"Altered Perceptions of Space"

On the cover of Architectural Record this month is the title statement "Altered Perceptions of Space", and in this month's issue is a series of critical articles on Record interiors. I must say that the projects profiled in this issue are remarkable, as are all works that appear in Record. And listed are works by some renowned architects such as Tadao Ando and Rene Gonzales. But what struck me first about this issue was not the content but simply the title of the expose, "Altered Perceptions of Space". This got me to thinking about Architecture and about Space. We, as Architects, design Space; we shape the world and mold the way in which we experience and interact with that world. And looking through history one can see in the works of our best and brightest how architects and designers have used many different ways to alter how we perceive and interact with the world around us. This, I think, is a profound challenge for all Architects.
If you look at the work of one of the great masters of this age, Le Corbusier . He set out not only to change our perceptions of space, but to create a "Machine for Living".

And in this machine for living, Corbu also began to change the way we perceived the spaces within the home. Much as Frank Lloyd Wright also did with his Prairie Style. But where Wright centralized the public spaces and secluded the private, Corbu opened the entire plan and made one space seperated by non-load bearing partitions or "screans". Many of us have grown up in McMansions all over the US and abroad so we are familiar with the compartmentalizing of the traditional house: a central living space with kitchen and dining adjacent, the master suite secluded to one side and the children's area tucked away in yet another corner of the building. This creates a sense of seperation within a single space. Corbu exploded that seperation and drastically changed how we perceive the interaction of individual spaces within the home. And this should be applied more than it is today, more than half a century later.
How can we bring about this change in the thinking of designers and Architects to take into consideration, not only the human scale,

but also the human experience? Walking down the streets of Jacksonville, Florida you see the disinterest and lack of interaction of pedestrians and buildings. There is no human scale, there is no way to experience what is around us, accept from above. What is the solution? I put it to you.