The Psychology of Architecture, Part 1

The natural world evokes various feelings in the mind, but humans spend a great deal of their time within spaces that they themselves designed and built out of the environment. In this Stuff to Blow Your Mind two-parter, Robert and Joe consider the ways that architecture impacts our thoughts and feelings.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to
Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert I thought we should
start off today talking about a place where Romans get naked.
Let's do it or gott naked. Would not be the

(00:23):
first time. Oh, I guess that's probably true. Where when
else have we done this? Well? Well, um, well, of
course we have another show called Invention, and we've definitely
touched on the history of toilets and baths, and I
think Roman baths have come up on the show before,
and just Roman culture in general. Roman culture, like any culture,
is going to contain a certain amount of nudity, if

(00:44):
not maybe a slightly enhanced amount of nudity. Yeah, it's
human life, it's culture, it's bare bottoms. So the baths
of Caracalla, they are these beautiful ruins in the city
of Rome. They were built sometime in the early third century,
beginning under the emperor Septimus Severus, and they were finished
during the reign of his son, the Emperor Caracalla. Now

(01:05):
these were public baths that operated for hundreds of years.
I think they were in operation until sometime in the
sixth century. And the interior space of these baths, it
doesn't remain inclosed now the ruins are you know, you
can see some like you can see columns, and there's
actually a lot of vertical structure still there. But you know,
they don't have the roofs anymore and that kind of thing.

(01:26):
But the interior space and these baths originally when they
were in operation, was palatial, with these huge vaulted cathedral
like ceilings and huge open halls, and apparently they inspired
the design of the original Pin station in New York.
But there was a quote I wanted to read that
comes from the American architect Louis Kahn. Louis Kahn was

(01:47):
at one point a professor of architecture at Yale, but
he was also known for tons of iconic original designs,
such as the campus of the Salk Institute for Biological
Studies in San Diego. Robert, I don't know you've ever
seen that one, but it's one of the strangest looking
college campuses I've ever seen, and it's kind of beautiful
in a weird way. It's got these buildings that look
kind of like glass and concrete accordions, you know, with

(02:10):
these strange kind of angles coming in. But anyway, Louis Kahn,
talking about the baths of Caracalla, he says, if you
look at the baths of Caracala, we all know that
we can bathe just as well under an eight foot
ceiling as we can under a one hundred and fifty
foot ceiling. But there's something about a one hundred fifty
foot ceiling that makes a man a different kind of man.

(02:34):
And I wonder about this, like, well, first of all,
I just wonder, would you literally wash yourself differently under
an hundred and fifty foot ceiling if you're like taking
if you're taking a bath in a cathedral, does that
affect the bath at all? Well, I I have to
say I can't. I don't really have a good basis
of comparison here, because I think I've bathed pretty much
exclusively in like non amphitheater environments. But on the other hand,

(02:59):
I said, only I can certainly think about swimming pools,
and generally when I in a swimming pool, it's either
open air or it does have a very high ceiling,
which is certainly part of the experience. Then the idea
of swimming and one of these sort of like old
timey basement pools or like one of those sometimes you
see like an image of a of a small swimming

(03:21):
environment on a submarine or something. Have you ever seen
the swimming pool in the basement of the Builtmore house? Yes, okay,
this is creepy looking. Yeah, I can't imagine us from there. Yeah,
it's so enclosed. It feels like you're going into an
underwater cave where you'll be hunted by glowing jellyfish until
you die. Yeah. Besides, that's that's Mason Berger's swimming pool.
I don't want to I don't want to swim there.

(03:43):
But yeah, I mean so, we we've talked before about
some of the possible psychological effects of you know, bathroom
related architectural features. I remember when we did the episode
of our other show Invention, about the invention of the toilet.
I remember thinking, like, does the location and shape design
of the place where you go to defecate shape your

(04:03):
feelings about these body functions? Like do people who go
to the bathroom with a flush toilet inside their house
tend to have different attitudes? On average? Towards a scatological
humor or things like that than people who would use
say a wooden outhouse or an open pit latrine, or
any other way of going to the bathroom. Well, certainly,

(04:24):
urinating outside and under the right circumstances, obviously, um like
in the woods, is a totally different experience than than
urinating inside of a restroom or into a urinal um.
And I would say it is. It is overall a
better experience. I've never really stopped to really consider why,
but it does feel better to urinate in nature, again,

(04:46):
assuming that it is the ideal sort of nature, not say,
you know, uh, at a bus stop or um or
or even in the woods on like at a dark,
rainy evening, that sort of thing. Yeah, I get what
you're saying. I mean, I don't want to draw to
direct an analogy, because I'm sure extremely different things are
going on, But I mean, you watch the way that
dogs urinate in their environment, and that's like a that's

(05:07):
like a you know, a territory marking and information can
conveying thing, at least in some cases for dogs. I'm
not saying humans do the same thing, but you've gotta
wonder maybe I don't know if there's some kind of
like instinctual preference for some types of expansive urination behavior
as opposed to enclosed urination behavior. I don't know well,

(05:28):
or certainly the power to urinate where you do not
live or where you are not currently residing, like that
is ultimately more natural than urinating within a shelter and
that you live in, uh in in terms of the
grand history of humanity. And so already we're we're we're
getting we're dealing with this, with this duality, this dichotomy

(05:50):
rather of of life indoors, life in created environments, and
of course life in nature, in the natural world. Uh.
And that's what we're gonna keep coming back to this
as we discuss for two episodes of stuff to blow
your mind. Uh, the psychological power of architecture. Yeah, uh yeah,
So I want to come back to Lewis Kahn's question,

(06:11):
like the idea of whether bathing in a cathedral like
building with a huge high ceiling has it sort of
creates a different kind of person or creates a different
kind of mindset than bathing in a normal bathroom like
most people would today. Yeah. Yeah, And and of course
we can take this and apply it to just about
every aspect of life, right of course. I mean we're

(06:31):
we're not just talking about bathing. It's it's about our lives.
And you know, in the year twenty nineteen, probably most
of the people listening to this podcast are gonna going
to be spending the majority of their lives in and
around artificial environments created by humans rather than living you know,
in the natural environment. This can't be psychologically and culturally irrelevant, right, So, so, yeah,

(06:53):
we want to talk about the hidden psychological and cultural
impacts of the buildings that we live in and around.
I think we've before considered the ways that culture and
human psychology shape architecture, right, you know, like like human
drives towards building certain kinds of buildings, But how does
it work the other way around? How does architecture affect
our minds and our societies? Yeah, you know, there's a

(07:15):
there's a there's a famous quote by Winston Churchill from
a speech that he was giving, uh, you know, regarding
you know, reconstruction, and he said, quote, we shape our buildings,
and afterwards our buildings shape us. Yeah. Of course, this
is a lot of what we end up discussing on invention, right,
and not just like why we why humans created a
certain invention, but how that invention turned around and shaped society. Absolutely,

(07:38):
at the very least, it's something you have to look
at all the time. But also these new objects, new technologies,
they give us new ways to think about ourselves. So
first of all, let's talk about that which architecture imitates
and indeed what all of our human designed and human
created buildings and structures and architectural objects are made out of.

