By: Hanan Rawashdeh
Ever wonder why you can focus better
in a particular space more than another? This is what Jonas Salk claimed while
working in his basement lab. It wasn’t until after he went to a monastery with
colonnaded walks and a beautiful hillside view that he felt serene enough and
capable of solving the puzzle of polio. After feeling strongly about the
architecture of the monastery with its harmonious elements, textures and colors
in inspiring him and clearing the mental obstacles that he hired the architect
Louis Khan to design the Salk institute.
It is clear that there is a
connection of how much we interact with our surroundings and our mental
processing. This has been an argument that many people have claimed, especially
architects half a century later research such as the ones made at the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture in San Diego are
being done on this topic. An introduction to neuroscience is even added classes
to the architecture program. Experiments have been done to fill in the
gap between the mental processing and architecture’s impact upon it. Joan Meyers- Levy a professor of marketing at
the University of Minnesota reported that the height of a room’s ceiling
affects dramatically on how people think. In 2007 she assigned 100 random
students to a room of 8 or 10 feet ceiling giving them a task of categorization
of a subject , the same task was given to another group whose setting were in a
much lower ceiling height. The results showed that those who were in a room with
a higher ceiling had more generic categorizations where as those who were in a
low ceilinged room were more specific and focused on details in their
categorization. With her past study indicating
that elevated ceilings make people less restrained physically this allows them
to think freely, which may lead to make more abstract connections as they will
see the “big picture” of things. Almost like literally saying “thinking out of
the box”. This doesn’t mean that all spaces acquire high ceilings. It depends
on the task. For instance a more detail demanding and complicated task at hand
would require a low ceiling to ensure a more focused environment. Furthermore
space can be manipulated to look spacious and less constrained by mere
manipulation either in the use of light colors or mirrors, something one
notices in the grocery section of small stores.
Spaces that increase creativity also
are linked to nature. Having a space visually connected or within a natural
setting such as a garden has been proven to motivate focus and attention. This
has been proven through a study done on children who moved house. The children
with greener views from their bedroom windows scored higher on the standard
test of attention. This is a notion that having green space in educational
spaces can help those with ADD.
In conclusion it is
vital to understand the influence of architecture on the mind in order for
architecture to respond to people’s needs.
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