Places of the Soul

Architecture and environmental design as a healing art

Christopher Day

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317342199
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Architettura
• Subtopic: Architettura generale

For Christopher Day, architecture isn't just about the appearance of buildings but how they're experienced as places to be in. Occupants' experience can differ radically from designers' intentions as their concerns and thinking differ. Additionally, multi-sensory ambience, spatial sequential experience and embodied spirit resonate in the human soul. Sustainable design means much more than energy-efficiency: if sustainable buildings don't also nourish the soul, occupant-building interaction will lack care and eco-technologies won't be used efficiently. This major revision of his classic text builds on more than forty years of experience ecological design across a range of climates, cultures and budgets, and 25 years hands-on building.

Treating buildings as environments intrinsic to their surroundings, the book explores consensus design, economic and social sustainability, and how a listening approach can grow architectural ideas organically from the interacting, sometimes conflicting, requirements of place, people and situation.

This third edition, comprehensively revised to incorporate new knowledge and address new issues, continues Day's departure from orthodox contemporary architecture, offering eye-opening insights and practical design applications. These principles and guidelines will be of interest and value to architects, builders, planners, developers and homeowners alike.

Reviews of the first edition

... one of the seminal architecture books of recent times

Professor Tom Wooley, Architects Journal

The 'bible' of many architects and those interested in architecture.

Centre for Alternative Technology

... an inspiration to all those who care about the influence of the environment on Man's health and well-being.

Barrie May, The Scientific and Medical Network

At last an architect has written a sensitive and caring book on the effects of buildings on all our lives.

Here's Health

This gentle book offers a route out of the nightmare of so much callous modern construction. I was inspired.

Colin Amery, The Financial Times

Chapter 1

Architecture: does it matter?

Architects tend to think architecture matters. Not everyone else does. To many people, buildings are expensive but not very interesting. It’s what goes on inside them that matters.

The argument continues that it’s better to have a good teacher (or craftsperson, parent, designer, manager, etc.) in an ugly shed, barrack, pre-fab, tower-block flat, etc. than a poor one in a beautiful room. But few of us are exceptionally good or exceptionally hopeless; we’re middling, so we need support. So, how supportive is the barrack to a middling teacher? Ultimately, how good is the teaching?

How much is good design worth? Research suggests it increases property value by 15 per cent.¹ When staff moved into Alberts and Van Huut’s ground-breaking NMB Bank headquarters,² absenteeism declined and productivity increased: also around 15 per cent. Other projects that prioritize occupant well-being have found similar improvements. A study on hospitals found an improved environment reduced treatment times by 21 per cent and analgesic use by 59 per cent – both major cost savings.³ Roger Ulrich, whose 1984 studies correlating patients’ view and recovery time pioneered this field, considers every tree-leaf visible from a hospital window ‘worth its weight in gold’.⁴ What this means for commercial buildings, where some 80 per cent of costs are staff salaries, is that a 15 per cent productivity increase justifies a building over three times as expensive.⁵ In short, soul-nourishing environment pays for itself many times over.

Opposite: Whether you like this or not, this is not architecture. It is a photograph of a building. A semantic distinction? On the contrary. One is a static view, chosen by someone else, freezing a transient moment of light, season, weather, approach, life … The other is, influences or is an interrelated part of, our total physical surroundings. Both touch our feelings, but no photograph can do so as deeply as multi-sensory reality. Photographs focus our attention but let us ignore context. Architecture, however, is the frame in which we live. We don’t just look at architecture, we live in it.

This book is illustrated with photographs. They’re incomplete and inadequate fragments of experience, however, for architecture is for much more than the eyes. It is for life. And that is why it’s such a powerful tool – often devastating, but potentially health-giving.

Photographs are selective. Most people’s interest is in the people, whereas architects tend to concentrate on buildings – often without any hint of occupancy. While, to avoid intrusion, many of these photographs show empty rooms, try to imagine them in use for their specific functions.

