BUILDING HAPPINESS

18-10-2006

Barajas Airport in Madrid won the Stirling Prize for Architecture at the weekend,and one of the most striking features of the competition was how many of the buildings were designed by British architects whose best work is done abroad. Psychologist Dr Mike Drayton wonders if we should be doing more at home to build happiness.

The buildings that surround us are very important in influencing the way we feel. Happy, content, safe or anxious, unsafe, discontented; all these emotions are impacted on by our environment.

Let me give you an example to explain what I mean. Last Saturday I had to go to Sainsbury's and also to a DIY shop to buy something. My nearest Sainsbury's and Homebase is at Selly Oak. For people who don't know it, the Selly Oak triangle is a 1980's design nightmare of colossal proportions.

On one island, surrounded by a busy one way system is the supermarket, on the other side are a collection of shops like PC World, Curry's and Homebase. Entrance and exits from both are via one road filtering into the one-way system. There is little in the way of pedestrian access. These are shops for car owners. Exit from the Homebase side is particularly difficult.

My description really does not do justice to the awfulness of it all. After I'd got the groceries, rather than drive for a second timearound the one-way system, I left the car at the supermarketand walked to the DIY store.

Here I encountered my first source of anxiety. I had to take my life in my hands by crossing the three lane one-way system, the nearest traffic lights and crossing point being fifty yards away from the car park. I did this and ended up in another car park - at Homebase -that had no pedestrian walkways. The designers seemed to have created anenvironment that discouraged walking and encouraged driving. I eventually arrived atthe store which did not have the item I wanted in stock and they suggested I try B&Q, next door. I could see the B&Q, in fact I could almost touch it, but could I get to it?

No. A high concrete wall had been built between the two stores which reminded me of the old Berlin wall. This forced me to walk back through the car park (dodging the cars), out on to the one way system along an eighteen inch wide footpath designed, I think,not for pedestrians but to stop cars getting too close to the wall. Then up the ramp, and through the car park to B&Q where I managed to buy what I needed.

After that, I hadthe perilous journey back to the supermarket. I reckon that if I could have walked directly between the shops it would have been about 100 yards, but I ended up walking about a mile in a dangerous and unpleasant environment. I felt stressed to say the least.

The alternative would have been to drive around the one-way system to Sainsbury's,then drive around the one-way system again to get to Homebase,and then drive around the one-way system one more time to get to B&Q.

This is a good example of a mad environment that causes stress and anxiety to the people who have to live in it.

Think about how it felt walking through the graffiti covered walkways of the old BullRing that stank of urine. Were you nervous? Fed up? Or just ashamed of the city which you call home? How does it feel walking through the new Bullring? Or through Victoria Square? I feel good and get a sense of civic pride about Brum.

So, all the new buildings in Brum are great aren't they? Well no. Rubbish architecture is alive and well and can be found in Bristol Street.

I wonder if the ugliest new building in Birmingham is the new etap hotel at the bottom of the Bristol Road?

Of course there are worse buildings but they at least have the excuse of being built in the 1960's and 1970's when brutalist architecture was the norm.

The etap hotel is a dull concrete box with windows. It will surely grow uglier with age as pollution and weather stains the concrete.

I know it's a cheap budget hotel but why does cheap have to equal bad architecture and bad design? Surely it must be as possible to make a beautiful building from concrete and glass as it is to make an unimaginative and ugly building?

Architecture is important to us and how we feel about ourselves and our great city.

What are your favourite buildings in Birmingham and the West Midlands? And is that etap hotel really the ugliest? Leave comment on the messageboard.