(07:59):
And that is of course a natural world. So to
state the obvious natural environments have an effect on us,
I mean, yeah, that's putting it mild, Like the natural
environments created us. That's right. The whole process of evolution
is being shaped by the environment. Yeah, we are made
out of it as well. Uh, the environment sustains us. Uh.

(08:19):
And say, just if we can just think back to
if you took a hike recently, um, which I was
fortunate enough to to to do recently, to take a
hike through the wilderness. Um, just think about what that
experience was was like all the ways that it sustained you.
That the air didn't just feel nice, it allows you
to breathe the sudden sun didn't just feel warm on
your skin, it provided you with vitamin D. You expose

(08:41):
yourself to a host of microbes that influence your inner
dimensions and and and contributed to your your microbial health. Now,
your distant ancestors might have well engaged on a similar
walk through the woods or through the wilderness whatever is
coming into your mind here, and they would have been breathing,
they would have been absorbing sunlight, and they would have

(09:02):
been encountering microbes as well. But they would have also
looked with a keen eye for the various elements that
would have truly sustained them. Flora that might be gathered,
rocks and stones that might be used in tool construction,
and fauna or the signs of fauna that could be
killed for meat uh and or organic construction elements, things

(09:23):
that could be utilized again in their their toolmaking and
their shelter and their clothing. And they might have had
a keen eye as well for environmental conditions that were
advantageous or detrimental to their survival. Fresh water caves, natural
springs in which to bathe, um, hollows that might afford protection,
heights of hill or tree that might provide a strategic

(09:45):
vantage point, places to hide, places where the enemy might dwell,
and places of potential mundane and sacred importance as well.
And it's argued that a lot of these observations are
still active and as submerged as we embark on such
a walk or a hike through the woods, or spend
any amount of time in a natural domain, or even

(10:05):
just a place that is cultivated to have those properties,
like a you know, a finely manicured city park, that
sort of thing. Uh. Such environments fully capture our array
of senses, senses that of course evolved to aid us
in nature. Nature and returns to nature therefore have long
been thought of as having healing powers over us, both

(10:26):
mentally and physically. Yeah, and this recalls part of what
we talked about when we did an episode on E. O.
Wilson's concept of biophilia, which is a hypothetical innate tendency
in humans to focus on life and lifelike processes instead
of on you know, the unnatural synthetic types of objects. Uh.
And citing the hypothesis here, by the way, it's not

(10:47):
an indication that we assume it to be coherent or correct.
If you want the fuller take. We did an episode
on it that also covered criticisms of the idea. But
if you recall, one major avenue of evidence that Wilson
and others called upon to support it was about the
shape of ideal landscapes. You know, there was basically this
concept of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness that animals tend

(11:08):
not to be adapted to live anywhere on Earth, but
to a particular landscape that shaped their genes, and they
would have had preferences within that landscape of you know,
things they like to be around that make it easier
to survive, and as such, like their brains should have
a ways of telling them to look for that type
of landscape, look for the place that you're most adapted to. Uh.

(11:29):
And so it turns out that there are certain things
that lots of humans seem to show preferences for with
when they when they're presented with different options of landscapes.
People tend to like open spaces with low grasses interspersed
with copses of trees. Uh. They like the trees to
look like trees that could maybe be climbed. They like
to be able to see water nearby. They like to

(11:52):
be able to see uh, animal or bird life and greenery.
They like to be able to see pathways extending into
the distance. Uh. And apparently, at least according to the hypothesis,
like this landscape type is widely regarded as beautiful, even
by people who might now live in places that don't
have this kind of landscape. You know, you might live
in the Arctic tundra, or in the in the desert

(12:14):
or something where you don't see landscapes like this, and
yet still people living in these other places often love
to see that kind of imagery, right, And it's often
brought up that this is why many of the more
famous and beloved landscape paintings or paintings that aren't even
specifically landscape have a landscape element to them, you know,
such as um, well you might take um was it

(12:36):
is it Brugal the Elders um? Uh? Fall of Icarus?
I think so? Yeah, where you know, the the subject
is Icarus falling from the heavens on his failed wings.
But it is, but it's a it is a piece
of art that is predominantly concerned with landscape. Yes, and
now these kind of preferences, of course, this could be
interpreting them wrong. You know, maybe there are other reasons

(12:58):
people like things like this. Maybe people don't even widely
like them as much as it's alleged that they do.
But if this is correct, it seems like not hard
to imagine why we have a keen eye for that
sort of stuff. Access to water is important for life,
Access to you know, greenery and animals are important to
you know, for food and for shade and for all
that kind of stuff. Uh, it's nice to be able

(13:19):
to see from a high vantage point, as you mentioned earlier.
That's like a safety security kind of thing. Yeah. Or
if if some sort of animal were to chase you,
it's nice to think that you might be able to
seek refuge in you know, in the limbs of a
tree or at the top of a jungle gym, that
sort of thing, yes, a climbable tree. Yeah. So, whether
or not there's there's truth to this whole connection between
biophilia and the supposed landscape of evolutionary adapted nous, there

(13:44):
is certainly the fact that we are brains were shaped
by our ancestral environments, and it should not be surprising
to us that we have preferences for certain types of
visually identifiable features of environments as a posed to others. Absolutely. Now,
I mentioned earlier that there's this idea that spending time

(14:07):
in nature has a beneficial effect on us mentally and physically.
And this is a this is a very old idea
that you'll you'll find this, uh in a number of
different cultures. Uh. One one great example is forest therapy
in Japan. According to Rebecca A. Lawton, writing for Ian
Magazine in an article titled the Healing Power of Nature,

(14:29):
she points out that you know this, this age old
tradition calls for the individual to walk, sit, gaze, and
exercise amid the trees, as well as to eat local
foods and use local hot springs and uh and actually
it is a tradition that apparently factors into different studies
because it's um, it's it's just apparently like a really
good example of Okay, let's see what happens when people

(14:50):
who are suffering from one ailment or another take to
the woods for a certain amount of time. But anyway,
she points out that studies indicate there about only one
possible pathways to improved health via exposure to nature. Exposure
impacts depression and anxiety and anxiety as well. Plus studies
show that just three days and two nights in a

(15:12):
woodland environment can increase immune system functions and boost well
being for up to seven days. Uh So the notion
that we feel better in nature is firmly supported by science,
she writes. Uh. Yeah, And this is something that's been
argued by a lot of people over the years. That
there was a study that I know we've looked at.
At least one previous episode might have been the biophilia

