Beautiful Spaces : Brain Deep

‘True beauty results from that repose which the mind feels when the eye, the intellect, and the affections, are satisfied from the absence of any want.’ ~ Owen Jones

David Hockney, A Bigger Interior with Blue Terrace and Garden, 2017. Courtesy of the artist. © David Hockney, Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt

There are countless philosophers, artists and great thinkers who have tried to define what beauty is. Commonly, the concept is linked to aesthetics. And so it’s often dismissed as being something that we don’t need, something that is just for special moments or something that’s for people who have a lot of money. Beauty as an ‘absence of any want’ infers that we satiate something first in order to expose it. And so what does that mean when it comes to your home or your space?

Our surroundings are more important than ever at the moment. And while we sit at home our eyes might consciously, or subconsciously, be scanning around us – acquiring what Jones refers to as ‘wants.’ Desires for beauty. 

So as we self-isolate, let's look at how space can bring value to our lives. And as a knock on effect, leave us more time for what matters.

At Space A, we believe that thoughtful design has the power to heal. And we believe that your rendition of beauty lies at the core of this. Home life is constantly changing and often cluttered, noisy and monotonous. This is especially poignant now. Family members or flatmates are living in close quarters and they’re sharing bathrooms, allocating desk area, cooking and cleaning more frequently in the same space. If our physical space is inadequate, it increases our stress levels, life becomes more bleak and mental health can suffer.

Jonathan Leaman - A Jan Steen Kitchen 1995–6 - Tate

So what do we mean by ‘adequate’ when applied to home space? What quality of space do we need to thrive and how do we change our mindsets to see that beauty matters – that it’s not superfluous or overindulgent? 

We all know how to recognise something beautiful – it’s an innermost gut feeling. Jones references satisfaction from the eye, the intellect and the affections – that we must see, think and feel beauty. So with this in mind, beauty is something that perhaps originates and evolves deep inside our brains. It's something we instinctively know and feel. And if our proximity to beautiful things leads to positive mental health, it makes senses that we are surrounded by it everyday.

The application of beauty is not simple and will not be answered overnight. To begin to start answering it, we’ve collaborated with Cleo Valentine, a Neuro- Designer who has recently completed her masters at Oxford University in Neuroaesthetics, to create a broad list of what people ‘need’ from space. 

Drawing parallels to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they range from the more ‘objective’ to the ‘subjective,’ in the attempt to meet both our physiological needs and psychological ones. 

What people need from space :

1. Shelter & Security

We need somewhere to hide from the weather; somewhere warm in winter and cool in summer and protected from external dangers such as wild animals and those wanting to cause us harm.

Architecture. Primitive Huts, or the Origin of Architecture.

Upper Right: Plate I. Lower Center: London, Published as the Act directs, June 17th, 1797, by J. Wilkes. Lower Right: J. Chapman Sculp.

2. Basic Comfort & Amenity

We need our space to be clean. We need access to clean water and to have clean air to breath. To be close to the food to eat. We need somewhere adequate to sleep. We need water and soap to wash with. Medicine to cure and soothe our ailments. We need light to see by - either artificial, or even better, natural light.

HMP Addiewell, Lothian, Scotland - a prison cell provides inhabitants with everything their body needs. (from - https://www.boredpanda.com/world-prison-cells-prisoners/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic )

3. Good Organisation & Access

We need our spaces to be arranged in a way that allows us to undertake different functions. We need easy access, we need enough space to move around, to interact with others.

The London Housing Design Guide was published in 2016 (now redacted) to advise on ‘minimum’ space standards for rooms in homes of different occupancy levels. https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/interim_london_housing_design_guide.pdf

4. Heightened Comfort & Amenity

We need our space to be in tune with our environment - its humidity, ventilation, sunlight and viewpoints. We need smells to be dissipated, we need artificial lights to subsidise the lack of natural light and the ability to control them in increasingly sophisticated ways. We need heating systems that adjust to our activities and the outside weather. We need specific layouts and combinations of spaces and objects, the right ceiling heights to aid ventilation and natural light penetration. We need the right level of acoustics to undertake our home activities, walls must muffle sound between spaces. Today we also increasingly need access to technology - wifi, charging points, light levels.

A Huf Haus interior - is flooded with natural light, is spacious, generous in size and connects to a verdant garden.

5. Subconscious Satisfaction

We need spaces that work with our inbuilt DNA. As we negotiate our environments our subconscious brain reactions must be in harmony. Some physical aspects are likely to trigger deep lying fight or flight mechanisms - such as too many right-angles or forms without ‘natural’ complexity or vibes. 

It takes between 4000 – 18 000 generations for a lasting evolutionary trait to be fully embedded across 20 varied populations in species that reproduce annually (Morjan and Rieseburg, 2004) As a result, much of how we survey + process our environment is dictated by past hunter gatherer environments + our ability to recognise and draw comfort from the natural environment that we evolved into. With recent advancements in fMRI scanning technology, reading brain activity in space is increasingly possible.

6. Personal Taste Mecca

We need to find personal connection to our space through objects, colours, texture and a sense of style. These associations, however small, can have a profound impact on how we perceive our space. Our tastes and sense of style continue to be moulded by childhood memories, our relationships, our social context and our cultural environment. And these things play a huge part in our judgement of beauty in space.

“ We wanted a cottagey stately home kind of feel,” 1991. Copyright © Martin Parr/Magnum, courtesy Rocket Gallery - ‘Signs of the Times.’ - The documentary photographer undertook a particularly fascinating TV series on taste + style in the home in 1992. The series is currently available on BBC Iplayer - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03rfd6s

Space A believes that beautiful space is the result of the ‘goldilocks’ combination of the listed things. And if you believe a space to be beautiful - it will make you happy to be in it. Deeply happy.

In unpicking why and how this can be achieved and where common ground exists between groups of people, there is a lot of work to do. But work, that we believe, can make a great difference to many people.

Ultimately, Space A believes beautiful space should not just be an optional extra, but a fundamental human right. 

We are at the beginning of our journey to acutely understand how to utilise these elements in spatial design. In the coming months we will be pursuing this topic further through research and development with Cleo as well as through our project work.

Space A designs spaces that free people from optimised living. We believe that it is the little things that bring joy to your space and by understanding the science of our emotions in space we can design and deliver homes that are fundamentally yours.