CoP: Interior design psychology

Interior design psychology is a field within environmental psychology, which concerns the environmental conditions of the interior. It is a direct study of the relationship between an environment and how that environment affects the behaviour of its inhabitants, with the aim of maximising the positive affects of this relationship. Through interior design psychology the performance and efficiency of the space and the wellbeing of the individual are improved. Figures like Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, John B. Calhoun and Jean Baudrillard have shown that by incorporating this psychology into design one can control an environment and to an extent, the relationship and behaviour of its inhabitants. An example of this is seen through the rat experiments conducted by Calhoun in which he noted the aggression, killing and changed sexual tendencies amongst rats. This experiment created a stark behavioural analogy between the rat’s behaviour and inhabitation in high-rise building projects in the US after WWII, an example of which is the Pruitt-Igoe development in St Louis demolished in 1972 only 21 years after being erected.

Space-Time Relationships[edit]

Charles Rice references the thinking of Walter Benjamin, in The Emergence of the Interior,^[9] on the study of interiorization and experience. He proposes that in our faster-paced modern society experiences are instantaneous and through this we are missing long experiences such as a connection with tradition and the accumulation of wisdom over time. To reforge a sense of this relationship and address the current lack he demonstrates that we might materially create such a relationship through inanimate objects in our environment. Giving the example: “that the hearth and the mantelpiece might materially encode the mythical fireside and the situation it provided for the telling of stories.” In this way one’s relationship with objects can embody a sense of experience, and fulfil the desire for a connection with tradition.