Physical Space as Psychic Space - Part 1


I saw this phrase hanging on the wall of a neighborhood bar. It was printed onto a black tapestry covered in multi-colored pom-poms. I looked at it and I thought to myself, 'huh, If only I could convince my thesis advisor…"Perhaps I can convince you. 

My gut instinct is to start re-arranging the words. If physical space is relevant to psychological space than psychological space could be relevant to physical space, right? And how is the psychological spatial? And what is space if it is both physical and psychological? I hope these questions become more clear in time, but for now since I was born with a mid-heaven in Virgo, I think I will tidy this mess up with a matrix:

1)Physical space is physiological.

Our physical space effects our physiology, and a healthy life is a boon to the psyche. When we live in our housing or spend time at work, school, parks, or as we inhabit physical space, these environments mediate our physiology. They are able to affect things like how much sunlight we get, or the microbiomes we interact with. These mediations or interventions can have knock on psychological effects like lowering stress levels and generally providing us with the physical context for psychological work.

2)Psychological space is physical.

The psyche grows up in the world “You did not come into this world you came from it.” We have learnt that ontogenesis is embodied and haptic. Ontogenesis is the development of an organism; how it gets from a single fertilized cell to an adult. And in the case of a human being cognitive development depends greatly on physical movement. How much a child runs or jumps, stretches or touches things affects the life of their mind, and the way our spaces are designed influences how we occupy and move through them. Spatial qualities are also anchor points for memory. Memories are encoded spatially. We experience this when we return to an old house and find the smell of it, the orientation and the scale of the rooms can all provoke an intense psychological experience. This link between memory and the spatial can relate to self-standing external places, but we also know they can be imagined or virtual spaces; as can be seen in the practice of building memory castles.

3)Physical space is psychic.

Physical space contains the psychological by its qualitative nature. We know sensual places are moody. We go to black-out restaurants to experience dinning anew. We go to bars to flirt because that type of inhibition is unbearable under fluorescent lighting Atmospheres condition mind and emotions and an atmosphere can be cultivated by the deliberate changes in the arrangement and character of our spaces. Studies show green calms down our physical bodies, but calmness is more than a physical thing it has human significance. It’s something you can experience but also identify with, project, relate to others on the basis of.

4)Psychological space is psychic.

If physical space is psychic, can psychic space be physical? I would argue that in the creative process of design we do just that. We take the preoccupations and desires of a psychic life and we enact identify, explore, express and produce those through built space. Such that the physical spaces that will influence the life of the mind and emotions via the routes mentioned above, is also the product of the the life of an emotional mind. This creates a sort of wasp-and-orchid dance that I think is often encapsulated as aesthetics. Where what we experience expands the purview of how we imagine and the products of what we imagine expands the possibilities of what we experience.

Physical space as psychic space; the tapestry won me over at my first glance, and I have been trying to unpack the many ways in which it could be true. Although the above is far from air-tight, my intuitions have already been hovering around these topics, insofar as they can act as lenses for evaluating built space. I was thankful to come across that bold little tapestry, who was able to grab hold of what I thought was just loose ends, and braid them into a guiding line.