(15:32):
episode um that was by Ulric published in the journal
Science in nineteen eighty four called view through a Window
may Influence Recovery from surgery. And basically what this found
is that patients in hospitals who could see trees like
greenery through a window had better recovery times, like they
got out of the hospital earlier, and they used fewer

(15:53):
pain medications than people who could not see such things,
who were instead faced with the view of a brick wall. Yeah. Yeah,
And other studies have also pointed to just having like
a landscape painting around to be exposed to can have
some degree of effect as well. Now, I think it'd
be important to point out that I assumed that the
view of nature thing probably has stronger effects on certain

(16:15):
types of things than others. Right, I would imagine that
it probably especially has effects on treatment outcomes that are
subjectively limited, like the perception of pain, and that there
you can see also in people taking less pain medication
for whatever they were suffering from when they could see nature.
The idea there, I guess would be that the view
of nature somehow changes your mind state that makes pain

(16:36):
less painful. Right and uh, and of course, and we'll
get into this more in the second episode. But just
because you have a room of the view of nature,
that I mean, that does not solve all your problems obviously,
right of course. Now, another paper I was looking at,
a two thousand seven overview from Villar day at All
published in Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, points out that
exposure to landscapes in particular, have been shown to reduce stress,

(16:59):
improve attention capacity, facilitate recovery from illness, um help with
physical well being and the elderly and influenced behavioral changes,
and improve mood and general well being. So all this
suffice to say, and this is going to sound again
like one of those sort of hippie hippie overstatements of
the obvious. Here, but nature is simply where we are

(17:20):
meant to be, which again it's just crazy to even
point that out because it raises the question where else
could we be? But in nature? Well, here we are. Ye.
Humans steadily created an answer to that question shelters, which
of course we have to think about shelters too, Like
what dides shelter? Originally? Do? It provided us this place
to go when it was better not to be in nature. Yeah,

(17:43):
it's safety, it's protection from the elements, and it's protection
from predators and enemies. It's something that uh, you know,
protects you from the weather, of course, but then also
it's something you can put your back to and there
and have a more defensible or securable position from threats. Yeah.
In a way, it was like a kind of way
of hacking the environment. Like there's a certain type of

(18:04):
environmental condition that is ideal for me during say a
rain storm, but I cannot find that everywhere when I
need it. But what have I? By use of my
my my limbs and my strength and my tools and
my ingenuity, I'm able to craft the natural world into
the shape I need when I need it. I can
make a cave. I don't need to find a cave,

(18:25):
so it begins there. But of course that evolves and
it rises to the level of camps and villages, and
the steadily evolves and to the cities of today and
today is proposed geological age. The anthropsyn is defined by
the transformation of the natural world, which includes the transformation
brought by cities and city escapes and the urban sprawl

(18:48):
all around them, along with massive environmental alterations that include deforestation, extinctions,
mass extinctions, and of course climate change right now. Of course,
we're not the only animals that engineer our own environments
like beavers. Of course, our our favorite rusty tooth buddies.
They are you know, famous for engineering their own environments.
Beaver dam is built out of you know, wooden debris

(19:10):
and stuff from the surrounding environment. Can become enormous like
landscape transforming projects. There's one example of in a wilderness
region of northern Alberta, Canada, there is a beaver dam
that appears to be over eight hundred and fifty meters
long and it's about half a mile. That's almost like
a beaver city. Yes, it's like a beaver City. It

(19:32):
is so massive that it can actually be seen from
satellite photos. In fact, for a while, the aerial photos
taken of it, we're the only way that it had
been seen by humans that we know of, since it's
not like right by a road or a city. It's
in this very inaccessible part of the Canadian wilderness that's
like hard to get through. You know, there's there's no
road that goes there. But in an amateur explorer from

(19:54):
New Jersey named Rob Mark plotted a route and actually
made the arduous hike through the Mosquito Ou filled marshes
and forests to get there and see it in person.
And he did. He got there in apparently the beavers
have been working on this dam since the nineteen seventies
or so. Yeah, and it's huge. It's like the size
of a small town. Maybe maybe shouldn't say city, I

(20:16):
mean for beavers proportionally, maybe it's a city, but yeah,
this is like a settlement size. But um uh, Beaver
dams otherwise are fascinating environmental engineering projects. So one interesting
purpose they serve I was just reading about I've never
read about before, was, uh, when a beaver dams the
waterway the reservoir that fills up behind the dam naturally

(20:38):
grows deeper than the original waterway, and this deepening helps
ensure that when the winter freeze comes, the water is
less likely to freeze all the way through, and this
cold but unfrozen water at the bottom of the artificial
lake serves as a useful place for the beavers to
store and access food throughout the winter. That's interesting, I know,

(20:59):
I either. So Anyway, all that just emphasized that humans
aren't the only animals that alter their environments, that that
engineer environments in which to live and change the surrounding landscape.
But I think you'd be very safe in assuming that
humans alter the natural environment to a much greater extent,
and in a greater variety of ways, both deliberate and accidental,
than any other animal, and in a shorter amount of time. Yes,

(21:23):
Because so we've explored in the show before. You know,
vast geological changes that have been brought about via the
emergence of life, But we're talking about changes that can
be brought on in thousands, hundreds of years, or even
decades of course. Uh. And so, of course, one of
the perhaps most self defeating ways that we engineer. The

(21:43):
natural environment is in creating these living and working spaces
for ourselves, almost entirely out of artificial elements and structures.
And so you are an animal, but the chances are
good that you live in work mostly inside some kind
of box with a lot of flat, hard prifaces and
ninety degree angles. And how do you like it? Well?

(22:04):
It has its ups and doubts, doesn't it. Yeah, well, no,
I mean I don't want to undersell the use of
I mean, it's good to have a place that you
can secure and be safe, and it's good to have
a place where you're protected from the elements. That's all
good stuff. Oh yeah, absolutely, it is nice to be
able to have a temperature controlled box, especially if you
were in a part of the world or in a
it's a time of the year in which the outside

(22:26):
the conditions are not ideal, especially for say, sitting around
in front of a computer otherwise motionless. But I wonder
if there are ways that the boxes could be better.
Oh well, the box can always be better, right, because
the ideal box resides in the what the realm of forums? Right? Uh? Yeah,
So we've we have both the natural environment now and

(22:49):
the built environment, the later of which is the design
domain of architecture. Architecture comes to us the word comes
from the Greek architect on, which means chief creator. We
remake the world, but of course we experience the world
through our evolved sensibilities for the natural and hopefully, Uh,

