Alonso Alonso
Renouncing a SOCIOFUGAL Building
When left abandoned, the failure of inordinate and encompassing structures comprising typologies like the American Mall becomes an eyesore to a city and the community. This thesis aims to restore the site's congruity to the community by removing the social fugality of an abandoned mall and infusing a sense of play, welcome, and intrigue. Psychiatrist Humphry Osmond coined the term "sociofugal" to describe environments designed to discourage social interaction and "sociopetal" ones that encourage social interaction. Environmental psychologist Robert Sommer adds that "sociofugal" buildings are regarded by their occupants as cold, stark, institutional, and resistant to personalization or change."
This project reuses the Hawthorne Mall, left abandoned in 1999, and converts it into a multi-use, tri-level open park accessible to the public with residential, commercial, and as an anchor, a variety of eateries which include bistros, coffee shops, and small restaurants. The strategy to develop a "sociopetal" project focuses on Psychologist Daniel Ellis Berlyne's four elements of judging beauty, which are complexity, novelty, incongruity, and surprisingness, known as the collative properties. The strategic layout of the floor plates in the thesis project contends for a continuity of forty-five degree angle cuts in floor design and layout and geometric volumes that are structures easily identifiable to the human eye that imbue complexity, novelty, incongruity, and surprise.
The openness and porosity of the park in this thesis project welcomes the public and those who occupy the structures. Stephen and Rachel Kaplan, professors of psychology at the University of Michigan, specializing in environmental psychology, concluded that mental fatigue results from excessive focus on anything. Conversely, a view of nature leads to happier and healthier individuals, especially at work. This thesis project transforms an inordinately large building, currently a sociogual building, into a sociopetal project that invites the public to engage with its spaces beyond mere observation.