Much more important than money, however, is what environment does to us: how it affects our lives and even our personalities. Children behave noticeably differently in different surroundings. Likewise even mature adults tend to feel, think and act differently. Environment easily influences world outlook, sensitivities and thought-mobility. Outlook affects how we behave, ultimately who we become. If the world is to switch to a sustainable lifestyle from a potentially suicidal one, this is of critical concern. Even at a personal level, I sometimes wonder what sort of qualities my own work would have if I worked in a harshly rectangular, glossy smooth-surfaced, evenly lit office.

Environmental design has been used for social engineering. Even if well-intentioned, this is about control, conditioning and manipulation: it cramps inner development. Soul-nourishment is the absolute opposite. It feeds inner development. Soul-nourishment is an art, not a science. Many people believe artistic ability is a matter of inborn genius, but I’m convinced that the main factor is commitment. Likewise, aesthetics is much less a function of money than of care. But care costs time. In a world where time means money, the less care put into buildings – in design, construction and use – the cheaper they will be. As few people want cheap-looking buildings, however, deceptive appearance, from cosmetic surfaces (like brick veneers) and mood-manipulative lighting to glossy fronts and cut-price rears, is now commonplace. Deceptive appearance, however, inadequately screens the primacy of profit over care. Being cheated doesn’t feel good – and breeds disrespect. It also does active harm, for children grow up and learn – from their surroundings as well as from people – the values that will steer them through later life.

Other than architects, few people think about architecture, but many feel it. Those who don’t will have had their sensitivities blunted, even obliterated – and built environment must carry much of the blame. Lots of people complain about the performance aspects of old buildings (like dampness), but complaints about new ones are even more common. These focus on environmental aspects (such as anonymity, sterility or characterlessness). Juhani Pallasmaa attributes widespread dislike of Modernist architecture to its visual purity at the expense of place ambience.⁶ People, of course, often condemn things unjustly. So it was an eye-opener to me to experience appreciation from passers-by when, about 1973, I built a (not very usual sort of) house. These people were farmers, carpenters, factory-workers, postmen … all sorts of people. As most of these lived, or wished to live, in cookie-cutter bungalows, I realized that many people choose such buildings because they can’t imagine any alternative.

Such blinkers on imagination shape and are shaped by the speculative building industry. Many modern rooms are lifeless: they depend on their contents to be habitable. Home magazines, therefore, concentrate on furnishings. In contrast, architectural fashion is all about unblinkered choice: the individualistically novel. Architectural magazines focus on buildings as dramatic (and usually uninhabited) objects, although they are rarely experienced that way by the people who use them. This focus on ‘image’ fosters building consciousness – nothing to do with creating places for people. Unfortunately, magazines often have a greater influence on architectural students than do their teachers, good or bad.

Consequently, in some buildings we feel we are trapped statistics, not valued members of society. Twentieth-century towers were mostly soul-deadeningly dull: force fulicons whose lifeless blank faces starve passers-by of living experience. Some relieved their dull form with mirror-facing aspects. To get a feeling of what’s going on inside is like trying to read someone’s thoughts through mirrored sunglasses. Few twenty-first-century towers are dull, they tend to make dramatic statements. But many vaunt their size: they are intended, after all, to advertise corporations’ power. Their smooth glass façades might look attractive on computer renderings, but on a massive scale, project hostility. Instead of being soul-nourishing, they create an environment of competitive aggression. Without soul-nourishment, the emotional part of the human being is left to seek fulfilment by indulgence in desires. An aggressive environment fosters aggressive attitudes. This is not a good combination.

What messages do our surroundings convey? Do they make us feel valued as individuals?

A century ago, Rudolf Steiner remarked that there is ‘as much lying and crime in the world as there is lack of art’. He went on to say that if people could be surrounded by living architectural forms and spaces, these tendencies would die out. When first I heard this, I thought: what bourgeois nonsense! Nonsense, because Renaissance Italy also produced the arsenic-skilled Borgias. And bourgeois, because the roots of crime are complex, with socio-economic disadvantage playing a large part. An essential prerequisite for crime (or any other exploitive abuse), however, is insensitivity to the effects of our actions on others. This makes it easier to see what he meant. Nor is crime the automatic result of circumstances. Whereas animals always react predictably to environmental stimuli, humans have the ability to transcend the situation. We often don’t: in any statistical sample, most people’s reactions are predictable. But we can. To rise above the level of automatic reaction requires, however, that we consciously direct our lives: rise above purely material considerations into the moral sphere. Whereas the physical world is rule-bound, moral decisions involve choice. Art transcends the limitations of matter. It imbues the physical with spirit. To be surrounded by spirit-impregnated matter has a very different effect on us than being surrounded by dead matter. One sensitizes us and motivates consciousness: the other deadens sensitivities and saps individuated will. Artists may have a reputation for disregarding moral codes but, in this respect, art is a moral influence.

