In a perfect world Ben Barkow (PhD '75) would like buildings with no signs to tell you where to go, bank machines that are self-explanatory, and Web sites that require no thought to navigate.

    In other words, Barkow would like the world to make sense and be "nice for people," he says. Not an easy thing to do. But Barkow, a self-described "engineering psychologist," is undaunted.

    Barkow's goal is to create systems that perform the way people expect them to. Much of his work has been with buildings such as Skydome, Roy Thomson Hall and, most recently, the Mississauga Living Arts Centre. His engineering/software design/ architecture business tries to do just that by applying the "principles of psychology" to the world we live in.

    User-friendly buildings? "The movement of people is important," says Barkow. "We design buildings so it's easy to image them."

    With Skydome, the problem was how to deal with the huge crowds. Barkow designed paths that helped people get where they wanted to go.

    But not all his projects have been so straightforward. The Sheridan Centre was a difficult case. Its lobby (several stories high) with escalators had been the site of numerous injuries and two deaths. "The City threatened to shut them down if they didn't do something," he says. "Our solution was to place huge, jungle-like plants along the sides of the escalators. People don't want to fall into those. Even if they did fall the plants would catch them. It solved the safety problem and didn't ruin the lobby's aesthetics."

    Photo: Nadia Molinari