Collective Home

:::  these are personal notes, used to develop my research project

[ISRAEL, Toby. “Some Place Like Home: Using Design Psychology to Create Ideal Places”. England: Wiley-Academy, 2003]

 

Environmental autobiography / families environmental history

-> treasure chest of memories and impressions of places we have lived (cities, homes, villages..)

-> presenting qualities that you chose to replicate or reject

In that sense, creation of a home space is NEVER on a blank slate. we create based on our past experience. In that sense, the concept of home is placed during the early years of childhood… and keeps changing...

Childhood

1st. environment – the womb: calm, nurturing, safe and protected.

Piaget: infant’s early world, a self-centered sensorial experience.

-> this immediate and open experience of perception of (new/out of womb) world is compared to the experience of an adult living in a foreign country. (or city, village…) this comparison is extremely connected to my own perception about the behavior of young persons living together as a family in the megalopolis. the openness to the senses, the connection between each other and, consequently, the development of a mature personality.

4 forms of childhood place attachment:

• Affection – family, love, security

• Transcendence – living presence in yourself, all 5 senses, exuberance

• Ambivalence – Tenderness and vulnerability

• Idealization – Idealizes values inhabit the space (alternative)

———

Erik Erikson “Eight Stages of Man”

including…

basic trust (the environment around is predictable and stable)

initiative (explore, plan, construct, begin positively to control environment…)

self identity ( control of how you appear to others)

intimacy (being able to love someone else)

integrity (mature human)

———

some phrases:

“[Edith Cobb]… believes that creative thinkers return to those magical, middle years of childhood ‘to renew the power of and impulse (…) into a  living sense of a dynamic relationship with the outer world’.”(p.9)

[Schachtel] believes thar is “the security of mothers love that provides the background for such openness in the child” (p.9)

the author, about her search for a house to live:

“[I was] looking for a realization that my mother and father could no longer provide me with shelter”

———

Exercise: designing the childhood mental map

noticing paths (access), edges (boundaries), landmarks (objects), nodes (activity transitions) and districts (large areas).