A couple of years ago, I traveled to this small mountain town called Yangshuo, located
in the Guangxi province of Southern China. Travelling to this part of China felt like
stepping into some forgotten past, where the ancient way of life is still the norm.
It was surreally beautiful to say the least. Yangshuo changed my life for the better.
How so? Well, it made me aware of the impact of the spaces I am in.
Throughout my life, I seldom questioned the architecture, environment and the space around
me and how they made me feel. We live somewhere that looks like this, we study somewhere that
looks like this, we work somewhere that looks like this and we travel everyday locked up
in this.
In Yangshuo I stayed in a quaint little family run hotel near the banks of Li River. The
place was quintessentially Chinese. Whether I was in my sunny room with a balcony facing
the river, or in the restaurant that was filled with books, tree barks and plants, I was always
very present and calm. In fact almost all the stores and buildings shared this zen like
essence, that made me feel completely relaxed and aware.
That’s when I realized how much the space we are in influences
the way we feel and the way we act. Now contrast this
with steel like concrete structures and tall condos of any major city, where people are
expected to study, work and live in contentment.
I am always amazed at our bee like existence when I walk in the busy streets of Hong Kong.
Incredibly lean and tall buildings cover the sky, and sharp bent street corners always
takes me my surprise. One thing I register subconsciously but never register is the fact
that I could the whole day without seeing the horizon in these cities. Contrast that
with the unobstructed view of the horizon from a sea shore. Seeing the horizon is akin
to seeing the possibilities, gaining a faraway perspective.
When you are in a mountain top, you feel that vastness, that faraway perspective, and when we contrast
that with constant obstructions in a crowded city, we start to get an idea of how our subconscious
react to our environment.
Countless psychological research suggests that even colors play a huge part in triggering
certain emotions. The blue of the ocean and sky signifies creativity, solution, and trustworthiness,
while red is often associated with solid focus and aggression. Green often signifies peace,
stability, abundance of nature and prosperity. On a bitter cold day, inside the dark subway,
a swath of people, mostly wearing dark toned jackets, looking all miserable. This is often
the scene when I lived in Toronto, one of the coldest cities in the world. In the winter
the city is riddled with monotone darkness without any color, add to that similar looking
glass condos devoid of any design. Our brains will definitely have a reaction to this. A
kind of unmotivated lethargy was mine.
Collin Ellard, a researcher in the University of Waterloo, Canada studies the psychological
impact of the city design. One of Ellard’s most consistent findings is that people
are strongly affected by building façades. If the exterior of the building is complex
and interesting, it affects people in a positive way; and negatively if it is simple, featureless
and monotonous. For example, when he walked a group of subjects past the long, smoked-glass
frontage of a Whole Foods store in Lower Manhattan, their arousal and mood states took a dip towards
negative states, according to the wristband readings and on-the-spot emotion surveys.
They also quickened their pace as if to hurry out of the dead zone. They picked up considerably
when they reached a stretch of restaurants and stores, where they reported feeling a
lot more lively and engaged.
Writer and urban specialist Charles Montgomery, in his book Happy City warns, “As suburban
retailers begin to colonize central cities, block after block of bric-a-brac
and mom-and-pop-scale
buildings and shops are being replaced by blank, cold spaces that effectively bleach
street edges of conviviality.” He points to this as an emerging disaster in street psychology.
A number of studies have shown that growing up in a big city doubles the chances of someone
developing schizophrenia and increases the risk of other mental disorders. The reason
behind this is a poignant lack of social bonding. Countless researches have shown that urban
living can change the brain biology in some people.
Sociologist William Whyte, once advised urban planners to arrange objects and artifacts
in public spaces in ways that nudged people physically closer together so that they would
likely talk to each other, a process he called “triangulation.”
A striking character of any big city is its tendency to induce a constant sense of being
lost or disoriented
Conscious cities is a concept which proposes that we replace the
focus on efficiency in the built environment with a focus on health and well being. One
of the major themes of Conscious Cities is to bridge neuroscience, architecture and technology.
It works on the basis that your environment is nothing but an extension of your nervous
system, a sort of an extended mind.
One of the most popular phrases that I’ve been hearing recently as a response to this
ongoing pandemic is “We are all in this together”. From celebrities to social activists
have been stressing that we are all in this pandemic together, and how it is somehow the
great equalizer. But the more I think about this, the more I realize that it doesn’t
make any sense. If anything the opposite rings true.
If you were already in a good place economically prior to this pandemic, you definitely have
a completely different experience as opposed to some one who are economically disadvantaged.
For example, two of my acquaintances, who are in different places economically have
different perspectives and reactions to this pandemic. One has a house with a garden and
car which gives them access to different places including lone hike trails, while the other
lives in a single room basement, only relying on public transportation. Never before in
recent history, an event made it brutally clear that no, we are not all equal.
But understanding human beings’ response to buildings, architecture, design and city
planning, and focusing on health and wellness, instead of monetary effectiveness, might be
the first step towards our collective psychological stability. It could even start from your own house
After my trip to Yangshuo, the first thing I did is to decorate my empty bare bones of
an apartment. Having plants inside the house, a simple zen garden with collected pebbles,
some art work here and there did wonders to my mental state.
So next time, when you feel anxious or stressed, take a look at your immediate environment,
it might reveal a lot more than you give it credit for. A simple act of opening the window
to let the sunshine in, can make a world of difference
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