Lessons on the Human Psyche through Designing Architecture

What I’ve learned about the subconscious through architecture, and how we need to change…

Space is intimate, especially architecture.

It is the container in which we experience ourselves, gather our presence, and do just about everything to take care of ourselves. It is where the spaciousness and color of our unique self extends out into the world. Needless to say, it is a very intimate reflection of us.

When designing space for another human, much of their inner landscape becomes illuminated. One of the most fascinating conditions I see is that people tend to believe that their current way of thinking about space is in fact the best way of thinking about space.

There is no best way to anything. People are very attached to how they believe space should function, yet have never given any space to an alternative.

How do you know what it is that you truly want if you have only tried one flavor?

Taste is entirely subjective, but 99% of architecture we live in today is the same bland flavor. It’s not that people don’t want spaces that inspire them, it’s that we have very little precedent. Your neighbor’s house looks a lot like your friend’s house whose house feels a lot like your grandma’s house, just without all the family photos.

Our conditioning is bias towards sameness.

Ego fights in defense of the comfort that sameness provides.

Even when I propose a more efficient, economical, healthy, and sustainable design to a space, often the ego is threatened because that is not a way of seeing space that someone is accustomed to. The ego’s nature is sameness. Contrast is threatening.

To me this is sad, but I have compassion because I’ve been there; however, I believe we need to laugh at the projections of our own conditioning because at times it is also a little hilarious.

It is particularly illuminating because we don’t quite realize that often we stand in opposition to a greater possibility of freedom, expansion, and creativity when we choose to identify with our current way of seeing.

There have been times where I’ve designed spaces that specifically meet all of the functions a client requested in a certain budget, albeit in a different way than the client expected, only to be scratched because it didn’t feel like something they knew. The possibility could not be conceived of because it was counter to how they had been perceiving space throughout their lives.

But this reflects a sad reality that many of us didn’t actually choose our way of seeing. In fact, we rarely ever choose a new way of seeing, but rather we choose to continue somebody else’s way of seeing that was imposed upon us though our inevitable conditioning.

We tend to disbelieve what we cannot see.

If we haven’t seen an alternative way that space can function, that idea is typically rejected by a majority. It reveals that people would prefer to be ‘right’ about their limited idea than to entertain a greater possibility.

We can hide parts of ourselves in the spaces that we inhabit. We have metaphorical closets where we can store away the ideas of ourselves that we don’t want to look at while we can put our favorite idea of ourselves on display on the fireplace mantel.

If we cannot come into our personal realizations that we really don’t know the depth of our true nature, then we will continually play out the same patterns of existence. Space will continue to be bland. The ego will continue to bolstered. And everyone will continue to fight about their way of being as the best ever.

I imagine an architectural landscape that is as robust as our inner landscapes. Where the wildness, creativity, and sensitivity on the inside can be given space and form on the outside. We cannot control our true nature and our inner landscapes forever. But the release of the need to control is the re-birthing of the ego, which means the death of the idea of oneself.

That is a very frightening experience for someone who existed in one modality much of their life, but it is the invetible. I wholeheartedly believe it much more beneficial on all fronts for someone to die many deaths in many ways before physical death. Architecture can be a vessel to reflect this evolving conversation with oneself.

My approach is to help incorporate all of oneself into space so that the conversation between the self and the space can be ever evolving. It’s certainly not an approach that most people are open for, but It is an approach that will help create space that reflects our actualization.