I had the pleasure of following a short interview with my colleague Fausto Favoretti, where the expression "psychological architecture" was used. I found there a great affinity with a term that I like to use to define my work: the "psycho-architect".
Every architectural sign, whether it is just a project on paper or even more work made, is a unique and unrepeatable fruit of the human mind, and as such also a product of the psychological characteristics of the author. But it is above all towards the recipient of the work that the connection between psychology and architecture has its deepest and most lasting effects. However, these are often ignored or underestimated.
The realization of a house, or even just a renovation, is always a complex operation, interacting multiple factors, some obvious, others more subtle and often hidden, but no less important and decisive. The customer generally considers the technical, administrative and economic aspects a priority, and initially turns to a professional to address and solve only these problems. In this way, the house assumes a purely "material" and "utilitarian" value. How much does it cost, what does it contain, how is it made, according to which rules and constraints, what is its usefulness?
But is everything so "deterministic", so material? Is this the correct approach?
With these parameters we think of evaluating a property, of choosing it, of making it our "home of life", without, however, asking ourselves the question whether it is really the right home for us, for our personality, for our history, the one that represents us most, the one that we would have chosen with a different and more complete awareness of ourselves.
The relationship with the house has ancient roots that sink deep into our animal origin, and is linked to ancestral needs for "protection", "health", "food" and "reproduction". Man, after all only for a few generations, has refined these needs into more complex and evolved questions, speaking of "safety", "health", "production", "family". Today in the house we no longer seek protection from atmospheric agents, from ferocious animals, from enemies, from concrete and visible elements, but rather protection from the "perceived insecurities" more internal to ourselves and to our psyche. In addition to food, now taken for granted in a large part of the world, we are now looking for economic stability and support for our work, production and creative activity. Health extends to the concept of personal, environmental and mental "healthiness". Finally, the "reproductive" aspects go beyond the "biological" connotations and affect interpersonal relationships, the family and the couple.
From a "natural", material world, with tangible and concrete needs, we have moved on to a much more "mental" world, where ideas, emotions and thoughts acquire ever greater weight in the decisions of our lives.
When we choose a house we have a very precise "idea" in the details: the image of a living room, a kitchen, a garden. Sometimes it is the shade of a colour, an old family piece of furniture, an important collection of books. Other times they are complex functions and relationships: the most favorable environments for children, adequate spaces for our social and interpersonal relationships, environments suitable for study or some other work activity. It is the image of ways of living and especially of emotions that we would like to live in that idea. Precisely because of the "image", dream, desire, we think we are able to concretely realize the house of our dreams. The problem arises, however, when it comes to moving from the emotion sought to the factual reality: those images are not enough, they say more, suggest a world within us much more complex and often unknown. A world that seeks answers to deep and ancestral needs that most of the time are not clear to us or we did not even suspect to have.
This is where the real work of the architect comes in: interpreting the emotions linked to the house, where they come from, what they mean, where they lead, accompanying the client in a process of clarification of the motivations and in the definition of the objectives, translating them from there into an artifact that is concretely feasible and really suitable for the person for whom it is intended.
The aim of the project will not only be a "material" house, made of concrete, bricks, administrative documents, metric calculations, but a real "house of the soul". The former is obviously essential and indispensable, but they must never become the absolute protagonists of the choices, of the design objectives. Without giving meaning to the house, without connecting it to emotional needs, without harmonizing it with its real inhabitants, it is not possible to create a right environment that is adequate to expectations.
This is how the architect becomes what I like to call the "psycho-architect". A figure who accompanies the client listens to him, perhaps in some cases "destabilizes" him but always helps him to find meaning in his relationship with his home.
But the design phase is not enough. The architect also becomes a support in the choices, in the moments of doubt and in the crises that often grip the client in the phases of execution of the works. Knowing how to adapt the project to new or more in-depth needs and correct the shot, also reviewing their own projects and solutions given for the final.
And it's still not enough. Obviously the project and its realization are the work of the architect, but for the final result to be truly effective, through a process of awareness of their choices, and a full assumption of responsibility, the house must be perceived by the customer as his work.
Paradoxically, the architect will declare himself satisfied with the work he has done when the client, looking at his finished house, says "this is my work!"
Setting up the work with this vision may require an extra effort on the part of the architect, but I believe that in the end, the results are much more satisfactory. Of course, it must be a complementary commitment and never an alternative or substitute for the possible commitment of the psychologist, since we work in the specific field of building and on a particular aspect of the person.
With this approach, Feng Shui is a powerful tool because its main characteristic is to study the relationship between man and his environment, with a holistic approach, including all the elements of the process, seen as a whole and not in individual parts that are independent of each other. A discipline between "art" and "science", codified by the millenary Chinese culture, which by studying nature and its link with man and experimenting with techniques and solutions, has worked effectively to create the best conditions of life, those that make a "house", perhaps perfectly realized but anonymous becomes a real and very personal "home", full of life and harmony.