Architecture and Environmental Numbness

Abstract

The quality of living environment depends on users’ active response. Users’ unawareness and passive, insensitive and indifferent reaction to their surroundings—collectively called ‘environmental numbness’—adversely affects users’ wellbeing and will gradually lead to degradation and final evacuation of an environment. Several factors contribute to numbness, namely: users’ conformism to deficiencies in their environment; recurrent architectural kitsch; crowding and overload; lack of emotional stimulation; little spatial flexibility; limited user participation opportunities and lack of place attachment. This leads to the conclusion that low-cost and social housing are priority areas that demand urgent attention by architects to prevent environmental numbness.