Considered across the broad sweep of human history, one of the strangest things about modern Western human beings is how few of us build our own dwellings. Few of us could. Think about it. If, somehow, all of our real estate was obliterated overnight and we had to begin again....you had to begin again.....what kind of a dwelling would you build? For much of human history, that's pretty much how architectural design worked. There are some incredible examples of how this process worked. Think of your very first home. Nope, not that one. This one:
So there you were, happily ensconced in warmth, love, nurturance and support. Isn't that what you want from a house?
The Dogon People of Central Africa certainly thought so:
The house in the picture represents a female form, with the head of the form serving as the kitchen, the main living area being the woman's abdomen surrounded by her embracing arms, and the front door of the house in this scheme would stand in as the vulva. This is an incredibly graphic illustration of a culture striving to find some way to define what a home means in a way that is deeply biological, natural and sensible. There's much more to Dogon architecture than this kind of simple body representation. The organization of living and working spaces communicates a great deal of important information about Dogon perceptions of family structure and gender relationships. The village is a microcosm of the mind.
Whether we like to think so or not, there are still deep resonances between the spaces where we live and the organization of our minds, but now things look very different. A large number of us live in places like this:
There are a million interesting reasons for the development of residential areas like these, almost none of which have anything to do with finding a way to enhance our quality of life by shaping our spaces to fit our psychologies.
The world of our parents is now just a distant shaky image in the rear view mirror. New models for living lie directly ahead of us. Hopefully, one part of the discussion could be how to make our lived spaces support these models.
Comments