(23:09):
the architect of a given building designed it was at
least some of these sensibilities in mind. Uh. But but
of course this is not always the case. Hopefully, but
maybe often not. Alright, So maybe we can take a
quick break, and then when we come back, we can
talk about ways that architecture impacts us in our minds.
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(25:00):
Are alright, we're back. We're talking about architecture of course. Now,
just of course reminder, Joe and I are not architects.
Uh but but what we know that some of you
out there are architects or have some sort of architectural background.
So that's right. We've heard from architects before. So as
always we're happy to to hear from our listeners on

(25:21):
these topics, to be corrected as need be. But but generally,
you know, if you just have additional UH info to
add additional examples, especially as we start getting into a
few examples of some of the the the architecture and
architectural principles that will be discussing here. Before the break,
we were talking about the natural world and how we've
evolved to thrive in the natural world, and how our

(25:43):
senses are there to help us navigate that natural world.
But now, of course we live UH to a very
large degree in an unnatural world. Of all these various
boxes that we have designed that we have built out
of natural uh naturally a hering materials hashtag box life.
So that quote I mentioned at the beginning of the

(26:05):
episode by Louis Khan, the American architect, about being a
different kind of person under one and fifty foot ceiling
UH that is referenced in a seventeen book by Sarah
Williams Goldhagen, who was the architecture critic for the New
New Republic for many years. She previously, I think, taught
at Harvard Graduate School School of Design, and now she's

(26:27):
an author, and in she published a book called Welcome
to Your World, How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives
and Uh. This book makes the case that the built
environments around us have profound impacts on our minds and
our well being, and this relationship between architecture and the
quality of human life is undervalued in in the building,

(26:50):
the building world, and real estate development. And she argues
that good building design should not just be thought of
as kind of like an extravagance or a frivolous opulent
You know, architecture isn't like getting a vanity plate for
your car. It's actually a social good or a public service,
one that directly contributes significantly to the quality of life

(27:11):
of people who live in buildings and in urban environments.
Actually originally got interested in talking about the subject that
we're tackling today because I read a seventeen article in
City Lab which featured an interview with Sarah Williams gold
Hagan promoting her book. And so gold Hagan mentions that
she was inspired to research and write this book after
reading an older book that we've referenced on this show before,

(27:33):
Metaphors We Live By, published in nineteen eighty by the
cognitive linguists George Lakeoff and the philosopher Mark Johnson. Uh,
don't remember what episode that came up in, but maybe
in one we did about like embodied cognition. Yeah, that
makes sense, so it talks about that. It's a book
about the role of metaphors in our lives and our thinking,
and one concept that's explored in the book is the

(27:54):
role of our physical bodies in physical space as a
key metaphor for understanding our thoughts and emotion. So, for example,
happy is up and sad is down. Isn't that kind
of strange, like why would happy be up and sad
be down? But it seems like there's a there's a
sort of brute physical reality to those associations. Right, when
you're happy, you your posture literally lifts. You come up

(28:18):
and you're you're more Upright when you're sad, you droop.
This also reminds me of I think we've discussed studies
in the show before about walking around looking more up
or looking down. The idea of like looking up you're
more open to new experiences. You're looking down, you're more
concerned with you know what, you may be tripping over
or stepping in. Yeah, totally, But I mean just think

(28:39):
about the ways that these types of spatial metaphors and
body related metaphors utterly pervade our abstract and emotional thinking.
The way you can get over it, get over something.
What does that mean? Like, it's as if you are
standing over a person or an animal or something having
conquered it, or you're able to leap over a problem

(28:59):
and like, you know, get past it. I guess that's
other another literal space metaphor um. And so this idea
inspired her to think more about the way is that
our physical space, the physical spaces that we occupy, literally
shape our thinking about our emotional lives and so and
it turns out there's actually a good amount of research

(29:21):
that already highlights this fact, and so she explores a
lot of this in her book and uh Goldhagen gives
some examples of ways that current building and architecture projects
often undervalue things that we already know about the human
experience of built environments, and one example she gives is
overall form of buildings versus the texture of surfaces. So

(29:45):
in this interview she says, quote, very often in cities,
the overall form of buildings is given much more priority
than materials, surfaces, textures, and details. What we know about
the way we appropriate and experience places is that the
overall form of a place is not what most dramatically
affects our experience of it. It's more what psychologists called

(30:08):
the surface based cues. Uh So, I was looking for
research to support this, and I think here she's referring
to work, including the following study one by Jonathan S.
Cant and Melvin Gooddale in cerebral cortex in two thousand
six called attention to form or surface properties modulates different
regions of human occipito temporal cortex. And so the basic

(30:30):
ideas Goldhagen rights that compared to overall forms of buildings,
research indicates that surface based cues like materials and textures,
you know, the kind of textures and details on walls
and things like that, elicit a more powerful quote whole body,
intersensory and emotional response. That these kind of things might

(30:51):
have a deeper access to our emotional well being than say,
the overall shape of a building. At large, wood you know,
and this is something worth keeping in mind. And next
time anyone out there takes a small child to a
museum where you're expressly told not to touch anything, you know,
like that. Obviously we need to connect with our environment
and like touch and uh you know, and the proper

(31:11):
understanding of the physical services of things that a big
part of that. Oh you're saying, like, yeah, yeah, like that. Well,
I think she's mainly talking about this individual sense, but touch. Obviously,
the desire to touch extends from our desire to process surfaces. Yeah,
I think that actually makes sense. Then, Like a lot
of like the details and surfaces and textures and materials

(31:33):
that have the most emotional access to to our brains
that have that caused these deeper whole body feelings are
things that we want to like get right up with
and interact with directly. You can't really do that with like, say,
the overall form of a skyscraper. No, that's true. You
can certainly come up and touch part of it, but
it's not the full experience totally. Uh So, she's arguing

(31:55):
sort of a more perfectly tuned neuroarchitecture might pay more
attention to what surfaces are made out of what physical
details and accents they have on them than to the
overall shape of the building. Though it's not like the
overall shape of the building is meaningless, that that has
important implications to which will explore more as we go on.

