PUBLIC REALM - HUMAN PSYCHE AND ARCHITECTURE

As city dwellers, we have access to and enjoy numerous places in the public realm. These spaces can be termed under the umbrella of “public spaces” which include public infrastructures such as hospitals, schools, libraries, museums, art galleries, etc, recreational spaces, spaces of worship and commercial spaces. They are places where strangers meet, interact and contribute in developing and defining the social fabric of an urban space.

In Palaces for the People, the sociologist Eric Klinenberg (2018) makes the argument that physical and institutional infrastructures are crucial for the development and maintenance of social connections. social infrastructures are necessary for nurturing public life, but also for addressing and preventing some of the most pressing concerns of contemporary urban life: countering social isolation, negotiating difference, and creating places for all—regardless of age, race, gender, sexuality, or income.

Social infrastructure can be broadly categorized as seen in table 1.

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In this article, we examine how we navigate and interact with social infrastructure and its effects on our psyche with the help of examples.

Public institutions such as schools, hospitals or government buildings evoke a very different emotion or reaction compared to public spaces like museums, art galleries and theme parks. This is because institutional spaces have a finely ordered spatial structure. They are designed to fulfill very specific kinds of functions. The user is carefully guided and managed through the space. There are clear distinctions and boundaries between public and private spaces, with rules and regulations making it explicitly clear where to go, where to stand and where to line up. The freedom of movement and choice is carefully managed and controlled.

On the contrary, cultural and entertainment spaces provide the user ample freedom of movement and freedom of choice while navigating the space. They allow the user to wander, ponder and experience the space at his pace.

HOSPITALS

Hospitals are traditionally known to be notoriously disorienting, stark and clinical with little to no interaction of users with their surroundings. A visitor enters the space in a slightly agitated state while being concerned for his well-being. Instead of greeting him with a stark and clinical atmosphere, it is important that the visitor be soothed, then guided, upon his arrival into the space. This can be achieved using spatial planning while actively focusing on ‘markers’ for orientation and using passive techniques of color psychology and selection of materials in transitional and common areas. Also, forming a visual connection with the surrounding landscape enforces a strong bond with nature – a key to creating a healing atmosphere.

 Image source : White Arkitekter

For example, White Arkitekter's Design for Nuuk's Psychiatric Clinic Emphasizes Nature in Mental Health Design emphasizing the beauty of Greenland’s natural landscape to create a tranquil atmosphere with a strong connection to the hospital’s surroundings. By analyzing and recognizing the impact of architecture on the hospital’s patients, the design team attempts to create a calm, healing environment for its visitors. For many, the stereotypical psychiatric facility may conjure up images of sequestered, enclosed spaces. But the team has emphasized the importance of natural light in interior spaces. Patient’s quarters are designed with generous windows, providing breath-taking views of the landscape and an abundance of natural light in most rooms. The architect has also chosen to emphasize wood, a natural material, throughout the design due to its proven stress-reducing effect on the human psyche.

MUSEUMS and GALLERIES

Museums and galleries commonly adopt storytelling in their interpretive framework by use of audio-visual techniques to convey the meanings contained within artifacts. The architecture can be regarded as a form of spatial storytelling, which is manifested spatially and cognitively for museum and gallery visitors. The visitor is guided through the space by making choices and interacting with the art, making the whole experience seamless and less directed.

For example, a study conducted by the Space Syntax group at University College London, shows the power of the organization of space to affect museum experience. In this case study, the Space Syntax group was recruited to analyze the use of space in one of London’s great galleries—the Tate Gallery. They used some simple methods to determine how the gallery was being used by visitors, including head counts in different rooms, measures of movement from room to room, and measures of the rate at which people entered and left different exhibit areas within the gallery. They combined these behavioral measures with computer analyses of the shape, or grammar of the spaces within the gallery. It was concluded that apart from the kinds of artifacts placed in various locations in the gallery, the movements of visitors largely depended on the shape of the building and the ways that different rooms were interconnected by the hallways within the space.

At the Tate, visitors took advantage of a strongly interconnected central hallway or ‘main street’ to explore the gallery space, moving back and forth from main street to the interesting side alleys. This meant that visitors were able to move easily and casually through the space, enjoying an arrangement of displays that could be visited in a number of different ways, but always maintaining some sense of orientation within the larger gallery. The authors of the report argued that it was this ease, the underlying logic of the space, and an organization that allowed visitors the freedom to explore the space in a manner of their own choosing rather than by being forcibly shunted from one painting to the next, that made the gallery such a pleasant space.

Another example where architecture becomes the narrative to evoke emotions, is The Jewish Museum in Berlin designed by Daniel Libeskind.

Image source : www.jmberlin.de

For Libeskind, it was about establishing and securing an identity within Berlin, which was lost during WWII. Conceptually, Libeskind wanted to express feelings of absence, emptiness, and invisibility – expressions of disappearance of the Jewish Culture. It was the act of using architecture as a means of narrative and emotion providing visitors with an experience of the effects of the Holocaust on both the Jewish culture and the city of Berlin.

The project takes the form from an abstracted Jewish Star of David that is stretched around the site and its context. The form is established through a process of connecting lines between locations of historical events that provide structure for the building resulting in a literal extrusion of those lines into a “zig-zag” building form.

Image source : www.jmberlin.de

Even though Libeskind’s extension appears as its own separate building, there is no formal exterior entrance to the building. In order to enter the new museum extension, one must enter from the original Baroque museum in an underground corridor. A visitor must endure the anxiety of hiding and losing the sense of direction before coming to a cross roads of three routes. These three routes present opportunities to witness the Jewish experience through the continuity with German history, exile from one's motherland, and the Holocaust. He creates a promenade that follows the “zig-zag” formation of the building for visitors to walk through and experience the empty and oppressive spaces within.

Image source : www.jmberlin.de

One of the most powerful emotion evoking spaces in the building is a 66 feet tall void that runs through the entire building. The concrete walls add a cold, overwhelming atmosphere to the space where the only light emanates from a small slit at the top of the space. An analogy for finding a glimmer of hope within darkness.The ground is covered in 10,000 coarse iron faces. A symbol of those lost during the Holocaust. The building is less of a museum but rather an experience depicting what most cannot understand or may fail to identify with.

Image source : www.jmberlin.de

The building’s extension leads out into the Garden of Exile where once again the visitors feel lost among 49 tall concrete pillars that are covered with plants. The overbearing pillars make one lost and confused, but upon looking up to an open sky, there is a moment of exaltation. The Jewish Museum is an emotional journey through history.

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In conclusion, the understanding and study of the human psyche is essential in planning and executing successful social infrastructure. As stated by Henry Shaftoe in Convivial Urban Spaces (2008), ‘successful spaces have people lingering in them and that for a space to be a real public space it must be used’.

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References:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-wandering/201302/what-happens-when-you-take-psychologist-museum

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09613210802519293

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gec3.12444

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309432628_Architectural_Psychology

https://www.archdaily.com/906440/white-arkitekters-design-for-nuuks-psychiatric-clinic-emphasizes-the-relationship-between-architecture-nature-and-mental-health

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095263517300444

https://www.jmberlin.de/en/libeskind-building