Staying at home makes the house look different
QUARANTINE MAKES US SEE OUR SURROUNDINGS IN A NEW LIGHT
HOW WE PERCEIVE OUR HOMES IS NOT AS A BLACK BOX, NO MATTER HOW WE FEEL ABOUT IT, ESPECIALLY WHEN WE ARE ALL FORCED TO CONFRONT WHERE WE LIVE, UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL.
If you are like me, you have never known your home as well as you do now, after a season of sequester. My Guilt List of Undone Home Repairs has shrunk to but a few lingering undone things. But more than that, all those hours trapped within its four walls, using its kitchen, bathroom, bedroom have brought its reality into focus and perspective that I could never have dreamed of five months ago.
Since I was the architect for our the home we built and refined lo these 36 years, surprises were few, but I do see our home more clearly now. Which brings up the question, how do we experience architecture? Why do we love (or hate) the buildings, spaces, places we have visceral reactions to?
Where did those views that you are discovering about your home come from?
Well, it turns out, architects have been doing an intensive focus on how humans react to what we create for ourselves. Architects are classically taught how to design as a way to express themselves, their clients, the site, even the hopes of mankind — but we are never taught how our attempts are received by those who are sentenced to live with them.
Stepping in the research that cuttingedge neuroscience technology affords, architects in New York and Boston are using those new tools, in concert with the training and practice of architecture to reveal the reasons that a building, or a courtyard, inspires on revolts us. Their efforts may inform your newly realized observations.
Ann Sussman is an architect who writes about how we see buildings and the built environment. Having co-authored “Cognitive Architecture, Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment” (Routledge, 2015) her new book, “Urban Experience and Design: Contemporary Perspectives on Improving the Public Realm,” (Routledge 2020) is due out this October.
She currently teaches at the Boston Architectural College and has a scientific perspective:
“We see the world like an animal because we are one. And our internal animal brain architecture directs our experience of external built architecture. As a social species, our brain is hardwired as a social engagement system, which means it’s always on the lookout for faces and face-like artifacts without our conscious awareness or control. This explains why old-city street with rows of face-like facades have enduring appeal; they reflect what we’re built like and most need to see.”
Sussman often works with New York architect Mark Alan Hewitt, FAIA. Mark is also a historian and preservationist His latest book, “Draw In Order to See: A Cognitive History of Architectural Design,” is the first book to survey the history of design using the latest research in cognitive science and embodied cognition. His perspective also dwells in the reasons how we experience buildings.
“Recent neuroscience indicates that humans perceive spaces and environments using the brain, body and environment in a series of feedback/feedforward loops. Perception is ‘enacted’ rather than passively experienced. We move our eyes and body in order to get ‘a better view’ of what is in front of us. but that image is not made simply of what is in our field of vision. It also includes memories and includes ‘perceptual presence’ of the previous scenes or objects that allow us to see partially hidden parts of the scene. When perceiving spaces, even more complex memories and images are necessary, as space is understood holistically. Exciting things are happening now that will change our ideas in the near future.”
I am not sure if this extraordinary new work gives me any insight as to why I have dedicated the last 40 years to making buildings. None of this new data validates my burning desire to refinish my kitchen counter tops. But how we perceive our homes is not as a black box, no matter how we feel about it, especially when we are all forced to confront where we live, up close and personal.