. He’d returned home to his native Switzerland for the holidays and decided to take his mother on a spa weekend. “This was my third or forth trip to Vals,” says Ducrest, contemplating how time moves slower in the small mountain village of fewer than one thousand souls in Switzerland’s Graubünden canton. “You just relax, without the everyday stress. You can walk and enjoy nature, and there aren’t a lot of distractions.”

    Zumthor's thermal baths

    View into the surrounding landscape of the valley of Vals. Photo by Jonathan Ducrest

    Swiss minimalism

    Zumthor, whose other significant works include the Kunsthaus in Bregenz, Austria, the all-timber Swiss Pavilion for Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany, and the upcoming expansion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in the United States, designed the spa building over the canton’s only thermal springs. The hydrotherapy center, commissioned by the village of Vals, was completed in 1996. Zumthor’s rectilinear design contrasts the valley’s traditional vernacular structures and pastoral setting, and was to look as if it pre-dated the luxury hotel complex.

    Zumthor's thermal baths

    Zumthor’s minimalist, clean-lined design contrasts the valley’s traditional vernacular structures. Photo by Jonathan Ducrest

    “The spa and the hotel itself — it’s like this temple,” reflects Ducrest. “There’s nothing but the water and the stone the architect used.” The cave-like structure comprises 15 units, each five meters high, whose grass-covered concrete roofs don’t join. The slim gaps are filled in with glass. The dark quartzite slabs are quarried locally, and 60,000 one-meter-long stone sections clad the walls in a subtly ordered pattern. “He framed the landscape outside with windows,” the photographer describes. “It’s like you’re watching a painting when you’re relaxing in your chair, and you’re looking out and it’s snowing or the light is changing or there could be a storm outside. You’re becoming more attuned to your surroundings.” The fact that all the stone Zumthor used was brought in from the valley connects visitors even more to the encompassing environment. “Everything comes from there: the waters, the air, the sounds.”

    Everything comes from there: the waters, the air, the sounds.

    Zumthor's thermal baths

    Photo by Jonathan Ducrest

    Ducrest has long wanted to photograph the space. But without an official assignment, he needed to be cunning in shooting inside the thermal baths, beginning his day’s work early in the morning, when only hotel guests are allowed in. Having been in the space before, he knew beforehand what he wanted to capture. “I had my camera wrapped in my towel, and my mom was looking out if someone was coming. And I took the pictures in a natural light, there’s no flash,” reveals Ducrest, who intently refrained from retouching the photographs. He wanted to depict the architecture as purely as possible — in the way it was designed. What is more, he says, “The lighting changes throughout the day. If you start incorporating lighting that’s not supposed to be there, it’s going to change the feel of it. I like the fact that I had to deal with those constraints. And I don’t really like having people in my photography.”

    I don’t really like having people in my photography.

    Zumthor's thermal baths

    Photo by Jonathan Ducrest

    Zumthor's thermal baths

    Photo by Jonathan Ducrest

    Feeling Zumthor

    By design, Zumthor, who received the Pritzker Architecture Prize for his lifework in 2009, pulls the visitor from the arrival and physical transition into bath attire deeper into the spacial experience of the building. A gentle slope leads down to the locker rooms. “You go down this dark tunnel, and you get glimpses of what he wants you to go and explore,” the photographer tells. “As you walk down the hallway, you turn to your left, and there’s this small but very tall opening, and you can see the space below. You see a pool, and you want to go there and see that space. You’re going through a turnstile, and again, you walk this hallway, and there’s water coming out of little water sprouts.” At the end of the hall, the locker rooms lie behind heavy curtains. “You emerge on the other side into the main space, and as you are walking down the staircase, you’re going to see the outdoor pool. You’re going to see a part of the main pool. And you’ll again want to go further and explore.”

    Zumthor's thermal baths

    Rigid and in order: Swiss minimalism. Photo by Jonathan Ducrest

    Ducrest’s images are a pictorial reflection on the architect’s intent of creating a physical, mental and spiritual human experience — with the Swiss touch of the internationally renown architect, who was born in Basel in 1943, the son of a master carpenter. “In Switzerland, we like things in order and a little rigid, that’s how we are. That’s still how I am,” Ducrest notes. “When you’re there, it’s always straight lines. It’s hard corners. From the design, you wouldn’t think there is something soft or calming about the space. It’s very rigid and square, and there seems to be no end to this gray stone. But then you add the thermal water elements and the lighting, and it all comes together. Now, it’s a perfect space.”

    Zumthor's thermal baths

    The soft element of the thermal water in juxtaposition with the rough stone and the straight-line architecture perfects the experience of the space.

    Also read: “Designing With Empathy” by Mette Aamodt

  • October 17, 2017

    Designing With Empathy

    The Slow Space Movement stands for buildings that are good, clean and fair, but what exactly do we mean by that? This is our inaugural piece in a series of articles exploring this thematic trifecta of what we understand slow space to be, beginning with “good.”

    In our practice at Aamodt / Plumb, we define a good building as a building that holds meaning for the users, brings them joy and connects them to the world, to others or to themselves in some way. A good building does not just satisfy our basic needs but helps us to understand ourselves and our place in the world. It mediates between our being and our environment, providing a filter through which we can see ourselves and the world. It is not a benign shelter, but a lense that we create for experiencing the world and ourselves within it.

