Construction of 'Ways of Life' in Architecture

image from the advertising for the Bohemian Embassy Condos in Toronto from here

Dana Cuff and Russell Ellis point out in their book Architect’s People (1989), that there must always be an “implicit actor who lurks in the designer’s imagination.” The character of this actor affects our experience of the designed space. Crafting a building always involves imagining possible world-creating that could occur within it. Andrew Ballantyne has put this very well when he commented that, “what architects can do in proposing a design for a building, is to propose a fragment of a world.” The induction of delight in a visitor to a building depends on predicting how this fragment of a world will be perceived. The subject experiencing the space may choose to participate in the proposed world, or alternately it may seem discordant to them. If this architectural description of a proposed way of life manages to strike a chord with the subject, this can be one of the most effective means of achieving delight an architect has at their disposal.