Pleasure-based design approaches to the built environment

Abstract

As an exercise in discipline cross-fertilisation, this paper applies the emergent practice of pleasure-based approaches in product design to the design of the built environment. This analysis provides insight into humans' emotional responses to the environment that is provided for them. Jordan's four pleasures model, composed of physio-, socio-, psycho- and ideo-pleasures, is used to undertake this analysis. From this analytical process it is evident that physio-, socio- and psycho-pleasures are drawn from generic elements that relate to humans as a kind, and that these commonalities are deeply rooted historical and cultural reference points. Understanding these reference points, and the design principles that emerge from them, will enable those who provide the built environment to engage with the ‘super-usability’ imperative that these pleasure-based approaches have been drawn from and, in so doing, to develop human-centric solutions that engender positive relationships between people and the environment that is provided for them. However, in the absence of a ‘market’, one area will remain problematic—that of personalised and individually constructed ideo-pleasure.