Domestic spaces and emotion

One of my very favourite things to do is call-in radio.  You never know what fantastic nuggets of wisdom or interesting problems people will come up with.  I had a wonderful session on Ontario Today yesterday, on the theme of interior design and emotion -- "what bugs you about your house?"  It's a stretch for me to pose as an interior designer, but it's very definitely true that there are some interesting connections between the work I do in my lab and the problems people face in selecting, designing, and organizing their homes.

The most interesting call came from a man who had bought his first house, only to discover sometime afterward how much it resembled the house where he grew up, which was not a happy time for him.  He was discovering that the form of the house was raising some ghosts for him.  This utterly fascinates me.  First, that he made this purchase perhaps without understanding all of the reasons that it attracted him, and secondly because of the suggestion that the appearances of domestic spaces and how we use them might provoke emotions based on our personal histories.  I always tend to think of the effect of space on the mind in terms of deep biological universals.  But there's a lot more to it than that.

After the show, the most interesting email I received came from someone who had just purchased a loft.  She wanted to know what I thought of the boxy, cavernous spaces in lofts and how they might work on our minds.  I hadn't thought about this much before, but I am now.  These structures are incredibly popular, and not all of it has to do with their appearance, but I think some does.  Many people (myself included) are attracted to high ceilings.  Why?  And is living under one as appealing as that first look at one when shopping for a home?

Comments

[Carin]

This post makes me wonder about how we form memories of spaces and layouts – not how we learn to navigate spaces, which you address in your book, but how the emotional experience of space becomes a deep-seated memory, perhaps - as the caller's experience suggests - as compelling as long-ago smell-memories. Is that kind of imprinting different from memory-formation for practical purposes of navigation? Hmmm....

(Off to listen the archived version of yesterday's show.)

[Colin]

Hi Carin, yes it's quite fascinating isn't it? We know all kinds of things about how we learn and remember spaces, but emotional maps of space are much less travelled territory, at least using the kinds of scientific approaches that I'm all about. You may already know about the classic exploration of intimate spaces written by Gaston Bachelard and called The Poetics of Space but if not I bet you'd enjoy it. Now that I've triggered some memories of the book, I'm going to cuddle up with my copy for the weekend.

[Carin]

I didn't know about Bachelard. I'll seek out a copy statim. Thanks!

[Alanna]

Hi Colin,
I had heard of that book and am now motivated to cuddle up with it this long weekend as well!
Thanks for the recommendation.
Alanna

[Colin]

Hmm. Maybe we should have a little Bachelard book club.

[Carin]

Yes! Just give us a few days to get the book :-)

[James]

Poetics of Space is a very insightful book. I'm up for a re-read.