(32:16):
But a few more ideas discussed in a review of
her book, I was reading an architect magazine by Blaine
Brownwell uh Goldhagan also says that architecture, to better suit
our minds, should strive for a kind of what she
calls patterned complexity. So this means it's neither complex in
a way that's confusing as to the building's purpose. Right,

(32:37):
you don't want to a building that's just kind of
assaulting your senses and you don't know where to go
or what to do. But at the same time you
don't She says, you don't want buildings that are simple
in ways that make them unnatural, boring, flat, and deadening.
That these have negative emotional qualities. The way I interpret
what she's saying here is I think it means you're

(32:57):
interested in if you're trying to create a build thing
for you know, for good cognitive, mental emotional health of
the people in it. You're searching for the kinds of
surface complexity that you might find in pleasing natural environments,
So making buildings that most resemble the features mirroring the
structure of the surface qualities of trees, the river, the

(33:19):
rock outcropping and the overlook and things like that. And
I absolutely find that this rings true to me in
the buildings that I like the most. Like, just before
we came into the studio, we were looking at a
picture of the Boston City Hall m which I know
is a is a controversial building. I think, like so
it's an example of brutalist architecture, and some people hate

(33:41):
it and some people like it, at least from the
angle I was looking at a lot of the photos
of it. I really kind of like it because it
has it has some kind of varied size elements that
have some verticality to them that somehow make this big
concrete building in some ways look like a copse of
trees that you could go into. It's almost kind of
a forest. Yeah, you showed me an image of it,

(34:03):
and when I look at it at a at a
building like that, I find myself on some level like
probably not you know, you know, overtly, but at least subconsciously,
I'm thinking, Oh, there's a place I could hide, There's
another place I could hide. Wouldn't it be neat to
sort of lay up there or to you know, to
camp on that little ledge there, Like all these little

(34:23):
um observations are taking place even if I'm not actively
thinking about what it would be like to to scale
the building. I think you're exactly right. I respond to
the same kinds of things, the nooks and crannies that
make a natural environment pleasing. Uh, you know, the idea
of rocks that you could get up on top of
little forests that you could wander into. That stuff feels good.

(34:45):
And I think even the unnatural, even the architectural versions
of them made out of synthetic materials, feel good in
the same kinds of ways. Yeah. Like one example that
comes to mind, it's it's neat to see a hill
or outcropping or something, or even a mountain and be
able to sort of plot the course of ascension. Yes,

(35:05):
But likewise, you can take of what is ultimately a
very unnatural environment, say the interior the Guggenheim Museum, which
is like what this I'm not even I don't even
have the architectural terminology to properly describe it. But it's
kind of like a spiral ramp up around a large
central space, right, And that's not something you would find
in nature. But when you look up from the bottom
of that the interior that museum, you see a path

(35:27):
of ascension. You see this, this winding trail going up
towards the top, and there's something in you that must
traverse it. Well, yeah, I think that's the same reason
that we respond so well to tall buildings with terraces,
you know, like stepped terraces look very pleasing to us.
I think maybe because there's some kind of instinctual We
can't know this for sure, but maybe because there's some

(35:47):
part of the brain that's looking at that and seeing
like that's the part that you could climb up to
and then you could get from there to here. Yeah,
it's well, it goes back to the ziggurat, the zigarat
as an artificial mountain and uh and therefore something that
is scalable and so Ziggorott like elements in buildings, there's
something irresistible about them. And as far as Ledges got

(36:08):
we were talking about this before we went in the
Chrysler building in New York City, beautiful skyscraper, you know,
classic skyscraper. But there's something about those those eagles at
the top. You know that you look at that and
you can't help but imagine yourself up there, standing on it,
or at least, you know, clutching it and crawling out
on it. And and and likewise, you see in fiction

(36:29):
various scenarios where superhero or some other figure is standing
there like, we can't help, but imaginement, Yeah, you gotta
put Batman there, you gotta put Spider Man there. Yeah,
Like sometimes it's probably too crowded, Like a superhero goes
up there for their selfie and it's just overrun. Yeah,
and then que the wing serpent comes flying out, and
then you never know what's gonna happen. But as much
as I think in some ways it makes sense to

(36:50):
try to create buildings that, in various ways mimic natural
landscapes and natural architecture of things like trees and forests
and mountains and rock out croppings and all that kind
of thing, I think it's also equally important. And of
course Goldhagen makes this point that there's an essential value
for literal physical nature as well, like green spaces and

(37:11):
cities full of natural vegetation. Absolutely, and there's a there's
a lot of research to bear that out, some of
which we'll get into in the next episode. Yes, totally.
I mean she cites research we already mentioned this one
that hospital patients have been documented in some cases to
have quicker recoveries and take less pain medication when they
can see natural vegetation like trees. Um. But there's also

(37:33):
research apparently that she cites that access to green spaces
improves cognitive outcomes for school children, including reduced stress. Yeah, like, well,
one thing, this is one of those scenarios though, of course,
where you look at major cities and and really I think,
like if you think of major cities that you've traveled
to or even minor cities of try to think about

(37:55):
your key memories. For me, anyway, I find my key
memories are also are often visiting the green spaces, you know,
Like when I think of New York, I think of
of Central Park, you know, I think of uh, for instance,
guang Zou or not in China. When I was in
both of those cities, it was it's the parks that
are that are the public spaces, the green spaces that

(38:16):
that really burn in my memory the most when I
was recently in London. I mean, of course I love
the the interesting interior spaces of the cathedrals and the museums,
but one of the main things that sticks in my
head is walking through like the palace gardens they just said,
like trees and open green spaces and and lots of
birds flocking about. And of course the thing with cities though,

(38:37):
is so yes, there are some wonderful examples of of
green spaces, and in many cases public green spaces, but
then there are also plenty of examples of portions of
some of those same cities that maybe don't have the
same amount of green space, that don't have as much
public access to green space. And there you see the
flip side of the equation. Well, yeah, and I think
one way of reframing this is that not having access

(39:00):
to green space is a real like cost to people
like that they pay a price for this mentally, emotionally,
psychologically for not having access to two trees and grass
and the sounds birds, And I mean as much as
a I guess that sounds like a cliche, but uh,
it appears that this really matters. Yeah, But it's it's

(39:21):
easy for I think developers and just people in general
to forget this for periods of time, and then you
have to have individuals come along and say, you know,
we need to put green space back in, we need
to plant trees. Uh. Here in Atlanta, this was I
understand to be there have been the case for a while.
Uh where in the downtown area you just had a
shrinking amount of green space. And then you had organizations

(39:42):
like Trees Atlanta came along and uh and you know,
took up the initiative of planting more trees and and
making sure that there there were trees around, there were
green spaces, there was room for nature to exist in
the sort of concrete environments that we were creating. Yeah,
and so I think that's the It's got to be
a crucial part of architecture. I mean, I guess that's
different from just when you're making a building. That's more

(40:05):
broadly like urban planning and that kind of thing. Though,
I guess it also has to do with you know,
like you've got a certain plot of land and you're
developing it, how much of that plot of land will
you devote to just like having space where you can
plant trees. In a lot of times, I'm sure developers
would look at that and say, well, that's just wasted revenue.
You could fill that in with the units you can fill. Yeah,

(40:25):
we see this all the time. I'm sure a lot
of our listeners see this. We see this in Atlanta,
especially where a lot is purchased and then a developer
will come in and they will build just as much,
absolutely as much house is possible as is physically possible
on the lot, and you know, lawn and green space
trees be damned. Uh. And then you know someone comes

