Know Your Space

Familiar places sometimes seem like characters in our lives: We can treasure, miss, and devote time and energy to them as we would a friend or relative. In Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life, psychologist and neuroscientist Colin Ellard explains why certain environments instill joy or calm while others bore or vex us—and how our relationships with even our most personal spaces might soon change.

You describe homes as “places of affection” and our relations with them akin to those we have with people. How are they similar?

Home gives us a set of feelings—comfort, security, and refuge. I’ve always thought one of the qualities of a really good intimate relationship is that there are no walls: You’re completely exposed. Anything can be said or done and accepted. I think that people crave that same kind of intimacy in their home spaces.

How are homes different from what you call “places of lust”?

Places like casinos and shopping malls are often designed in such a way that it’s hard for us to know exactly where we are with respect to the outside world. There are few windows, and walkways can have sinuous curves that promote a sense of disorientation, which causes us to surrender control to the space. This can make us more likely to do things that aren’t in our best interest, like making an impulsive purchase. In your home space, you have a great deal of control.

What happens if we lack that control?

You will try to gain it in all kinds of interesting ways. I spent a little bit of time in Dharavi, one of the big so-called slums in Mumbai. Even in very challenging conditions, people find ways to exert control over their space and to make it their own—with a couple of family heirlooms, for example, or maybe just a picture.

What else surprises you about our ties to intimate places?

Deliberately or not, we seem to make connections between our earliest living spaces and our current ones. A few years ago, I walked into a house and immediately knew that I wanted to buy it—and I didn’t really know why. A year later, I visited the first couple of houses I ever lived in and discovered that the layout was pretty much the same, which completely freaked me out.

How might new technology influence our relationship with home?

There’s a lot of discussion about “responsive” homes. You might love your home, but are there ways in which your home can love you? The Nest thermostat knows your comings and goings and your habits. But going beyond simple temperature control, you can imagine a home that knows when you’re sad and, like a loving companion, supports you with appropriate lighting or a soothing cup of tea. In some ways it sounds marvelous.

What’s the downside?

Who gets to decide how your home should respond to you when you’re happy or sad? Some think it sounds horribly irritating: “I don’t want my home to shelter me from the range of feelings that I normally have. When I’m angry, I want to be angry.” You can think of it as representing a kind of surrender of control, which we don’t like.

Credit: Smiling house by Tumar/Shutterstock