SPATIAL STRATEGIES SOLUTIONS

Is it possible that spaces where we lived in the past have left their mark on us, influencing our values, choices, behaviors? Could the understanding of these spatial patterns of our past bring us closer to understanding ourselves?

While reading the Timeless Way of Building I have come upon an intriguing passage. "All acts of building are governed by pattern language of some sort, and the patterns in the world are there, entirely because they are created by the pattern languages which people use." states Christopher Alexander. People are expressing things that can not be said, nor measured through a symbolic language, through patterns. One of most commonly known patterns expresses the religious feeling of prayer, of longing for communication and communion with God:

The upward pointing lines, the sharp focal points in high positions, the light coming from high above all encourage us to lift our eyes above the material world, to lift our spirit to the realm of light. Thespatial patterns of these cathedrals invite us to join a specific religious feeling, and to assume a posture that expresses our prayer and our longing: 

As we can see, along with intended meanings, patterns on an other level carry values and qualities. Seems that Alexander agrees on that:

"And beyond that, it is not just the shape of towns and buildings which comes from pattern languages – it is their quality as well. Even the life and beauty of the most awe-inspiring great religious buildings came from the language their builders used."

I would even dare to go a step further. In my experience of analyzing patterns, both the patterns of human domain and of space tend to be self-reproducing or repetitive in time at the same place or in a certain area. Some of the cathedrals of modern world are trying to evoke the same feeling of awe and the longing to commune with a "higher order" of things:

Chrysler Tower

Empire State Building entrance hall

Republik Bank Center lobby, Houston

We perceive these social patterns as the "character" of a city, town, country, and usually even use it to explain some people; we say someone is a typical New Yorker, or Greek, or Italian, you name it... As if not just people were defining patterns, but patterns were also defining people. Like these patterns were hereditary on some collective-subconscious level. On the other hand, we do not distinguish among our behaviors, thoughts, choices, etc like "you behave like Empire State Building" or "I won`t do this, since we had just two bedrooms in our house". When I come to think of that, maybe we should.

It has become quite commonplace these days, that the forgotten (or suppressed) events of our childhood influence our adult lives. Some theories advocate that we even carry the psychological burden of deeds of previous generations, living by the hopes and frustrations of our parents and grandparents, and through those by the influence of many people we never even had direct interactions with. There are many methods by which we can discover and map these influences, and exclude or heal the unwanted ones. However, regardless that people are spatial beings, living, interacting and expressing themselves in space, we still do not have such widely accepted theories on how our past and present places influence us. Even less is told about how we are influenced by the places where our parents, grandparents and other people that influenced us lived.

Assuming that the patterns once solidified from the intangible sphere of ideas and values through human actions into spatial patterns contain the qualities of those ideas and values, it is also logical to assume, that the spatial patterns are able to transmit these qualities back to humans. These qualities become part of us, and therefore we are shaped by spatial influences on an individual level much more than we are aware of.

Reviewing some cases from my practice, I have come upon some interesting human behaviors that did not fit in with the patterns of the living and working spaces, could not be explained within the actual spatial and social frame of the persons. After doing some research into the past of the persons, it turned out that the spatial patterns with which their behavior, values and choices matched were present at some earlier points of their life. Understanding the nature of spaces of past that my clients were attached to helped to understand the roots of conflicts with their present space and present life, and to resolve them spatially by harmonizing the patterns of past with patterns of present. It also helped the clients to face the patterns of values and behaviors linked to the spaces of the past and governing their lives from under the surface. Some of these cases I will share in next posts.

Creating links to spatial patterns of a place I call "spatial anchoring", and it is more complex than just forming personal attachments to a place. It describes the process in which the individual, living in a space, imbibes some of the collective-unconscious qualities coded in spatial patterns, and thus its personal set of values, its ways of thinking, its judgments and many other aspects of the person are influenced by the spatiality of a certain period in life. As a part of a real HOLISTIC healing process the spatiality of a human being should also be addressed. In order to be able to face new spaces, new influences and new possibilities, these "spatial anchors" should be discovered and – if needed – pulled out.