{"id":10906,"date":"2015-01-28T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/architizer.wpengine.com\/what-can-pooh-do-for-you\/"},"modified":"2017-09-19T12:02:19","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T12:02:19","slug":"what-can-pooh-do-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.arc.ht\/blog\/inspiration\/collections\/what-can-pooh-do-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"What Can Pooh Do for You? Finding Happiness in Urban Planning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cArchitecture may not necessarily cure personal unhappiness,\u201d English architect Nick Elias<\/a> tells Architizer via email, \u201cbut it may provide the framework for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the guiding premise of PoohTown, Elias\u2019s RIBA President\u2019s Silver Medal-winning conceptual overhaul of Slough, a middling English town where industry rules \u2014 the likes of O2, Mars, Blackberry, Sara Lee, and Ferrari are headquartered there \u2014 and quality of life ratings are low (so low that Ricky Gervais chose it as the perfectly drab setting for \u201cThe Office\u201d). For his dissertation at the Bartlett School of Architecture, Elias re-envisions a place described by English media<\/a> as \u201ca concrete wasteland\u201d and a \u201cbyword for blandness and mediocrity\u201d with a thought experiment: What if, in the 1920s, it had been built on an industry of happiness… based on none other than our beloved Winnie the Pooh?<\/p>\n

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Elias\u2019s speculative urban design project and supporting thesis, \u201cQuantifying PoohTown,\u201d is based on research that suggests that what makes people happy is \u201cplaying an idealized, fictional, representation of themselves \u2014 from putting make-up on to proving their organic credentials at the farmers’ market.\u201d PoohTown exists as a series of renderings, fictional vintage black-and-white scenes brightened by honey-yellow, very purposeful Pooh-themed architecture, as seen from a hot-air balloon tour.<\/p>\n

\n\t\n\t\n<\/div>\n\n

Familiar characters are repurposed into civic works. \u201cResearch shows [that] reading fictional books make us happy as we entertain our imagination and massage our potential (eg. wanting to be superhero), and Owl is an advocate of reading and education in the story,\u201d Elias explains. \u201c\u2019Owl’s Library\u2019 represents this happiness in a designed forest with various ‘Ministrees’ (sic<\/i>) as sections of the library.\u201d At the end, guests visit a virtual emporium of happy products to underscore the commercial potential of happiness.<\/p>\n

Elias\u2019s response to his own research \u2014 the creation of an entire fictional urban scheme \u2014 took cues not from the works of architects but English political artists like Grayson Perry and William Morris, whom he describes \u201carchitects in their own right by exploring the ‘way of living’.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\n\t\n<\/div>\n
\n\t\n\t\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIf architects only look to architects for inspiration then the discourse may forever remain closed,\u201d he says. And Winnie the Pooh has a thing or two to teach us, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, Winnie the Pooh explored serious moral and political teachings,\u201d says Elias. The character also originates from the 1920s, the same time as Slough\u2019s industrial sprawl. For all the happiness PoohTown seeks to provide, the bittersweet underlying truth is that for the depressive, lonely Christopher Robin, Pooh was a make-believe form of escape. But it gets the point across. \u201cPoohTown argues if we were to start designing for our emotional, mental state,\u201d says Elias, \u201cthen we may ask less of the physical world though a resolved sense of belonging.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\n\t\n<\/div>\n\n

via Nick Elias<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cArchitecture may not necessarily cure personal unhappiness,\u201d English architect Nick Elias tells Architizer via email, \u201cbut it may provide the framework for it.\u201d This is the guiding premise of PoohTown, Elias\u2019s RIBA President\u2019s Silver Medal-winning conceptual overhaul of Slough, a middling English town where industry rules \u2014 the likes of O2, Mars, Blackberry, Sara Lee,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"architizer_featured_type":"","architizer_featured_image":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[29],"architizer_project":[],"architizer_brand":[],"architizer_firm":[],"architizer_product":[],"class_list":["post-10906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collections","category-inspiration","tag-play"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Can Pooh Do for You? 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