How many college administrators have gone to a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the nagging, sinking feeling that they had just spent millions on a building that nobody liked? What if, long before a golden shovel pierced the ground, campus architects and planners had a procedure in place to avoid such a fate?
Steven Orfield not only believes that such a procedure is possible but says he has devised it—a method that might strike people as radical, necessary, nonsensical, or even threatening, depending on which side of the designer-client line they stand. Orfield, who consults with architects on sound, lighting, and other environmental factors from his office here, says he can use market-research techniques to test various designs according to the preferences of building occupants and prospective students.
That is not the common design charrette, a workshop in which architects and clients hash out the architect’s design ideas—a process Orfield regards as an “indoctrination session” led by the designer. Nor is it a focus group or “visioning session,” in which clients might look at different designs and offer opinions about what they like.
Rather, he says, research needs to gauge people’s feelings about a building or space before they form an opinion.
“If you are trying to measure someone’s response to a product or an environment, the one thing that you can never do is ask them, because they don’t know,” Orfield says. “The question is not, What do people realize they like? It’s, What do they like but don’t realize?”
This isn’t exactly uncharted territory, the consultant insists. His company, Orfield Laboratories Inc., has done similar market research for companies like Harley-Davidson. If they can test the appeal of their products to consumers, he asks, why shouldn’t architects, who deal with much higher stakes and much bigger budgets for each “product” they turn out?
Higher education might benefit from that kind of market testing, he adds. College campuses have a need for aesthetic continuity, which has been broken in recent years as big-name firms have been hired to put their dissonant marks on campuses, he argues. Administrators may not have the design background or the guts to guide the architects.
The method seems simple on its face: If a college were considering a new building, researchers would assemble members of the university community, along with prospective students, and ask them to very quickly rate a set of building designs. (During my visit to his office, Orfield promises I’ll get a chance to take the test.)
Over time, the researchers would develop a profile of the campus—what others it aesthetically compares with, and what its people aspire to. Then, in future tests, the researchers would drop in renderings of proposed buildings and compare the responses. The data would eventually point to building types and sizes, interior styles, and other architectural features preferred by that college’s target audience.
Orfield is developing this market test with input from architects who find it a compelling idea that might both satisfy more clients and lead to more-adventurous design.
Tom Lesan, vice president at Southwestern Community College, in Creston, Iowa, heard about Orfield’s work from an architect who wants to try it on his campus. Southwestern has planned and built a lot of structures, and Lesan is curious to find out whether the buildings appeal to prospective students. But Orfield’s process could cost tens of thousands of dollars, and he’s not sure the college can afford it.
Perry Poyner, of the Omaha firm Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture, which has done many projects at the University of Nebraska, is also interested in Orfield’s work. When colleges want master plans or building designs, “oftentimes, it’s left up to the discretion of the designer,” Poyner says, “and there is not a lot of input from chancellors or people who are going to live with this campus for a long time.”
Administrators might know what they like but don’t know how to ask for it, he says. “Orfield is suggesting that there might be a process so that people don’t walk in when it’s done and say, ‘Yuck.’”
But other architects might read this and feel their stomachs churn. Orfield readily admits that he has talked with a lot of designers who hate the notion of testing design ideas, arguing that doing so would strip out the art. “I no longer give enough rope to say that architecture is an art—it isn’t,” Orfield says. “I once had the Ayn Rand idea that architects were these heroic figures. It took about a year for that to wash out of my head.”
Orfield is not an architect, nor is he an engineer. He studied analytic philosophy at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and then got a job selling modular office furniture. The manufacturers made many claims about the acoustical properties of the office cubicles that did not pan out after installation, he says. So Orfield started buying sound-testing equipment, taught himself how to use it, and in time had his own sound-and-lighting consulting firm. Today Orfield Labs also studies thermal comfort and indoor air quality for its clients, who have included campus-project architects. The market research and product research started out as a way to weather downturns in the construction industry.
Orfield’s Minnesota-flavored accent loses none of its gentleness when he tells me, with some frustration, that the architecture profession is too subjective. “Architecture will never be a really great field until the concept of right and wrong gets into it,” he says.
He professes to love modern and novel architecture above other styles, but when asked about some of the “starchitect” buildings around the Twin Cities, he pans them—mainly for how they sacrifice the experience of the occupant for the glory of the designer. Antoine Predock’s McNamara Alumni Center, at the University of Minnesota, he complains, has terrible sound quality in its atrium, despite its intended use for public functions. Of the university’s Weisman Art Museum, by Frank Gehry, he says: “I think it’s awful. ... Whatever the building is on the outside, it doesn’t come through on the inside.”
Orfield’s headquarters, located in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis, is like a funhouse of visual wonders. Artworks are everywhere, including a major collection of the spooky photo-emulsion work of the Canadian Ojibwa artist Carl Beam. A portion of the building once housed the former Sound 80 Studios, where Bob Dylan recorded parts of his album Blood on the Tracks, and where the first direct-to-digital recordings were made.
For sound geeks, the building features something more thrilling than even Dylan’s echoes: an anechoic test chamber that is the quietest place on earth, according to Guinness World Records. It’s a small room, resting on springs and lined with sound-absorbing fiberglass wedges. Even a dog, with its hypersensitive hearing, would hear nothing of the outside world once the door closed.
We step inside and close the door. Silence closes in like a shroud. As my ears adjust, I hear a loud “tick-tick-tick,” and I point to Orfield’s watch, thinking I am hearing the second hand. Orfield shakes his head and points to his chest—it’s his artificial heart valve.
After a tour of Orfield Labs, I sit down to take a sample test. Images of about two dozen college campuses flash on a movie screen for 30 seconds each, and I am instructed to rate the campuses on various scales: Is a building more static or dynamic, organic or mechanistic, austere or ornate, obvious or intuitive, exclusive or inclusive? Orfield and his assistants explain that the meanings of words like “organic” or “intuitive” are not important; all that matters is what they mean to me. They also tell me not to think too much—I should just react to how an image strikes me.
But I can’t help but think: When a picture of Stanford University flashes up, I rate it as highly “exclusive,” but is that because I recognize it as Stanford? I rate an image of Sproul Plaza, at the University of California at Berkeley, as highly “extroverted,” as did others who have taken the test. But is that because of its reputation for protest, or is there something about the place itself?
It may not matter. The results are merely meant to gauge the image against others, in the hope of finding similar responses in proposed designs.
I ask Orfield, What if this method were applied to Carl Beam, the challenging American Indian artist whom he admires? The work of an architect and of a painter can’t be compared, Orfield replies.
“I don’t have an assumption that buildings are works of art for people who pass by,” he says. “I think a building honors its occupants, and that’s the primary thing.”
Still, I have to wonder: Wouldn’t this kill spontaneity in design? Wouldn’t this push architects toward a bland middle? I’m thinking of all the bad design that people don’t seem to mind—vinyl-clad megamansions, gaudy shopping malls. “I have had arguments with people about this who say, You’re ruling out novelty,” Orfield says. But it’s possible to be quite novel within boundaries—in fact, he argues, boundaries probably force architects to be more creative.
Besides, his research strives mainly to find the broadest definitions for an architect’s work, such as determining the optimal scale of a building, rather than to judge the details. And it’s research that would probably be applied most often to common campus buildings, not to the efforts of star architects, whatever their shortcomings.
“I don’t think we’re talking about world-class buildings here,” Orfield says. “Most of what we are doing is raising the floor, not touching the ceiling.”
