Do you ever feel
the emotion when you step into a strange place or a space that can recall back
your memory? What kind of place you would like to go or strongly reject to step
in? This is all due to one reason, “Spirit of place and sense of space”. Our
spaces, our place, our buildings, our cities, and our landscape—make us feel
and behave, giving us different memory and experience. Architecture might address the human spirit. Creating an
emotional space is the most power tools as a designer can use, and this is also one of the reason that
separate architect and designer with normal people do.
Place give people
different emotion is based on people own experiencing and memory about that
place. “Sense of place is synaesthetic. It combines sight, hearing, smell,
movement, touch, memory, imagination and anticipation.” by Joseph C . Pitt from my article. Memory and sense
of space are linked, for example, the hotel corridor in Genting Highland will
give horrific feeling to some part of people because of the ghost story that
they heard before or maybe they really seen, but another part of people do not
have this feeling because they do not believe ghost exist. Our memory of events
may depend upon a strong sense of place; our sense of place may be influenced
by the integrity of the memories formed there.
Moreover, there
is different between place and space, space could be define as inside a place and
the spirit of space has no direct relationship to historical period, style,
location, or size of a built-environment. Article that support my point is “The
Spirit of Space” by Noushin Ehsan, AIA saying that obviously spaces are usually
“designed”, and the results reflect the cultural background of the designer and
his/her sensitivity to landscape, history and culturally relevant issues. It is
thus immediately apparent that designers have a great responsibility not only
to understand the significance of the spaces they design but also to
consciously shape them to reflect human responses to the desired Spirit of
Space.
How to create
emotional space? We should consider the use of natural light, open floor
design, natural ventilation, materials, lightness of structural form, human anthropometric
and so on. For example space designs of a library have to be different with a
kid’s interior playground. The library emotion should be serious and
automatically makes people quiet besides putting the signage of “quit”. Compare
with kid’s playground which should able to attract kid and makes them feel
happy and interesting. Different between these 2 spaces is the use of
materials, colour, the open floor design and also lighting. The contribution of
the five human senses towards the perception of space and this is how a person defines
a space emotion.
As a conclusion,
sensing spaces and place is about how architecture and designer confronts user
and communicates with them on an emotional and psychological as well as visual
and intellectual level.