(40:45):
along and they buy it, but it's just it's all house. Now,
speaking about the psychological effects of of built environments and architecture,
I want to come back to the thing we talked
about at the beginning of the episode. Remember that quote
from Louis Kahan talking about bathing in a poll all
setting versus in a regular bathtub in a little room.
Something about a hundred and fifty foot ceiling just makes

(41:06):
a person a different kind of person. If a person
is different under a majestic high ceiling, how and why, like,
is there any empirical evidence for that other than your hunch?
And if so, why would that be true. So I
want to actually look at a few studies here. All right,
let's do it. So the first one I will want
to look at is by Vartanian at all in the

(41:27):
Journal of Environmental Psychology, published called Architectural Design in the Brain.
Effects of ceiling height and perceived enclosure on beauty judgment
and approach avoidance decisions. Uh So, there were some basic
findings here. First of all, rooms with high ceilings were
judged as more beautiful than rooms with low ceilings. I

(41:48):
think there should be no surprise there. I mean that
just totally goes to their intuition. You think of like
the cathedrals and the high ceiling palaces tend to be
more beautiful but more interesting. Through the use of addition
a psychological testing and neuroimaging with f m r I,
rooms with high ceilings were shown to elicit activity in
quote structures involved in visuospatial exploration and attention in the

(42:14):
dorsal stream. Uh so. The dorsal stream is a concept
that's part of a hypothesis in neuroscience known as the
too stream hypothesis. Basically, the idea is that the brain
has two main routes for processing perception of visual or
auditory stimuli. You get the ventral stream, also known as
the what stream or the what process, and that's used

(42:36):
primarily for identifying and recognizing things. What is that? And
then you've got the dorsal stream, also known as the
war stream or the wear process, and that's associated with
plenty of other things, but primarily with assessing where a
perceived object is in space relative to the viewer and
in guiding action through space. So it seems that compared

(42:59):
to rooms with lower ceilings, this study found that open
rooms with higher ceilings engage brain structure is associated with
exploring spaces, whereas open rooms. Open rooms were also more
likely to engage parts of the brain that perceive a
visual motions. I think open rooms would seem to prime
you to see things moving around. Meanwhile, the same study

(43:21):
found that more enclosed spaces tended to trigger avoidance behaviors
and stimulate quote exit decisions, as well as showing increased
activation in the anterior mid singulate cortex and the author's
right quote. This suggests that a reduction in perceived visual
and locomotive permeability characteristic of enclosed spaces might elicit an

(43:45):
emotional reaction that accompanies exit decisions. So, if I'm interpreting
this right, I think that's a technical way of saying
that more enclosed spaces are likely, on average to trigger
less activity in the brain that says, let's explore, and
more activity in the st uture of the brain that
says it's time to get out. Now, I think that's
really interesting, the idea that higher ceilings might sort of

(44:06):
trigger activity in the brain that says it's time to explore,
time to map, time to time to get into it.
But I also wonder how this this connects intention with
the idea that smaller spaces can sometimes be perceived as say, cozy,
Like the perception of coziness somehow seems like the opposite
of an exit or avoidance motivation. And yet you can

(44:28):
clearly think of times winning closed spaces are cozier than
a big open space. Yeah, but they tend to when
I think of them, I tend to think of environments
where I am going to like climb into a bed
or sleeping bag or something, you know, as opposed to
somewhere where I'm going to engage in something more like work. Uh,
you know, like if I'm gonna snuggle up with a
really good book. Then yes, I might think of some

(44:51):
of being in some casket like chamber on a train
or a ship or so forth. Yeah, that's an interesting
that it has to to do with what types of
things you're about to do. Um. But like but like,
for instance, a kitchen. I've never heard anyone say, oh,
I wish I had a cozier kitchen in which to
you know, engage my culinary exploration. No, people want bigger kitchens.

(45:17):
They probably envisioned a kitchen with a with you know,
reasonably high ceiling, probably maybe not a cathedral ceiling. But
I don't think anybody gets excited about a super tight
little ship galley of a of a kitchen. That's interesting. Yeah,
it's like it's almost like you want big spaces to
to do work and to think about big questions and

(45:37):
to think of you know, and to to explore ideas,
and then you want small spaces in order to have
privacy and feel secure and sleep. Yeah. And I guess
it also has to do with the scale of the work, right.
It's one thing to think about, say, painting miniatures and
being an a tying a cozy it's a space. But
when you're cooking, you're doing something that probably is making
making a mess and engaging you know, so few different appliances, etcetera. Well,

(46:01):
it may have to do with whether or not you're
trying to be creative. That'll come in in the study
you want to talk about in a second. But another
thing that's intention here. I think. For example, Goldhagen refers
to some research that suggests, quite unsurprisingly that closed spaces
give people a sense of refuge and security. Okay, that
makes sense, um, But I think of how many like

(46:22):
office workers, including maybe some people in this room, you
arned for the days of cubicles and little offices as
opposed to the modern scourge of open office plans, where
you are supposed to on paper, benefit from constant collaboration,
but in fact they just well, I mean, I don't
want to speak for everybody, but for many people they

(46:43):
clearly just make you feel distracted and on edge all
the time. Yeah. I was reading a little bout a
bit about about this as well, And it's one of
those things where you can find some some material to
back up either case basically, and you can find individuals
i'm sure, with different experiences to back up either case.
I also think it depends on what sort of work
you're in, Like, to what extent is your work communal

(47:06):
between individuals, or to what extent is it you know,
is it a situation where this this individual is doing
their own thing for extended periods of time and it's
better not to bother them. And that can vary. That
not only varies from person to person in company to company,
it can vary from department to department within a single entity. Obviously,
where maybe maybe the advertising department of a particular company

(47:29):
is more about running from desk to desk and talking
about what they're working on. Likewise, people have more of
a research role, might need to just be you know,
have the blinders on right. How much of your job
involves the need for deep work? Yeah, yeah, so, But
obviously they're going to be different effects and tendencies playing
against each other in the design of interior spaces. There's

(47:49):
clearly not a one size fits all, like all interior
spaces should be like x UM. But yeah, one thing
I was also wondering about with the idea of like
approach versus of ouidence behaviors, exploration motivation versus exit motivation.
You know, if you were were more likely to get
the brain into exploration mode in rooms with high ceilings.

