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Functionalism and human experience
I am heavily influenced by designs that prioritise the experiences of the people who will use them , and I am inspired by Dutch Architect Aldo van Eyck ( 1918-1999 ) who famously rejected functionalism in favour of human-centric experience through design .
While studying in the orphanage Aldo designed , I witnessed its spaces as a wonderful example of a humanised environment , within which sat an overwhelming presence of two overlapping scales : a mature underlying system of parts at a more mature strategic scale , and another smaller more detailed , slightly cheeky landscape , but at a scale appealing for children .
Applying this same joyful , humanistic attitude and design ethos to infrastructure projects has been central to the design decisions for Abbey Wood , a new railway station terminating the southeast Spur of London ’ s Elizabeth line . However , the brief needed to deliver much more than a railway station . The highly symbolic start of the Elizabeth line demanded a hard-working architectural statement , supporting Abbey Wood to emerge as a unique and thriving neighbourhood .
Abbey Wood
Engineering tends to be focused on the feasibility of itself , and for rail things tend to be linear , but the impact of a railway station is far from linear . A key challenge when designing for a human-centric experience is how we transform that linear inward oriented engineering into a locally responsive humanistic solution . Only when stations deal with that space , interface or interchange do they become places .
In the case of the previous Abbey Wood site , while it might have fulfilled its functional requirements , it was very much unhumanised and a hub for antisocial
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All photo credits Richard Lewisohn