In a post last October on Inspirational Buildings I mentioned the effect that Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum had on transforming the fortunes of Bilbao in northern Spain. Earlier this week I watched a Channel 4 programme that put the case against buildings such as the Guggenheim. It suggested that many post-Guggenheim buildings are more about show (and the architect’s ego?) than functionality for the people who use them. I am a passionate believer that buildings can have a powerful effect on the way we feel, how we work, how creative we can be. But I would readily agree that some creators of modern buildings do not seem to care about the users. An obvious example is the many people who are not comfortable with heights. Despite this, architects put glass lifts up the outsides of buildings and escalators that run up through space. They design buildings that rise to unnatural heights … and then give them glass walls!

The trouble is that many of us get so caught up in what we are doing that we often fail to understand what our customers experience. We may not be asked to design an iconic building but all of us have the opportunity to do something worthwhile, something that can make a positive difference to our business, the organisation for which we work, our community, or just to an individual. All that is required is an understanding of what the end user needs, rather than what we want to give them. Maybe over the weekend we can reflect on one thing we can do next week that will start to change something.  Another eminent architect, Frank Lloyd Wright said, “Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as a cathedral”.