Adia Sisson

Adia Sisson

Paul Nowicki

ARCH 100

25 June 2018

What is Shelter?

When have you arrived? In order to arrive, there must be a journey, a moment when you leave and a destination you travel towards. In the example of traveling to a friend’s new house, your journey starts when you get in your car and begin to drive. After driving a while, you cross into their new neighborhood. A few blocks later, you see your friend’s address on what must be their house, which you’ve never seen. You park your car, double check your given address, and step outside. Have you arrived? You’ve never seen the house, so you can’t be sure that you’ve reached your destination, but the traveling portion of your journey has ended; you’re in the vicinity. You walk up the steps and knock on the front door, waiting for someone to answer. Someone you’ve never seen comes to the door, making you question if you’re in the right place. “Hi, is this ____’s house?” you ask. “Yeah, they’re just in the back gardening,” the person replies. They shut the door, so you’re on your own again. Have you arrived now? One could argue that you have, as you’re at the house, the original destination, but your friend is somewhere else within the property, so if you stayed where you are now, your journey wouldn’t be complete, and you wouldn’t have arrived. You walk around the house, trying to find the garden. Depending on the design of the house, you may easily find it, or you may get lost and wind up farther away. Assuming you get to the garden and reach your friend, have you then arrived? In my personal experience, I don’t consider myself having fully arrived until I’m included whatever is happening where I am. In this example, I personally would consider myself arrived once I put my bags down and started gardening with my friend or once we walked inside together. A clear sense arrival depends on the particular person arriving, because my friend might consider my arrival once I entered their garden, knocked on their door, or even stepped out of my car.

In my opinion, arrival has three or four sections: entering the vicinity, crossing the outer boundary, crossing the inner boundary, and for some people, engaging with the situation. Depending on the situation and person, some sections may be more important than others. Any journey can be broken into the following parts:

• Traveling
• Entering the general vicinity, such as the neighborhood or campus
• Ending the travel segment and moving toward the outer boundary, such as parking the car and walking toward the building
• Entering the specific location, such as knocking on the door of a house or entering the lobby of a building
• Receiving validation that you’re in the right place, such as seeing an address, sign, or talking to someone
• Crossing the inner boundary, such as walking into the house, apartment, classroom or office
• And finally, engaging with the situation, such as putting your stuff down, sitting, or talking with the people already there

Because I have anxiety, I personally don’t consider myself fully arrived until there is no uncertainty in the situation. Even if I was standing in someone’s house, I would still feel like I was in the wrong place until I was directly addressed by the inhabitant or given instructions on what to do. My mother, however, considers herself arrived after simply entering the neighborhood, showing how a sense of arrival is personal and can vary a great deal.

Sense of arrival can be made more uniform and more easily achieved through clear signage, intuitable design, and clear transitions between environments. For example, a sense of arrival at the Architecture Department of Batmale Hall would be made easier if the building included more signage about the location of the department, identified a clear entrance, and changed the look of the department in relation to its neighbors, perhaps by displaying architectural drawings near the entrance of the wing.