What makes you feel homely at your own place?
Design of a home can’t be a prototype as every human being is unique. A house is not always just a building that we usually perceive. Neither is it just an engineering combination of metal, cement, bricks or wood. Sometimes, we forget, it would serve no purpose without its people. A house is important up to that limit which is prescribed by its end users. Hence, a ‘Home’ is the building plus the people plus the designated purposes for which it is built. Why do we feel that we belong in some places and not in others? Place and identity of individual are inextricably bound to one another. A ‘Space’ and a ‘Place’ have contextual differences. A ‘space’ is usually defined by three physical dimensions (length, width and height). Place is metaphysical; it goes beyond the built environment obtained adding a social and cultural dimension to the particular space. A place is a fourth dimension where the physical space takes on personal meaning. For example, your newly purchased prototype apartment is just a ‘Space’ which is yet to become ‘Your Place’ with internal rearrangements as per the specific requirements of your family. Recently, people who build the spaces we live in have also come to realize that the physical characteristics of space do indeed shape our thoughts, emotions, and even our actions.
As the human culture is a representation of unified behavioural pattern, the quality of place indeed controls the quality of culture of a specific community. There is no distinct identification between so called “high cultures” or “low cultures” but, expressionist intelligences of human beings are developed in a particular atmosphere. The atmosphere controls the direction of the expression of inherent human behaviour. When we design the space or a place for a group of people or a particular community we inherently shape the cultural pattern by the quality of the place we are making.
How does the built environment influence cultural attitude? It is the physical quality and accurate composition of multi-directional purposes of a particular space which sends signals about embedded cultural values to the end users. What difference of cultural attitude of an individual would be brought out in the different settings of a restaurant or a temple? What does your office environment inspire in you?
A smart design is a human friendly optimized composition of different purposes of the human beings who are going to use the place. When the composition of diverse functional purposes match with the needs of the users, the space converts into a ‘place of identify’ and the structure becomes your ‘home’. A good or bad built environment promotes good or bad memories, which inspire a good or bad mood, which inclines us toward good or bad behaviour. Places are important in a symbolic sense. A socially responsible and quality designed place always gives value to the multifaceted functions of its end users and helps people to recognize their unique cultural and intellectual identity.
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