Challenging Human
Centred Design (HCD)
​
Architecture commonly dreams of an adaptable utopian space. Yet, bound by reality, architects resort to conceptual graphics to convey the endlessly mutable utopia.
Mega
space
structure
In 'The Spatial City Project' (Figure 3), Friedman envisions a 'Megaspacestructure' encompassing a total system merging the permanent(structure) and the transient(human) elements (Rouillard 2018).
​
Illustration of the infill of people in the 'L'ornamentique' (Figure 4) further evolved this allegory of architecture being about mobility and free will of the individual inhabitants, thus replacing the architect's role as the decision maker.
​
Figure 4: Yona Friedman, L’ornamentique, 1958 (Rouillard 2018).
​
Likewise,
Allison and Peter Smithson
​
proposed an architecture that can be changed as needed; or to infill an existing village with new elements (Figure 5). These unrealised theoretical constructs are the fundamental principles of the "human centred design" (HCD) approach.
Figure 5: Alison and Peter Smithson,
Infilling village, 1957 (Rouillard 2018).
It is time
to shift this dream into reality.
​
​
By taking Forlano's proposition to "decentre" the human in a context increasingly becoming controlled by 'non-humans' (technology), technology must be leveraged to solve complex socio-technical problems and create a 'utopian' city (Forlano 2016).
Thus, paradoxically evolving Friedman's HCD ideology of the infill of 'people' by moving beyond human needs and desires during an environmental and economic crisis era and offering new possibilities of 'decentred' human design that evaluates the world's needs and reorganises social and environmental systems.
​
Infilling the
structure with
​
Architects need to go beyond crafting individual graphics or products toward integrating the field of science and technology.
​
​
It needs to be embedded in our core educational system, thinking process, pragmatic approach, and prototype to create and curate complex socio-technical networks, which are the foundation of "collaborative citymaking for the benefit of all citizens" (Forlano 2016).
​
The Hybrid
Smart City
​
The hybridity of a total system produced by the collaboration between 'humans' and 'technology' is the 'Smart City' prototype. The 'Smart' city is the utopian space that enables flexibility and adaptability; according to Forlano, it embodies the socio-technical systems of politics and ethics. Therefore, architects need to be equipped with the skills to integrate IoT technology which is the core architecture of the Smart City model. Hybridity has proven its impact during the global pandemic. The hybrid office was the solution to the problematic conventional HCD office architecture, the "logical post-pandemic approach" (Seabrook 2021)
​
The disaster of unbalanced, radically scaled architecture was evident during the Covid-19 pandemic. Accelerated experimentations of spatial architecture fully skewered to human needs and desires (HCD) or fully skewered to technology (virtual office) produced data evidence of global economic recession (Seabrook 2021) and diminished social capital (Bernstein and Waber 2019).
​
​
Apple has already well established this ideology in their business model.
​