I was thinking on the way home about learning and the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance would say that one learns best when experiencing something novel, but not too novel. By extension, one stops being able to learn when something is too far outside of one's comfort zone.
So I wonder what role architecture and place can play in creating the right amount of dissonance to stimulate learning. Too comfortable, and our surroundings become mere wallpaper, not even worth considering. Too dissonant, and we retreat from the experience.
It strikes me that having a garage door literally open up the teachers' lounge into a performance stage finds the dissonace balance point. It's an architectural moment that leads us to reconsider what a teachers' lounge is for and invites us to use it in additional way.
(Well, this thought made sense to me on the way home; hopefully it didn't get too garbled here.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
That reminds me of something we talked about in studio on Wed. In the context of experimentation, Madlen suggested that we should try to get out of our comfort zone this semester and that people tend to do their best work when they feel a bit beyond their usual scope. As Catherine mentioned, however, if you go too far, it is likely that a person might shut down in response. I guess somewhere in the middle of all that is the pretty obvious idea that in both process and product we should strive to push ourselves and the status quo, but also strike a balance betweeen what is comfortable (i.e. cultural clues) and what is new.
Post a Comment