JPJC 2023 JC2 GP Prelim_P2_Insert

Name: ____________________________________ Class: _____________ JURONG PIONEER JUNIOR COLLEGE JC2 Preliminary Examination 2023 GENERAL PAPER 8807/02 Higher 1 30 Aug 2023 Paper 2 1 hour 30 minutes INSERT READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST Write your name and class in the spaces provided above. This Insert contains the passage for Paper 2. This document consists of 3 printed pages and 1 blank page.

2 Michael Bond writes about the hidden ways in which architecture and urban design af fect how we feel. 1 “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us, ” mused Winston Churchill in 1943 while considering the repair of the bomb-ravaged House of Commons. M ore than 70 years on, he would doubtless be pleased to learn that neuroscientists and psychologist s have found plenty of evidence to back him up. For example, buildings and cities can affect our mood and well-being, and that specialised cells in our brains are attuned to the geo metry and arrangement of the spaces we inhabit. Yet, urban architects have often paid scant attention to the potential cognitive effects of their creations on a city’s inhabitants. The imperative to design something unique and individual tends to override considerations of how it might shape the behaviours of those who will live with it. That could be about to change. 5 2 Recently, the Conscious Cities Conference in London considered how cognitive scientists might make their discoveries more accessible to architects , designers, engineers, neuroscientists and psychologists. Greater interaction across the disciplines would reduce the chances of repeating such architectural horror stories as the 1950s Pruitt-Ig oe housing complex in Missouri, whose 33 featureless apartment blocks became notorious for the ir crime, squalor and social dysfunction. Critics argued that the wide open spaces between the blocks of modernist high-rises discouraged a sense of community, particularly as crime rates s tarted to rise. The project was eventually demolished in 1972, highlighting the need for greater consideration of behavioural insights in urban design. 10 15 3 Psychological studies today have consistently shown that people are strongly affec ted by building façades. If the façade is complex and interesting, it affects people i n a positive way; negatively if it is simple and monotonous. For example, during a study in M anhattan, subjects' arousal and mood states plummeted as they walked past the long, smoked-glass front age of a Whole Foods store, only to improve when they reache