(48:10):
Could that have abstract implications? Could these exploration and exit
behaviors also lead to broader emotions, motivations, and cognitive potential?
And I did find at least one study that would
seem to support this. This was by Joan Myers, Levy
and Rui Jou published in the Journal of Consumer Research
in two thousand and seven called the Influence of Ceiling

(48:31):
Height the Effects of priming on the type of processing
that people use. And so what happened here is that
researchers found that even relatively small differences in ceiling heights,
say like the difference between an eight foot ceiling and
a tin foot ceiling, these had noticeable effects on psychology
and cognition. UH not very surprisingly, rooms with higher ceilings

(48:53):
primed people to think about words and concepts related to freedom,
whereas rooms with lower ceilings were more were likely to
prime people to think about words and concepts related to confinement.
And they measured this UH this priming effect by seeing,
like what types of words people were more likely to
solve foreign puzzles like anagrams. A common way of testing

(49:13):
for like priming on certain concepts and words. You know,
are are you already kind of like having this sort
of thing in mind? Um? But more interestingly, the author
has also suggested these broader cognitive effects that higher ceilings
make people more likely to use abstract relational cognition, like
thinking about the abstract relationships between ideas and things, whereas

(49:38):
lower ceilings were more likely to make people think in
terms of concrete objects and specific details. And I can
think if they're correct about this, this makes me think
obviously that you could have different types of workspaces being
more suited to different kinds of work, Like the kind
of the kind of work where you need to be
creative and think abstract things might want to have a

(50:00):
room with a big, high ceiling. The kind of work
where you're focusing in on my new concrete details of things,
you might want a smaller space with a lower ceiling. So,
if I'm understanding this correctly, you're you're going to ask
our employers for custom offices in which there is a
ceiling that can be manipulated via remote control. Sure, yeah,

(50:21):
Raisin lower, Yeah, Yeah, that makes sense to me. Again,
this does seem to roughly fit with personal experience, like
I can think of what happens when you go into
a cathedral or a palatial atmosphere. I mean it does
tend to in a way sort of elevate one's thinking.
You are more likely to think about big ideas in
there somehow, at least in my experience. No, that's that

(50:41):
would say, that's my experience as well, not only with
with human made environments, but even we've we've talked before
about say seeing the Grand Canyon or something like that.
You know, it is a lot to see a large
empty space. That kind of environment summons, uh, you know,
a certain amount of introspection and and you know, thinking

(51:02):
about it eternity and so forth. Um, I mean the
big spaces have inspired big thoughts for some reason. Yeah.
But at the same time, I mean we were just
talking about what kinds of work are are small space
is good for. I mean I miss my cubicle from
the old days, especially at times when I want to
like really zero in on, like editing a document. You

(51:25):
know that it's almost like the the the enclosure helps
you stay on task with minute details of things. Yeah,
it almost literally becomes like like the blinders of a horse,
Like you can't just look up and see what everybody
in the office is doing, uh you know, and and
and gaze up and inspect every little slight movement that
occurs in your peripheral vision. All right, on that note,

(51:45):
we're going to take one more break, but we'll be
right back. All right, we're back. So we've been talking
about the psychology of architecture, how the built environment, uh
you know, influences us psychologically and how it shapes our lives.
One other thing I was looking at was studies about
color and interior spaces, because yeah, you have to paint

(52:08):
it some color. You have to pick out some color
of carpet. Oh, you don't necessarily have to paint it.
You could have just like say, exposed raw concrete. Right. Well, true,
but even that is a choice. In coloration, it is.
Uh So color psychology, we know, we've talked about on
the show before. It's a big field with a lot
of complicated and sometimes conflicting results. I think it's important
in color psychology. I mean, I guess this is important

(52:28):
for all things, but for some reason it especially comes
up in color psychology that, like plenty of psychological effects,
the effects of color on thinking, emotion, and motivation are
not necessarily universal to the human animal. They can be
influenced by differences in cultural associations. Right, Like, a big
one that I've read about before is red. Green and
red have certain connotations generally an American and Western um individuals,

(52:52):
where green is go, red is stop. So green is good,
red is bad. But you and so you might be
inclined to utilize that in your tech knowledgy and your
app or what have you. But then if you translate
that app or technology to a Chinese market, where a
red has a strongly uh you know, positive color, it
is a very noble color, like you would not associate

(53:13):
red with a negative outcome in Chinese culture. Right. So,
if you are actually using color psychology research to shape
the design of interior spaces, you would probably want to
consider research done on like cultures like the the culture
where you're making your building, right. Um. So, one example
of something that came across was a study from two

(53:35):
thousand nine published in the journal Science by Ravi, Meta
and Ruigu called Blue or Red Exploring the Effect of
color on cognitive task performances. And this was a study
looking at the color the effects of color on cognitive
performance without going deep into the details, all other things
being equal, and they found that red backgrounds tend to

(53:56):
make us more likely to engage in avoidance behavior years
and this was done among North Americans, so that might
not be surprising that maybe you could have some like
stop signs stoplight associations at work there. But that read
also enhances performance on detail oriented tasks, such as specific
recall of details in a memory exercise, like if I

(54:19):
give you, um a list of words to remember, you
will get more words right in remembering, remembering them and
recalling them later with a red background, then with another
colored background. But meanwhile, they found that blue backgrounds tend
to enhance performance on creative tasks e g. Coming up

(54:40):
with a list of creative uses for a mundane object
like a brick, though there was some subjective judgment involved
in evaluating those responses. They had like a panel of
judges that were judging how creative the uses of the brick. Course, UM,
So you know, I wouldn't take these results as ironclad,
but if they're correct, if they're onto something here. One
interesting association is the idea of blue, again with openness

(55:05):
leading to creativity, So the idea of like blue environments,
especially those with the same kind of hue as a
blue sky, making people more creative, and that might seem
to connect to the idea of being more creative or
exploration oriented in open spaces rooms with tie high ceilings.
Now we mentioned earlier educational outcomes, One interesting thing I

(55:28):
was reading was another review of the gold Hagen book.
I was reading an Education Week by an author named
Sir John George, and this piece made reference to one
of the most startling research findings that Goldhagen sites in
in her book, which is as as expressed by the
author of this piece quote one study of thirty four
different British schools where the six design parameters of color, choice, complexity, flexibility, light,

(55:55):
and connectivity affected a student's learning progress by twenty five scent.
The difference in learning between the best and worst design
classrooms was equal to the progress of an average student
over an entire academic year. Yeah, and so with that
kind of study, obviously an effect of that size I
would be inclined to be skeptical about. You know, you know,

(56:18):
you want to see that replicated a good amount. But
even if the study somehow overstates the effect, even if
the effect were only half that that that's an amazing difference. Um.
So the author of this piece suggests that some extrapolations
from this research should be used in schools. Just one
example they give is, maybe is it a good idea
when students misbehave to send them to a room that

(56:41):
is like almost intentionally made to bore them on purpose,
and you go to the detention room where you can
sit and do nothing. Um, I mean, maybe it would
be better to have a kind of like reparative discipline
system where instead students who misbehave are sent to an
outdoor green space with some vegetation in it. That that

(57:01):
with the free range children, the free ranged children exactly.
I mean, that's that's an interesting suggestion to me. I
don't see any harm in trying things like that, absolutely.
I mean, I know where I would rather go if
I were sent to detention. The outdoor detention garden sounds
much better than the detention chamber. Another specific example about
built environments from Goldhagen's book that the author here mentions, uh,

(57:23):
and I thought this was interesting was that there are
apparently apparently some documented benefits to quote repeating patterns with
respites from that same pattern, which can stimulate problem solving capacity.
And this is very specific and I like it. I
think I know exactly what this is referring to, Like
when you see a building with pleasing irregularity in patterned elements,

(57:48):
you know, so you have I guess an example would
be like you say you've got a row of windows.
You've got seven windows with alcoves, all in a row,
and then suddenly where you'd expect the next one, there's
not what. There's like a protruding feature rather than a window,
And then the windows begin again. And maybe this happens
at different levels with different irregular variation in that pattern.

