Research Statement
The current driver for my research is how “The building has become an intrinsic part of the human experience and plays a crucial role in our physical and mental - wellbeing and health” (Gibson). It is important to me that we develop strong emotional connections with our built environments as “it is this built environment upon which our lives and memories are built” (Gibson). We should feel as though our homes are enriching our lives with some sort of deeper connection, a space where we can encourage emotion and allow ourselves to re align mentally. Doing this becomes particularly important when you realise how much of our lives revolve around the built environment, “today nearly 90% of our lives are spent indoors, with 54% living in urban environments” (Gibson).
I believe if we can harness our sensory experiences then we can spark connections within our homes. We can develop a deeper connection with these memories that we have in the built environment, our memories allow us to understand our past and also gives us an insight into our futures which can be interesting to consider when designing our homes moving forward. As the building users we have a right to control the design processes that are put in place, how certain materials for example will affect our sensory experience needs to be considered as well as how our emotional connections will be affected with not only the people but the building itself.
“Human experiences are stored in episodic memory and are the basis for developing semantic narrative structures and many of the narratives we continually compose” (Anderson), delving deeper into these memories and “cognitive narratives” (Anderson) will give me an interesting insight into the relationship with our built environments. We can start to build that connection we need to live in a happy, healthy home space. Although “human memory is not a literal reproduction of the past, but instead relies on constructive processes that are sometimes prone to error and distortion” (Schacter) I believe that this in a way only makes it more interesting and powerful as there must be a reason for why our memory is not always accurate. Our memories are “not a simple rote or reproductive system” (Schacter) they are complex and sometimes may be distorted by our new world views, beliefs etc.
I am particularly interested in the relationship of our memories not just in the literal sense of our minds but our whole body, the memories of our whole bodies within space. All of our senses make up our memories and how they are preserved within a physical location. My site is currently ‘my home’, specific to each individual. The experiences and the memories of you and your home will be different to mine so to create the deepest connection possible they need to be person specific.
A work that I have been inspired by is ‘Dreams-Chasing Life & Art Showroom’ by Peihe Xie and AD Architecture. In this work a red gyro constantly rotates around at a high ride within the middle of a mall. People gaze into this rotation and “causes people to fall into the abyss of dreams, mysterious dark and overlapping…”(Xie) This concept of people being transported through another world such as dreams is inspiring for me to think about memories in this way, in a way dreams and memories are not all that different. “Dreams provide more space for people to think about infinity, transcending the boundaries of real space, chasing, exploring and conquering in dreams while looking backward at the self and superego in personality.”
Works Cited:
Allen, Gary L., editor. Human Spatial Memory: Remembering Where. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003.
Anderson, Tory S. From Episodic Memory to Narrative in a Cognitive Architecture. p. 10.
“Dreams-Chasing Life & Art Showroom / AD ARCHITECTURE.” ArchDaily, 9 Mar. 2019, https://www.archdaily.com/912621/dreams-chasing-life-and-art-showroom-ad-architecture.
