Have you ever come across a vegetable, fruit, flower, food grain or any part of human or animal in precise square or rectangle shape? Just recall the shape of forest, lake, waterfalls or sea. We rarely find sharp, concrete, precise and 90-degree-based objects in nature. In nature, all around us are imperfect and curved objects. This is the reason we feel more organic with rounded curvaceous structures and feel kind of external and unrelatable with sharp right angled based objects.
Have you seen toddlers running around home in full speed to reach someone or something? Have you ever panicked on seeing their coming near sharp corners of furniture, wall corners, etc? I did experience such a fall when I was a kid on an edge of a wall which was so sharp that I bleed profusely and underwent a stitching in my right eyebrow. Thank God for saving my eyes.
There are hardly any square or rectangle forms in nature. Most of all forms in nature are round as opposed to flat or squared off. Nature took extra care to avoid sharp corners in most of its produce. Sharp objects are usually made by humans.
Though there are no statistics, I am sure most of the accidents, some of which would have led people to death might have been less damaging, provided the environment in which such accidents happened was without things with sharp corners. Furniture with sharp corners, wall joints, wall pelmets and other joineries finished in right angles are highly accident prone. It’s not only the toddlers and seniors, but more and more restless busy youngsters too are facing the danger due to their non-stop urgency to catch up with time. Whenever we experienced such accidents and painful injury, our body immune system develops a balloon of liquid tissue so as to reduce the impact and inflammation. Once the repair is done liquid balloon should contract. Chances are in some cases such contraction will not happen and the balloon becomes bigger and bigger and may suppress your nerves/blood vessels and create a new problem.
Solution to all such accidents are within us by being patient and careful while moving around. Further if all things within our home/office are designed with round smooth corners and edges we can avoid or reduce the impact of such accidents.
At the beginning of industrial age, various objects were produced with sharp, rigid and 90 degree structured to speed up production volume and to cut costs. Over a period of time designers aware of the accident risk attached with such designs introduced rounded corners which are safe and more pleasing to feel and look at. More and more automobile, electronic and house hold gadgets are produced by new age machines which are capable to produce such smooth edged objects with least cost and high speed. However, roundness was yet to show progress in building constructions. Even the high end housing units pose built-in dangers of sharp right angle finishes both within and outside of buildings.
It’s high time architects address this issue with new designs which pose less or nil risks against such pitfalls.
