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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

Screw the ornamental stuff, when do we start getting different large-scale patterns in spaces to live and work?

Long dark hallways filled with apartments where nobody knows each other or has any occasion to interact. Secluded offices vs. anxiety inducing planes of "open" disasters. Apartments designed to be a shrine to a television and a small bedroom with light only suitable for cave dwellers.

The shape of spaces is important and shapes our quality of life. I would like to see a revolution in that much more than a different kinds of facade.

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Sure, that too. Architects don't give a shit about interior spaces. They have interns do the plans. What they are lauded for is the exterior, the big hall and the sky terrace.

To be fair the working space is being experimented upon. The open spaces are fairly new, and there are plenty of workplaces also where people don't have attributed desks, they just walk around the building and sit wherever they want. Whether any of it works, I don't know...

> Architects don't give a shit about interior spaces. They have interns do the plans. What they are lauded for is the exterior, the big hall and the sky terrace.

This probably the true for those big and famous offices (especially the part with interns). But "Architects" is broader group then that. Smaller offices often do consider internal spaces. Also sometimes it is often challenge to design it in way that can survive yak shaving [1] in commercial projects.

[1]: this one often occurs even after original budget was met in the design. That is why public projects are more attractive to many architects even if they are often more modest.

> Architects don't give a shit about interior spaces. They have interns do the plans.

As a rule of thumb, main architects are just sellers. They sell projects to clients and authorities - only. Most senior architects are project managers, they don't plan anymore, at most they give some ideas and impose limitations. The rest, including "interns", do the bulk of the project, interiors or facades.

This is the one area driven purely by economic factors, any developer commissioning the building will let the architect have free reign on the exterior or overall building shape on the proviso that it maximizes leasable floorspace inside. Exciting and interesting interior spaces either use up space or are less marketable catering to a smaller subsection of the market.

> To be fair the working space is being experimented upon. The open spaces are fairly new, and there are plenty of workplaces also where people don't have attributed desks, they just walk around the building and sit wherever they want. Whether any of it works, I don't know...

All of this is purely driven by cost cutting.

Many jobs require deep concentration and quiet and in places that respect this you get individual offices (extremely rare for the entire company, but notice that in 99% of companies every level above manager tends to get an individual office) or team offices (probably the best compromise in terms of cost - socialization trade-off).

The flexible desk ("flex desk") setups work for some things, but they tend to suck, too. You have to take everything with you, generally. Over the ear headset? Bring a bag! Favorite mug? Probably the same. Pens, notes, whatever? Nomad life style.

I have long wanted to make a coffee-table book called Lonely Architectural Spaces, not because I enjoy them but because I'm fascinated by how big an impact they have on my mood and psyche.

Though it's a bad photograph, here's a recent car rental lobby I visited: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aboxwithrocksinit/test-buc...

I worry about people who have to work in places like that.

You might love "Liminal Spaces". There are a few blogs with collections of images, but I think my favorite place to view them is the subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LiminalSpace/

Wow, thanks! I did not know this was a thing!

Local zoning/regulations/politics also play a significant role in limiting types of housing. In general, development projects are going to play it safe to try to get a plan approved.

My grandmother had a saying from when she and my grandpa moved around various Air Force bases: "the closer your neighbours, the less you want to know them"

That's what I love about Barbican in London. It's really hard to convey in pictures, but despite being a brutalist building, it's totally unpredictable and different at every turn and is alive in a much deeper sense than "organic shapes" or wooden panels that we get nowadays. It's a maze of a block that might be annoying to get through if you're in a hurry but is so much more natural in its nature than a typical city block.

I guess it's just way more expensive to design than those standard boxes we see everywhere.

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