(58:09):
This reminds me of some of what we talked about
in our episode of the Gods must be Counterintuitive, about
how a certain amount of counter intuitive design is admirable
in our myths and our stories, and therefore it would
make sense in our architecture as well. Yes. Uh, the
idea there, I think is that that kind of like
it was like, they had to be minimally counterintuities. They

(58:31):
can't be so counterintuitive that it just feels random. It
needs to feel mostly structured, but with enough weirdness that
it sticks in the memory. Yeah. Yeah, And and if
you're looking at it like the natural environment, that makes
sense too, Right, if you're considering a large hill to
climb and you're sort of plotting your course up there,
it makes sense that some of the visible ledges would

(58:54):
be more pronounced than others are more desirable or more interesting,
like there would be varied features and not and and
there would be some features that might be more desirable
than others, Like you know, it's something that is interesting
to look at with big buildings, skyscrapers and whatnot, where
you see something that is you see something that's an
element or that maybe it's just the very top and

(59:14):
maybe it's a penthouse or something like that, but it
does you start stirring your mind. You're like, what kind
of person lives there? What or what office is that?
Who has access to that space in the building? Um?
And then what is it like to stand there? I
have I don't know if I'm alone in this, but
I have have frequently had had weird dreams where I am,

(59:34):
especially at a former location that we had where we
had access to an outside terrace at our building. I
would have dreams though where I would be it would
be in in different strange skyscrapers, and and accessing terraces
on those skyscrapers, uh, and and then looking out and
it was like in an achievement to you know. It
wasn't like I was sneaking in, but it was just

(59:55):
it was I felt a sense of accomplishment by reaching
those terraces. I haven't had those specific dreams, but as
somebody who ever since I was a kid has loved
to climb up on things, and as an adult, I
wish it were more socially acceptable to just climb up
on things with your inner goat. I totally identify with that.

(01:00:15):
Not the dreams, but I know the feeling. Yeah, like
if I see a fancy terrorists, I mean I want
to stand up there. So I'm you know, kind of
terrified of heights, but I still I still want to
stand on on that terrorist. For some reason. This is funny.
I have so many other neuroses and terrors, but for
some reason I like heights. Yeah, it's what's it's your
inner goat. I think it's the goat like desire to

(01:00:37):
to stand atop something and look about. Now, there's one
last thing I wanted to move to before we close
out this first part of the discussion here, and it
was a question about I wonder if there are differences
in um sort of the professional aesthetics of architecture versus
the actual preferences like what's good or everyday people. And

(01:01:01):
I was thinking about this because I was just looking
at one specific study. Uh, it's a fairly simple example
by no means proves the case, but it was a
little bit interesting to me. This is a study by
Sybil does Here and Maryland Read in Environment and Behavior
from two thousand twelve called Furniture forms and their influence
on our emotional responses toward interior environments. So, Robert, I've

(01:01:25):
got some images for you to look at. Here. We're
looking at pictures of different furniture designs. Some are rectilinear,
meaning you've got like straight, clean lines and right angles,
and some are curvilinear, meaning that they have soft, rounded edges.
Which of these designs looks more hip? Uh? Well, I

(01:01:45):
don't know. That's kind of loaded question, you know, like
hip in a way where I like it, or hip
in a way where I feel like the predominant taste
makers in society would like it architecturally tasteful. Okay, I'm
gonna between rounded and straight edge. Yeah, I'm gonna go
straight edge. Yeah, I would think the same thing, And
maybe not everyone would agree. But my hunch is that

(01:02:08):
the clean lines and the right angles of the rectilineal
furniture would be considered a superior design by pros like
people who work in design. It looks more modern, it
looks more clean, it looks more tasteful. It looks like
the kind of furniture you would see in like a
cool I don't know, in like some hip furniture store
that's selling cool furniture. The rounded stuff honestly looks like

(01:02:31):
something I would see in a doctor's waiting room. Yes,
the rounded edges, I think could be conceived perceived as
kind of kitchy, right, They don't look like the choice
of interior design professionals, or at least you know. I
don't know for sure, but that's my guests. But this
simple survey found that the images containing curvilinear couches these

(01:02:51):
rounded edges made people feel more of a number of
positive emotions. People felt happier, people felt more hopeful, more comfortable.
Looking at those kind of rooms and imagining being in
those kind of rooms, then they did with the right
angled furniture. So I wonder, if this is correct, could
a similar thing be true of our buildings? Could there
be two issues? Actually, One is that often buildings are

(01:03:14):
designed in a kind of careless, cost cutting way with
little attention to aesthetics, and how that those aesthetics really
impact our brains and our emotional lives. But perhaps there's
another thing that even when aesthetics have built, environments are
taken into account. I wonder if sometimes they're oriented towards

(01:03:35):
some like esoteric design standard that is appreciated by a
small group of people who are deep in the world
of architecture and design, but maybe not towards the maximum
psychological benefit of people who live and work in in
and around these buildings. Does that make sense? Yeah, I
believe so. For instance, the taste of the individual choosing

(01:03:57):
the layout for an office versus the individual taste the
people working in an office, well yeah, I mean it
could be that, like a certain thing looks cool when
you're designing an interior space, but then it's not actually
great to live in. Yeah. Yeah. And and with the
sort of like planning an office layout example, I feel
like it's such a different world right, because on one hand,

(01:04:19):
someone is saying, this is what I want the whole
office to look like. This is the you know, the
blueprint of the office on paper, and that's different than
the experience of having one particular corner of the office
two that is yours or has been assigned to you,
and this is where you are working. Um Like, it's
just a it's a different viewpoint. One is the broader

(01:04:41):
view and and of course there are other factors as well,
like if you're designing the whole office, you might be
thinking about that individual who walks in and sees the
whole office for the first time. It's more about impressing
that individual than than making the you know, the worker,
the employee happy. Yeah, this is something I would definitely
like to actually hear from architects on what are your
thought it's about this? All right, We're gonna go ahead

(01:05:01):
and call this episode, but we will be back in
which we will discuss architecture a good bit more. We
will talk about brutal, cursed, and hostile architecture. Especially in
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