Berkeley High School Gymnasium, photos by Timothy Hursley (left) and ELS Architecture and Urban Design (right).In Dwell magazine’s opening issue, the editors made a declaration they dubbed “The Fruit Bowl Manifesto.” The gist of it is that whenever one sees a fruit bowl in a photograph of the interior of someone’s home in Dwell, it is there not as a stylish prop, but because the homeowner likes to eat fruit. A corollary principle is that the people who live in the home ought to appear in pictures of the home; or, more broadly, that photographs of buildings should show them in use by human beings.
Pictures of buildings with people in them are more true to life, but in addition to the question or verisimilitude, there is the question of where we focus our design attention. As Herman Hertzberger has suggested, we might better think of buildings as pedestals awaiting the presence of people, rather than as sculptures, complete without them.
One dramatic, but dependable, place to compare spaces with and without people is a schoolyard. Get there ten minutes before classes let out for recess, find a comfortable bench, and wait. These shots of the new Berkeley High School gymnasium, by ELS Architecture and Urban Design, suggest the effect.
Originally published in 4th quarter 2004, in arcCA 04.4, “School Daze.”
