Your face, Your space
“What you say is not as important as the bookcase behind you,” ~@BCredibility headline.
Are you embarrassed to show your home space to your work colleagues? Have you artfully angled your computer and table position so your most impressive background appears in video calls alongside your face? Have you obsessively tidied that space and curated it with profound objects to maximise your credibility?
“I think the [video chat] background rules are pretty close to the good Instagram photo rules: shallow depth of field, not more than three colors, keep it simple,” says Curbed’s architecture critic, Alexandra Lange.
The banter over famous people’s bookcases has been fun to watch. The twitter account @BCredibility provides commentary of what their surroundings reveal about the person. Although the comments are exaggerated for comedy, they reveal interesting observations on how our personalities shape the environments around us.
Of course, if you wish to avoid this scrutiny altogether you may have downloaded a virtual background. Masked out the home chaos with a safe plain colour background or even downloaded a digital version of your dream interior….probably probing your fellow video callers to wonder - what are they trying to hide?
West elm backgrounds you can download for your zoom call.
Now that video calls form our new work reality, the external world has a portal into our private space. It's gleaming a light on what your home space says about you.
Previously we might have carefully picked our outfits everyday to support and justify the kind of person we wanted to be at work. The clothes were our armour - we used them to march to the work arena and strengthen our persona as we interacted with others. Now we must think about how we use our home space in this way too.
But the video calls are one small part. When we are not on video calls we are all confined to home. No virtual zoom background is going to shield you from things not being quite right. So for all of us who are lucky enough to have a home that is warm, dry and comfortable; how can we make our space ‘just right?’
‘The materials around us will speak to us of the highest hopes we have for ourselves.’ ~ Alain de Botton
Home space : an extension of the mind.
Home is the physical representation of the brain and stimulant for the optimisation of the body. If your space is formatted wrong, it may not be giving you joy or making you operate at your best. It may help to make you feel grumpy, whilst restricting your body’s efficient functioning.
Home space : environment & body.
Our proximity to natural light can directly influence our mood + productivity. A space flood with natural light might make you more alert and improve your cognitive performance, whereas a dark space may do the opposite. The temperature of your house can impact your physiology – generally if we are too cold our muscles tense, too warm and we feel dozy. However this has been proven to vary depending on your gender - females are proven to perform better in warmer environments and males in cooler ones.
Noisy environments can trigger our ‘fight or flight’ mechanisms and therefore can impact stress levels. Hearing functions continue to operate even when we sleep, meaning our bedroom’s exposure to noise can have a fundamental impact on our mental health.
Our ability to look out a window and observe the world outside (while remaining out of sight), can make us feel safe, inspired and informed. This harks back to our hunter-gatherer origins where this advantageous position would have enabled us to see and escape danger (an argument put forward by German ethologist Niko Tinbergen in the 1970s). With views of nature we are closer to our ancient habitats, which is proven to make us feel less stressed. The earliest study proving this came with Roger Ulrich’s experiment (1972 - 1981), looking at recovery rates in hospital patients - those who could see nature from their window recovered faster than those who could only see concrete and walls. But later experiments have extended this theory- showing that simple views of nature of any form can produce lowered levels of arousal, healthier patterns of cardiac activity, more relaxed patterns of brain activity and psychological positivity. Plus people who live in greener settings talk to one another more, and petty crime is therefore less likely (as proven by Francine Kuo & William Sullivan in their 2001 in inner city environments)
Home space : emotions & memories.
Aspects of our homes jog our memories and remind us of a host of positive and negative emotions. These can be super subtle and also exist in your subconscious. The rounded curve of an armchair might remind you of softness and feeling safe, the creak of your front door might make you irritated, the smell of a hand soap may conjure a memory of a past holiday (see research on smell + memory), and the colour of a wall might make you feel energised and motivated (colour science theory). Most of these feelings originate from our childhood experiences at home. Positive and negative memories play a large part in shaping our adult opinions of our surroundings. The Berkley professor Clare Cooper Marcus pointed this out in her 1995 book ‘House as Mirror of Self.’ Many people she interviewed found their homes uncomfortable for reasons that had nothing to do with ordinary issues about design or privacy. Marcus writes that ‘we unconsciously reproduce aspects of our childhood homes as adults, our surroundings somehow tethered to this core’, adding that someone ‘may rent a house that is completely inappropriate for his needs, without being aware his childhood home is still reverberating in his unconscious’.
Interior with restful paintings, Roy Lichtenstein, Date: 1991
Home representing our aspired self.
Aspects of home architecture might talk to us of traits that we admire – a front door might feel ‘distinguished’, the window box ‘charming’ and the outer brick walls might have a rustic charm that nostalgically remind us of the olden days. Equally the internal features and our belongings talk of the qualities we like to embody ourselves. And perhaps they do ‘clash’ a bit. Maybe you love that medieval love-spoon and the modernist bookshelf… together?!
The ability to change our home.
We like to have the control to change our homes – we like to adapt our environment as our viewpoints and styles are moulded and tweaked. This was argued by U.S architect Oscar Newman in his book ‘Defensible Space’, which emphasised the importance of the feeling of ownership and control over communal areas in high density living spaces like St. Louis's notorious Pruitt- Igoe social housing complex. When we have the power to update our environments we can shape it to our own individual psychology. In this way we form an attachment and have an interest in maintaining our relationship with that place.
Inspiration overload.
So whilst our new found intimacy with our homes seeps in, we turn to inspiration online – our thumbs scroll through miles and miles of instagram, our irises scan the pages of pinterest prompting us to question what it is that we like best. We constantly try to find our ‘favourite’ and what defines us. We are flashed with bright colours, alluring shapes, snazzy headlines and quirky content. Like a rabbit-in-the-headlights we often feel blinded with all these IDEAS. In psychology this phenomenon is called ‘overchoice’ -where making a decision becomes overwhelming due to the many potential outcomes and risks that may result from making the wrong choice. When faced with many exciting images, each is another option - another potential version of the selves we could have and another type of life we could live.
At the end of the day we want our home to represent our most authentic selves because ‘in this setting, we can come close to a state of mind marked by integrity and vitality.’ - Alain de Botton
But how do you know what your ‘authentic self’ is?
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A good space is like a good diet.
We believe that architects play a similar role to dietitians when specifying a spatial environment. Just like getting your five-a-day of fruit and veg, your body and mind need the correct environments to perform optimally in space. Light, temperature, sound, smells, textures, memories, agency amongst others all play their part.
To get there we need the headspace to think and reflect. We need to be asked the right questions. And the time to consider and answer them. We need the peace to allow the right memories to bubble to the surface and for us to mentally catalogue the times we truly felt content and why. Through conversation, through optioneering, through testing - it becomes pretty clear what is just a fad and what is deeply important to you.
The Space A way
At Space A we work with you personally to understand the facts, the quirks and the little things that make you, you. We realise you may not care two hoots about shadow gaps (architect’s joke) or raw concrete walls. Instead you may need a beautiful wall to pin up your family pictures or the right internal lighting tone to make you feel cozy. You may want a super impressive entertaining space or enjoy a kitchen splashback that is easy to clean.
Just like your face, your space has many ways to express itself. These expressions contribute to a vibrant internal environment that will support you through a rainbow of moods and environments.
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To be continued….
Next month we will be considering this further with the help of our new friend - Christian Eldershaw. Founder of the ‘Mindful Estate Agent,’ Christian works closely with people to find and sell homes that deeply connect to their inner self. We are fascinated by his discipline and we will be interviewing him and publishing the results to reveal more.