Architecture and The Working of The Human Brain
Architecture has always been more than four walls and a roof. It’s never just another house or another office. For someone out there it’s the first home they bought with their life savings after moving out of their parent’s place, it’s the office where they got their first job and realised their true passion. Our brain links different memories to the various factors that make that scene important. One of the prominent factors is the setting that memory took place in, hence the architecture around you. Your environment plays a huge role in how your brain perceives a moment, and architecture plays a huge role in creating that perfect environment for you. Emotions at large seem very vague to describe, it’s better to consider them in their psychological, physiological, and social dimensions to get a proper understanding of what we’re dealing with.
Understanding Emotions
The built-up space around us acts as stimuli in multiple situations. For a person with mental health issues, the furniture layout, the expanse, the functionality of the space, and the colour palette each play a role in whether your brain reacts negatively or positively towards it. For example- Dark spaces with lesser fenestrations and overcrowded furniture might make you feel claustrophobic, stuck, and anxious. In contrast, a more light-flushed space with multiple windows and adequate clearance gives you the appearance of being in a sociable setting, of being free and having your own space. Indoor Air Quality, Temperature, and Noise are some other stressors that affect a person’s response to the space. A space that provides a user with enough clearance allows them to choose between socialisation and isolation thus making them feel in control of their surroundings. Interior Architecture with an understanding of functional plans is what provides the users with a place to work with their emotions as they wish. Especially if we consider healthcare facilities or even residential spaces, the architecture of these should provide comfort and an innate sense of understanding.
Understanding Architecture
Humans tend to attach meaning to everything important in their lives. Every moment has a significance for them. There is meaning to the crack on their bedroom floor and the half-painted wall in their kitchen. It’s what makes the place their own. It’s these sublime things about the same 4 walls and a roof that gives it salience.
”There is no story without emotion. I believe architecture is a storytelling profession. It tells a story. A story without emotion is just a report in the Wall Street Journal. But a story with emotion, that’s what makes us human”- Architect Daniel Libeskind.
Form follows Function, Abstraction, Construction- all these terms turn architecture into a technical concept that creates neutralised spaces. But there is nothing neutral about architecture. The Boston City Hall is a prime example of it. The brutalist take on the building’s architecture is considered blocky, prosaic, and uninspiring by the people of Massachusetts. But even those beige-plastered walls are symbolic of the rise of brutalist architecture in a post-war era at a time when architecture was at a standstill. Emotion cannot be extracted from architecture because every building is a byproduct of years and years of ideologies, philosophies, and understanding of architecture and humans at their core.
The User Needs
Architecture is about discernment of the user needs but when in the context of personal or commercial buildings. In the case of major public buildings such as a museum or an observatory, the building focuses on what the architect aims for the users to emote. The current rising concept of 360-degree immersive experience is based on this idea. It makes the visitors feel like they are a part of the display. It gives them a chance to observe the art interactively. When a user/visitor is made to interact with the display, they tend to get a deeper understanding of the topic, giving them a comprehension of the architect’s aim with the place.
The Memorial of the Murdered Jews of Europe
Eisenman’s The Memorial of the Murdered Jews of Europe is an array of 2711 concrete stelae of various sizes spread over an area of 19,000 acres. This museum does not work on any complex designs or intricate ideas instead it lays out in front of the visitors the exact reality of the holocaust. When the visitor walks through the passages of the memorial, the bare concrete blocks trigger a multitude of emotions. The stelae are so placed that the narrow aisles invoke in the visitor the same claustrophobia, the darkness, the need to get out as the Jews felt. The memorial stands on a sloping land and creates a wave-like structure, different from every corner. The varied ground of the memorial makes the visitors understand the instability and lack of direction. Depicting the trauma of the Holocaust, a place the architect has never witnessed, a saddening that is beyond understanding is very hard but the greyish-black tones of the structure, the endless pathways, and the minimalist materiality memorialise the pain. This simplistic yet extraordinary design depicts how architecture does not need to be extravagant or radical to make a person feel what the architect wants. Sometimes a bunch of concrete blocks are enough to convey the message.
Architecture is a Display
Architecture is beyond the planar understanding of it. It’s an expression of emotions. All of it starts with the ideas and emotions the architect aspires to construct leading to what the user turns it into. The same rental house is used by a bunch of people at different times of their lives, and each one of them affiliates with it in their way. Similarly, every piece of architecture affects every individual differently. Emotions are elemental to any human experience and they make the architecture and the environment around them an integral part of that experience.
REFERENCES:
1.Bil, J.S. and Pawłowski, L., 2016. Influence of architecture on mental health–selected issues. Przestrzeń i Forma, (28), pp.41-52.
- Lehman, M.L. (2024) How emotion impacts the perception of architecture, Maria Lorena Lehman | MLL ATELIER. Available at: https://www.marialorenalehman.com/blog/how-emotion-impacts-the-perception-of-architecture (Accessed: 30 June 2024).
- Daniel Libeskind | Emotion in architecture (2016) YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j64YQdrE5CU&t=215s (Accessed: 30 June 2024).
- (No date) View of Shades of Grey: The role of the sublime in the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. Available at: https://journals.lincoln.ac.nz/index.php/lr/article/view/704/512 (Accessed: 30 June 2024).
