Headspace

The Psychology of City Living

Paul Keedwell

• Publisher: Aurum
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781781317129
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

More and more of us are choosing to live in the man-made environment of the city. The mismatch between this artificial world and our nature-starved souls can contribute to the stresses of city living in a way that is barely noticed – but is crucially important.
What does the science of architectural psychology tell us about how the world of brick and concrete affects how we think, feel and behave? In an increasingly crowded urban world, how does good urban architecture inspire, restore and bring us together. Conversely, how does bad architecture cause anxiety, alienation and depression?
Dr Paul Keedwell uncovers the secret psychology of the city, and how it affects our daily happiness. Starting with the home and reaching out to the street, neighbourhood and wider city landscape, Headspace teaches us how to see our cities differently, and how we can best adapt to our rapidly changing urban world.

Part One

The Home, From Inside Out

We spend 90 per cent of our time indoors, and most of that time is spent in the home. In 2009 I conducted a survey of 1,000 homeowners all over the UK to assess how attached they were to their homes, and why. About one-third were not emotionally invested in their homes, despite owning them. We know that if we don’t own a home we tend to be less attached to it, so in the general population this figure might be higher. We want to love the places we call home, but it is not always possible to do so. Sometimes the places where we live just cause stress and annoyance. Often there is a mismatch between the space we inhabit and our deep psychological needs: the problem could be with housing type, design, space, character or location.

Why do our homes have such an important influence over our well-being? In psychological terms, what does a home represent? Freud said that the home is a womb: it is the place whence we all emerged and to which we like to return for safety, warmth and sustenance. Jung regarded the home as a cave. Both men imply that the first function of a home is to provide refuge and security. Security is the second step in Maslow’s hierarchy of instinctive psychological needs (the first being basic sustenance). Abraham Maslow can be thought of as the first evolutionary psychologist, and his hierarchy represents a useful model for understanding what a home and its neighbourhood can do to help or hinder our happiness. So, above security, we should be able to connect with others, have a sense of identity and positive self-esteem, and pursue our dreams.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (a pyramid)

Home should be the place where intimacy and sex happen, where we live with others and where we might, if we choose to, raise a family. Home should also allow us to express our unique selves – through the choices we make in decor, furnishings and memorabilia. It should reveal where we have travelled through life, literally and figuratively. In turn, our identities should be reinforced by where we live. Good homes can help us to express our true selves. Bad homes are so austere or overdesigned that they leave little room for homemaking, for adding biographical texture. The design of a home can help to inspire – just as is true of a vibrant neighbourhood and access to good public buildings – or it can inhibit our creativity.

Judith Sixsmith, of the University of Surrey, UK, used a method called the Multiple Sorting Task to obtain a detailed picture of how we conceptualise our homes. Participants provided descriptions of all past, present and possible ideal homes, along with places never considered as home. These descriptions were then sorted into categories. She confirmed that the main themes were to do with belonging, responsibility to family and self-expression. Home was where formative experiences happened (thus giving a place meaning) and where relationships developed. It was a place for entertaining friends. However, home also had associations with ideas of permanence, familiarity and constancy – things that are often lacking in people who rent in the city. For some, home was furthermore a place of architectural interest.

A home does not exist in isolation. Its location is important. What is the view from the window? Is the home twenty floors up in a high-rise block or on a street? What is the neighbourhood like? Does it have a sense of place, with a lively street life? Is the street open or closed to passing traffic? Does it have trees and green space? Are there hidden spaces where crime can proliferate? Is there a community and sense of ownership, or is it neglected? If a neighbourhood has declined, what are the causes and what can be done to reverse it?

What we learn from the psychology of the home extends beyond its four walls: so many of the themes we explore in the home run through the other chapters. For most of us, home cannot meet all of our psychological needs, and so we inhabit other ‘homes-from-home’ which can affect us in positive and negative ways. Let us first explore the idea of home as refuge in more detail.

Chapter 1

Refuge versus prospect

Home is where we are at our most vulnerable. It’s where we eat, sleep, have sex, and recover from illness. It’s where we start life as defenceless infants, perhaps have children of our own, and where we grow old and infirm. It’s also the place where most of us would choose to die. If we don’t feel secure in a home, it is hard for us to think of anything else: we don’t sleep well, we become anxious, fatigued and even depressed. Home satisfies the primal drive to survive, to be protected from attack by enemies and predators when we are at our most unguarded.

