Alterity is essential to human development. If deprived of a variety of stimuli, the brain is unable to develop, losing plasticity and deteriorating like an atrophied muscle. This reasoning is widely accepted when it comes to social relations or cognitive and physical activities. But what about the stimuli promoted by the built environment?
There was a time when the search for ideal spaces, totally controlled to offer the perfect conditions of safety, comfort, and ergonomics to their users, encouraged an ever-increasing dissociation between internal and external environments. Nowadays, the importance of being in contact with nature, in outdoor spaces, with its intrinsic variables of light, noise, temperature, humidity, scents, textures, colors, elements, and lives, has become more and more clear.
The importance of a wide variety of stimuli has been discussed not only concerning interiors and private spaces but also when it comes to public open spaces. Streets, sidewalks, walkways, gardens, and squares are often so monotonous that it is even hard to distinguish them from each other. By replicating standard solutions for roads, amenities, and furniture throughout the city for the sake of efficiency, opportunities are wasted, both to include different types of stimuli in everyday urban life and to promote diversity, and all its richness, potential, and capacity to inspire curiosity.
