Spaces shape our lives. Design shapes our future.
How design shapes the human soul and the hidden influence of space. A philosophical analysis and an urgent call.
The character of our lives will tend towards the character of our spaces.
How so? Let us begin with the fact that everything is constrained by its physical capacities and characteristics. Take, for example, the difference of a conversation at a table given a rectangular and a circular one—the distance between people, the volume of their voices, the angle of their heads as they look at one another will, naturally, all influence the group dynamics– a circular table distributes attention more evenly, while a rectangular one concentrates it heavily at the ends. A low-ceilinged garage will never allow a tall vehicle to park inside– nor the things it contains. A house without windows will actively hinder emotional connection with the world beyond its walls. One could cite a million more examples and still not come close to exhaust all the possibilities any more than removing a single drop of water empties the ocean. There are as many variations in what can happen within a space as there are possible spaces. No two different spaces can house the same events. The things that occur and the characteristics of a space are inseparable. The features of the space determine all that happens in it.
But of course, spaces are not the only things being shaped. By adapting our lives to the constraints of the spaces we inhabit, we, too, become conditioned by their possibilities. Nothing can happen outside of a space. And all spaces are conditioned by their possibilities. Therefore, everything that occurs in our life is shaped by the possibilities of its space. I am nothing more than all the places I have been. You are too. Spaces are not merely the combined elements that form a room, a library, or a garden. Spaces are also everything that can and does happen within them, for they are inseparable at its core.
The narrow corridor of a building where two people pass and are forced to greet each other for the first time in ages. The house whose entrance requires walking through a garden that slows the pace of whoever passes, making them lose their worries in the petals of an hortensia. Spaces are not a neutral container— they are alive, they influence the lives of those who inhabit them, they leave their mark, deeply shaping the character of those who have known their corners for years.
This implies something very important: architecture is not merely an architecture of physical materials—stone, wood, steel—but, like a mirror of water, it reflects itself in thought and becomes, too, an architecture of ideas. We constantly analyze and absorb influences from our surroundings, so anything we perceive will shape our minds: the painting at the back of the room, behind a vase of withered flowers, alters how I think at present of a past love. Simply by existing simultaneously in perception and in space, the places we perceive influence what happens in the human mind—the exterior shapes the interior. Thus, if a house is designed in a way that projects peace, that quality will be reflected in our thoughts. Places with certain qualities invite those qualities into us. In stone, we can see any state of mind projected.
So now you know this: our space is constantly provoking thoughts and states of mind, which spring from the perception of its elements and their relationship to the whole. Spaces, beyond defining physical possibilities, also define possibilities in the mind. Here lies the key. It is said that buildings show us the society that constructed them in the past, but this does not capture the full truth: the buildings we construct also determine, into the future, the character of the society that inhabits them. It is not a written history, but an ongoing dialogue.
Seeing this, I now ask: can we expect nobility of spirit from someone whose relationship with the world has only known squalor? As long as a form of aesthetics dwells in our minds, we will feel the influence of its character. Compare and ask yourselves: how much ease for self-realisation and personal growth will these two people have?
First, the life of a person living in Makoko, Lagos, in a rickety wooden shack, surrounded by toxic fog and entangled in a jungle of high-voltage cables. The lagoon beneath them is both public bath and public dump, and malaria appears as naturally as a bee in a garden—waking with damp skin, forcibly moving by canoe, trying to catch the few fish that can survive in the polluted, waste-filled waters, then returning to the creaking, swaying planks of the shack, the stench of foul water, the mosquitoes over the bed and the suffocating heat.
Second, the life of a person living in a room in Venice’s Palazzo Barbaro, where beyond their window stretches the Grand Canal, and a concert of façades—of soft, watery pinks—reaches all the way to the Baroque church of Santa Maria della Salute, against the horizon of the sea—waking to light filtered through Gothic windows that reveal frescoes at the far end of the room, the hours of reading in the study with Tiepolo’s paintings near the great mahogany desk, the silence of Venice broken only by the sound of water lapping at the house’s pilings and the shouts of gondoliers. Stepping out in the evening to stroll through Piazza San Marco and the Rialto markets, sipping an espresso on a café terrace watching Venetian life pass by, the glow of lanterns shimmering on the canals, while a distant serenade drifts through the air.
The difference needs no emphasis.
We therefore have an urgent need: to design our spaces as we wish our society—and our own lives—to be. Their aesthetics are not merely a reflection of our spirit; our spirit is also a reflection of their aesthetics. There are as many forms of thought as there are ways to represent them materially. This has implications that may, alternately, terrify or exhilarate us. Which of the two it will be depends on us.