The instinctive need for a cave-like refuge is apparent from an early age: as children, we love to build dens. Many of us remember making a tent from some blankets spread across chairs. Our den is supposed to protect us from intruders, but for obvious reasons it can’t be a completely sealed box – the home must have a threshold to the outside world. We want to have a clear view out from our refuge for two main reasons, which have their roots in our early ancestral environment. Firstly, we have an instinctive desire to be able to see any threat approaching – any home can be invaded by a predator or enemy. It makes sense that the view is as wide as possible so that things can’t creep up on you from hidden corners, forests or a thicket. Secondly, prospect helps us to look for sources of food and water, and enables us to assess the weather.

These two instinctive needs are in balance: too little refuge is (in our unconscious imagination) dangerous, but so is too little prospect. If your window on the world is too big, you will feel too exposed to predators – you will compromise the need for refuge. If your home is too enclosed, you will also feel under threat, and you will miss the strong desire to survey your territory. Too much of either will be stressful.

In the early twentieth century, the increasing use of reinforced concrete had the potential to open up the house to its surroundings more than ever before. Reinforced concrete floors could bridge wide gaps between reinforced columns, removing the need for support from internal or external walls. The external cladding of the building could be hung like a curtain (known as a ‘curtain wall’). Windows that wrapped around corners became possible (with the columns set back from the corner edge). If you wanted to, you could enclose the entire building in a skin of glass. Some of the earliest modernist architects built homes like that. This was considered a good thing, because of the increased access to both daylight and natural views.

Farnsworth House

A famous example is Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, in Piano, Illinois, which was built in 1951 to much acclaim (see below). It is still considered a masterpiece of modernist design by many architects. A steel structure surrounded entirely by glass, it is known for its elegant, innovative design, but there is a secret history surrounding the building – a personal drama of conflict and misery.

Mies’s Farnsworth House, Illinois

Its owner, Dr Edith Farnsworth, attempted to sue Mies van der Rohe, reportedly in the context of a bitter, unrequited love affair with the charismatic German-American architect. However, a re-examination of Dr Farnsworth’s diary suggests that the emphasis on their relationship was a cover for a failure in the building itself. A less selective reading of her memoirs reveals that the lawsuit was less about romance and more about something more prosaic – that the house simply wasn’t a very pleasant place to live in.

In chapter thirteen of her memoirs, Farnsworth recounts for the first time how she relates to her new home:

By the end of 1950, it seemed possible to spend [the first] night in the house… It was an uneasy night, partly from the novel exposure provided by the uncurtained glass walls.

Over time the house began to take its emotional toll:

Do I feel implacable calm?… The truth is that in this house with its four walls of glass I feel like a prowling animal, always on the alert. I am always restless. Even in the evening. I feel like a sentinel, on guard day and night. I can rarely stretch out and relax…

What else? I don’t keep a garbage can under my sink. Do you know why? Because you can see the whole ‘kitchen’ from the road on the way in here and the can would spoil the appearance of the whole house. So I hide it in the closet farther down from the sink. Mies talks about his ‘free space’: but his space is very fixed. I can’t even put a clothes hanger in my house without considering how it affects everything from the outside. Any arrangement of furniture becomes a major problem, because the house is transparent, like an X-ray.

Her modernist house, like the others, was sited in a desirable and safe rural location, but it caused a primal unease. None of us want to live in a state of total exposure, where any untoward visitor can see our every movement. Edith Farnsworth enjoyed no balance between project and refuge. The latter was sacrificed for the former. She wrote, ‘The silent meadows outside, white with old and hardened snow, reflected the bleak bulb within, as if the glass house itself were an unshaded bulb of uncalculated watts lighting the winter plains.’ Her anguished writings demonstrate that our desire to bring ‘the outside in’ has its limits.

While it is obvious that bedrooms need to be cave-like, the most pleasing and calming communal living spaces (where we spend most of our time) provide us with clear demarcations between prospect and refuge, signified in the theatrical balance between light and dark spaces. A great example of this is Can Lis, a house designed by the Danish architect JØhn Utzon for his wife.

Utzon’s Can Lis, demonstrating a clear demarcation between light and dark areas

In the UK, the long-running t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction: The psychology of the city
• Part One: The Home, From Inside Out
• Part Two: Home and Identity
• Part Three: Neighbourhood
• Part Four: High-rise Living
• Part Five: Public Places: Places for Play
• Part Six: The Workplace
• Part Seven: Healing Spaces
• Endnotes
• Index
• Image Credits
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright