Architectural Psychology Explained
Image: Royal Ontario Museum | wvs | Flickr
Architectural psychology can be described as a branch of environmental or ecological psychology. This deals with the psychological processes of the interaction between man and his environment, as for example spatial perception, spatial thinking, orientation behaviour, or spatial experience, territorial behaviour, living requirements and satisfaction, local identity. (1)
When an occupant experiences a building, they immediately become involved in an array of overlapping processes that all contribute to their experience — architectural psychology focuses on such connections and can be applied to all building types.
A GOOD PLACE TO START
After my last post entitled Environmental Psychology: What Every Architect Should Ask Themselves, I received various questions from readers wanting to learn more. So, I began to look in the “not-so-usual” places. And then I came across this site at http://leoncolor.com, belonging to a firm specializing in color and light, trend monitoring, product development and architectural design.
Within this site, you will find excellent brief explanations of design psychology and architectural psychology complete with lectures, seminars, research and teaching sections. (I do believe that if you explore the site you will find collections of actual papers — like this one on color and vision)
THE BIG PICTURE
Architectural psychology is an important field where findings reveal how we can design buildings better for occupants. By understanding more about how occupants experience built form, you will take on a more occupant-centered approach. It is this type of approach that will lead you to more truly innovative architectural designs.
(1) Oberascher, Leonhard. http://leoncolor.com
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I think you’ve touched on a very interesting subject here. I’ve done my master thesis on architecture and emotion – the experience of the user, and I’m still looking for more sources and ideas on this subject. New ideas to broaden my horizon. Your blog has given me a few new things to consider. Thanks!
I’m developing a new experimental design process (still work in progress) with my research partner for designing architectural atmospheres attuned to the concerns of the user. If you’re interested, I could tell you a little bit about it. Maybe we could exchange ideas on this subject… just let me know.
Looking forward to reading more on your blog
Yes, finding the links between architectural design and user experience by way of emotion is a vast, deep and important study — I’m very glad that my site is of help to you.
Also, your current research project sounds very interesting and I would love to hear more about it. Perhaps you can send me a description of what you’re up to. Please feel free to email me at any time: mll(AT)sensingarchitecture.com.
ummm…can you give other examples of a psychological architecture??
we have an assignment right now and i dont know what to research on.
i mean buildings..
Hi Jeremy,
Well, I’d say that all architecture has a psychological effect upon those occupants that experience them. The question then becomes, what kind of effect do they have? If you are designing a building project I might start by asking yourself more about the qualities and consequential effects your architecture needs to convey to its occupants according to institution type (i.e. hospital, school, museum, office building, etc).
Additionally, you could look at a building you find “successful” (or “unsuccessful”) and ask yourself why it elicits a certain human response. For example, is it the way the architect used color or spatial placement of features from one another? The acoustical design? Or even the lighting?
For example, a hospital is a place where architectural psychology can be used effectively. If you were designing this building type you could ask questions like: What effects should this hospital have upon its patients? How can these effects influence (hurt or help) their healing and recovery? etc. For example, it has been found that patients in rooms with views of a tree out of their window actually recover faster than patients in rooms with no views of nature.