    As architects, designing a good building is a hard, if not impossible, task, but one that we choose to strive for every day. One of the ways we can pursue good building is through empathy.

    Feeling what they feel
    architecture design empathy

    Architecture and Empathy, 2015. Published by The Tapio Wirkkala-Rut Bryk Foundation.

    Empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and feeling the emotions they feel. According to Juhani Pallasmaa, empathy in architecture is when “The designer places him/herself in the role of the future dweller and tests the validity of the ideas through this imaginative exchange of roles and personalities.” (Pallasmaa, Juhani. “Empathic and Embodied Imagination: Intuiting Experience and Life in Architecture” in Architecture and Empathy.)

    Empathy is one of our basic human traits and one that differentiates us from other species. It evolved to nurture babies outside of the womb, as our upright position forced babies to be born before full gestation. Babies continue to develop through skin to skin contact with their mothers. Without this babies fail to thrive and suffer irreparable physical and psychological damage, and sometimes death. Architect and philosopher Sarah Robinson has argued that the skin is the most fundamental medium of contact with our world.

    architecture design empathy

    “Boundaries of skin: John Dewey, Didier Anzieu and Architectural Possibility” in Architecture and Empathy

    “Empathy allows us to connect to the world through our own bodies and in turn, the world opens itself up to us as we feel our way into it. As the mutuality of the mother-baby relationship exemplifies, we dwell in a reciprocating circuit. We are built to be received into a world to which we must connect, into a world that fits us. Empathy is the deep reflexivity at the heart of life.” (Robinson, Sarah. “Boundaries of Skin: John Dewey, Didier Anzieu and Architectural Possibility” in Architecture and Empathy.)

    The leather-clad door handles at the Villa Mairea by Alvar Aalto are an example of how sensitive the architect was in designing the physical point of connection between the user and the building. Instead of leaving the cold metal bare to draw heat away from the body, he wrapped them in leather so the contact would be skin to skin.

    Embodied simulation

    Recent discoveries in neuroscience have identified exactly how empathy works within our bodies. Mirror neurons in the brain create a mechanism, called embodied simulation, that maps the actions, emotions and sensations of other people onto our brains as if we were experiencing them ourselves. Embodied simulation is not just limited to empathizing with people, it extends to objects and space. MD PhD Vittorio Gallese, who along with his team discovered these mirror neurons, says that “Embodied simulation not only connects us to others, it connects us to our world — a world inhabited by natural and manmade objects … as well as other individuals.” (Gallese, Vittorio. “Architectural Space from Within: The Body, Space and the Brain” in Architecture and Empathy)

    “The notion of empathy recently explored by cognitive neuroscience can reframe the problem of how works of art and architecture are experienced, revitalizing and eventually empirically validating old intuitions about the relationship between body, empathy and aesthetic experience.” (Ibid.)

    Human-centered design

    Empathy is a cornerstone of human-centered design, a buzzword that has been nicely packaged and branded by IDEO, the interdisciplinary design consulting firm.

    “Human-centered design is a creative approach to problem solving and the backbone of our work at IDEO.org. It’s a process that starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor made to suit their needs. Human-centered design is all about building a deep empathy with the people you’re designing for; generating tons of ideas; building a bunch of prototypes; sharing what you’ve made with the people you’re designing for; and eventually putting your innovative new solution out in the world.” (IDEO Design Kit)

    This description is how I always understood architecture, but I am grateful to IDEO for spreading these ideas to the mass market. But why does human-centered design seem so out of fashion inside our industry? What is it in contrast to? It is in contrast to market-driven design, like developers who are often just concerned with maximizing square footage and reducing costs. We are all pretty familiar with these examples.

    Technology-driven design

    Then there is technology-driven design that I will call “tech for tech’s sake.” Quoting a recent opinion piece in The Guardian, “If there’s one thing the technology community loves, it’s an over-engineered solution to a problem that isn’t really a problem. Double points if the root of that problem is: ‘I’m a young man with too much money who needs technology to do for me what my mother no longer will.’ ” (“The five most pointless tech solutions to non-problems,” The Guardian) At the top of their list of the most useless tech solutions is the Juicero, a $400, Wi-Fi-enabled machine that squeezes single-purpose pods filled with crushed fruit and vegetables into a glass. This company raised $120 million in venture capital. PS: It turns out, if you just squeeze the pod, the juice will come out ready to drink. No machine needed. (Juicero has suspending the sale of the Juicero Press and Produce Packs in September 2017.)

    design empathy

    Tech as tech can: Render of Zaha Hadid’s design for the headquarters of the Central Bank of Iraq. Photo: Zaha Hadid Architects

    Technology-driven design has dominated architecture for the past 20 years, where the cutting edge has been defined by what wild architectural form could be created by the latest software and material technology. The work of FOA, Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry comes to mind. The green movement has also been swept up in technology-driven design, with everyone searching for the tech equivalent of the silver bullet that will solve our environmental crisis.

    “True sustainability demands more than technological solutions — it must be founded on an understanding of human nature that recognizes, affirms and supports our nascent vulnerability and interdependence.” (Robinson, Sarah. “Boundaries of Skin: John Dewey, Didier Anzieu and Architectural Possibility” in Architecture and Empathy.)