It’s no wonder that places like this are notorious for their crime rates. The issue is less that of easy opportunity, but of faceless, depersonalized, uncaring, insensitive harshness.

Although built of lifeless matter, no building need be dead. Its constituent elements and relationships can sing – and the human heart resonates with them. But many forms, spaces, shape-relationships and colours are dead. Just like polluted air, electromagnetic fields and noise, these sap our life-energy. In good health, I have taken my son to hospital clinics but, after sitting for hours in rectangular grid-patterned, vinyl-smelling, fluorescent-lit, overheated corridors, I felt only half alive.

Most people, myself included – but possibly architects excepted – don’t normally look at our surroundings. We breathe them in. Views on postcards or through windscreens can be interesting, even dramatic. But they only touch our hearts when they become a multi-sensory ambience we can breathe. Mostly, however, we barely notice our surroundings. Consequently, we offer no conscious resistance to their influence. As these surroundings are mostly built environment, architecture can significantly affect us. It can influence us so powerfully that it’s sometimes used to manipulate people.

Manipulation isn’t limited to Nazi stadia with theatrical mood-distortion devices. Boutiques where music, textures, colours, split levels and diagonals create ‘vibrant world’ mood are meant to excite us; layouts focus on goods we are free to touch, to sharpen our desires. Satisfaction seems linked with purchasing. Even in uninviting shed-like interiors, retailers use lighting, signs and display colours and background music to subtly enhance the excitement of buying. Compare how many shelves of goods in your local supermarket are brightly lit with focused display lights in warm, active colours or sparkling white, and how many are softly lit and in the blue range. Is there anything wrong in this? Shopkeepers have always displayed their wares so we ‘taste’ them with our eyes. Is Soviet-style drabness more ‘moral’? The threshold between something appealing – something that brightens our day but leaves us free to choose – and something desire-manipulating – subliminally pressurizing us to make off-balance decisions – is subtle, but crucial.

Without consciously lookingat them, we breathe in our surroundings with all oursenses. In some places, the outer, communal, world only makes us feel exhausted and unwell. No wonder some people seek relief through artificial stimulants.

Design doesn’t have to – and to my mind, never should – involve manipulation, but it is about mood enhancement. Environmental design unavoidably affects the spirit, hence our outlook, values and actions. We only need to stay briefly in a different environment to recognize how much our taken-for-granted surroundings have formed our own and our society’s sensitivities, values and way of life.

Dwarfing all this, however, built environment is responsible for around half of all climate-damage. Despite nineteenth-century coal-burning, most of this is the product of the last few decades – and is the result of building design: mostly buildings’ need for heating and cooling, but also less visible cradle-to-grave impacts. This climate-damage threatens all life. Stopping this is a survival issue. Nonetheless, the solely technological route to survival is essentially short-term. Short-termism is risky. Dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki won the war against Japan – and warned the USSR not to oppose American power (its hidden agenda). But it led to four decades of life at a hair trigger from oblivion. Long-term survival depends on changed attitudes. For this, technology is an enabler and horizon-expander, but environment – spiritual, cultural, social and physical – is the prime agent of change.

In our urbanized world, environment means built environment. Some 90 per cent of us spend 90 per cent of our time in, near or influenced by it. We cannot avoid contact with it. Much fosters ill-health, alienation and crime. The pollution it causes is destroying our planet. These health, social and ecological impacts are now well known. We also know how to mitigate them. But can architecture go beyond mitigation? Can it have positive effects, outweighing its harmful legacy? Can it have a harmony-inducing, health-giving, even healing influence: biologically, socially, spiritually and ecologically? Can it help transform attitudes so that environmental and social responsibilities become the norm? Can it heal places, enrich the human spirit and nouri...