Daniela Palacios

00200868

The architecture of emotion

Often many people think that architecture is all about just building houses, but is

much more beyond that. Architecture determines a person’s lifestyle , their mood changes

, how close they feel about their family or the ones surrounding them . Indeed architecture

constructs, but not houses , it builds homes , a life . As it’s known “Architecture has a

profound influence on every aspect of our everyday lives. Our lifestyle, the patterns of

our day, our relationships with the people around us, our success and satisfaction in our

jobs are all shaped significantly by the physical environment” ( Lyon , 2011 , online ) . It

seems a lot of responsability to rely on just one area, so that’s why architecture is divided

into 3 main topics that doesn’t just influence, but they shape people’s life’s , these topics

which are: space , color , and light are needs to be considered when building a house .

In one hand , space determines how much time a person will want to be in that place

, and also whethever their routine will be seen as annoying , or something they expect up

to . For example , in a working environment , if a secretary has a small cubicle , where

only her desk and a small chair fits , and where there’s not room left to put her personal

stuff , it’s scientifically proved that this person will likealy suffer depression or will be

unhappy about their lives. This is because by being in small places , where our actions

can’t go very far , our brains creates limitations in what we think we deserve . Also, if

people live in place where all of the main areas just like the kitchen , the bedroom the
living room are in just one place , they will likealy avoid being at home , that’s because

every human has the need of change of an environment when they enter a new room ,

without communication areas , as they are called , the feeling of being locked away

increases , plus , it has been proved that people that live under conditions like this , get

sick more often , and they are the ones with the higher percentage of contracting

claustrophobia .

In the other hand color is and extremely important factor to take into account when

building and designing a place , it influences in our health , our productivity , and also the

time a person will want to be in an specific place . There’s a thing called the physiology

of color, which is a palette that determines which range of colors are proper of rest ,

working , social , private and public spaces . If too bright colors such as yellow or red

are used in private areas , such as bedrooms , it’s possible that the person who spends

time there will experience health problems , such as sleep deprivation , constant tiredness

, or the’ll feel dizzy often. That because our brain is designed to rest in certain spaces ,

and by using bright colors , it feels obligated to maintain active , even causing that the

person will avoid at any cost entering to this areas. The palette colors also affect our

productivity , there’s a very well known case of the owner of a factory who wanted to

increase the productivity of his employees , the walls of his factory where a dark gray ,

so he constantly found people sleeping in their rounds and the production percentages

where very low , so he decided to paint all of the walls in the factory in a very bright

yellow, the very next day when this was done , his employees started to produce their

products in a rate so high he had never seen before , but along with this , an 80% of the

staff started to get sick , they started experiencing hallucinations , and would often threw

up in the middle of their work , at the end of the week , even though their production was
incredible high , there were a really small number of workers still attending , the owner

of the factory discovered that using yellow everywhere in the factory , caused motion

sickness and hyperactivity , so , he instead , decided to paint all the walls white , and put

small yellow strips in all of the machinery , the result was incredible , not only the staff

was more dinamic an produced much more than the beginning , but also , the health

problems started disappearing.

Last but not least, light is considered to be the most important factor in architecture,

light and darkness are able to create their own spaces , it has the ability of make a person

feel peace in a room , and feel immediately happy when changing to another room . Light

, in between in all of the factors , is the one that will influence the most in the emotion of

people . Is known that the level of brightness there’s in a person’s room , can tell you a

lot about their personality , very lighted rooms say that a person is very social and likes

to be in contact with other people , where , in contrary , rooms with a more diffused light

will reflect the personality of an introvert person .

As a conclusion , it’s important to determine that architecture is much more than just

building a house. This career holds the responsability of a family or a persons‘ lifestyle ,

when building a place , it’s important to consider not only how it looks like , but how it

makes other people feel , it depends entirely on space , color and light to make people

feel good with themselves or to take every inch of happiness out of there , at the end , a

person doesn’t make a building, a building makes a person.

Bibliography

Lyon , C. (2011) Speck: architecture influences lyfestyle. Austin Business Journal .

Available at: https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/blog/retail/2011/10/dde.html