From the three necessities of life, clichéd but always true; food, clothing, and shelter, the shelter as Architecture highly influences a person’s life, well-being, and how one might perceive and react to a situation. In the battle of definitions over what good architecture is, we see it as a specific idea of innovation for every user, creating a new ecosystem emerging as an extraction from the broader term as it exists.
The longest thing a man does is to live, and of that, 90% percent is indoors. We live inside to experience the worthy nature (resort), to appreciate the sense of enclosure (room), to celebrate safety (home), to relate what a designer wanted us to know at once (museum), to enjoy a strong brewed coffee (courtyard), these are distinct ideas how persons and spaces connect in three different ways,
- Identity: Includes what all you do to explain, ‘Who I am’.
- Thoughts and feelings: Includes what we do to make us feel a certain way in an environment (e.g., making a focused space for work)
- Behavioral residue: Includes the traces of behavior a person is engaged in, further reflected in his immediate spaces.
Every space you live in is the reflection of your identity and is connected to your positive and negative feedback senses. If a messy space reflects you as a person with chaos, it may also give you a sense of creativity and a high level of serendipity, followed by numerous happy accidents which can lead to innovation. Similarly, a clean and tidy workspace that may present you as an organizer can also sometimes give you blank silences with no ideas at all. For example, a library is a space where you visit in search of a specific idea but leads to finding several other books which connect to you at a higher subconscious level through the cause of serendipity.
“If the built environment isn’t supporting you, then the chances are it’s probably hurting you,” Ms. Goldhagen says.
If you think of your childhood memories, those were always detritus of spaces. It could be a garden where you played with your dog or the stairs you fall down from while running or maybe that rocking chair where you sit with your grandma to listen to stories or simply a tree you watched out of the window. Thoughts and memories are the offset of architectural spaces we live in. We can create space out of thought or can memorize the associated feeling with a space.
Our actions and behaviors make us aware of the respect and contentment over habits and processes we believe in to add quality to our lives. Simply adding a shoe rack at the entrance generates serenity within the space you enter and just separating the dry and wet areas in bathrooms can justify your usage of space and the habits you follow.
And beyond these three connections, we have a sense of contrast or the connections of opposite that a person may encounter or sometimes unknowingly enjoys between him and the architecture.
Because the adversity of cold can only be cherished if we have enclosed warm space around us and the speed of wind calculated in contrast to the stillness of a quiet. In actuality, to experience every part of our lives we use architecture. This can be anything as simple as the weather where we use architecture to analyze what is changing around them.
For say we have,
- Rain: To enjoy it, you might need a space that is half-open to listen to it and sheltered at the same time to protect yourself from being wet or it can be something similar to the chained detailing done in Japanese houses as open rainwater drain system over the pipe outlets can also help better connect with the sound of it.
- Wind: To make a comparative analysis of wind speed over a hill while trekking you need to have a semi-open space at your hilltop resort for that sense of stop after too much wind.
- Cold: To enjoy a hot brew in the cold we need to introduce a space with a bonfire or an outdoor sitting area with a bonfire to feel the sense of cold and relief from it with the heat.
- Hot: In hot summers the wide window panes which once helped to get the south sun inside, can also make you realize the cooling effect of interiors compared to the outdoors with the light and shadow with jali and semi-sheer curtains.
But again, Architecture is a specifically user-oriented process because, in some ways, we are like every other person, in some ways we are like few other persons, and in some ways we are unique and like no other person. To design specifically, we first understand the needs and desires of the person from their spaces, it might be productivity for an office, wellbeing for healthcare facilities, safety for residential units, comfort for your rooms, enjoyment from public areas, ambiance for a resort, acoustics for the opera house, intense studying from the library, fear for prisons and many happy accidents for every space we think needs physical designing.
“What we see outside the building through the window is as important as what we see inside the building — and it has just as profound an effect on us as nature does.”
References:
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[Accessed 2022]. - Anon., 2021. [Online]
Available at: https://www.cutedecor.info/environmental-psychology-and-architecture-what-is-the-relationship-and-how-do-they-impact-our-lives/
[Accessed 18 02 2022]. - Anon., n.d. [Online]
Available at: https://www.gardenista.com/posts/rain-chains-the-beautiful-alternative-to-gutters/
[Accessed 2022]. - Anon., n.d. [Online]
Available at: https://www.directenergy.com/learning-center/what-to-do-during-high-winds
[Accessed 2022]. - DamiLee. (2020). Design Strategies for Enjoying the Rain, Understanding architecture. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHlavyU-9R8&list=RDCMUCJ_2hNMxOzNjviJBiLWHMqg&index=1. [Accessed: 18/ 02/ 2022].
- SXSW. (2005). Psychology in Architectural Design. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DviLdO6YyyY&t=1146s. [Accessed: 20/ 02/ 2022].
