The Anthropology of Space

on an article by Edward T. Hall


"We shape our buildings and they shape us"
Winston Churchill


Fixed-Feature Spaces:
We all have fixed-feature needs that make us feel comfortable. Some vary with culture, like the way the Japanese deign their cities to focus on the intersections more than the streets, whereas France does the opposite. While Americans prefer to have rooms with determined functions, like a living room or dining room, the Japanese move their walls to accommodate different functions, removing the fixed-feature sense of the layout. Hall suggests that we can be different people in different places, an idea also found in "The Architecture of Happiness," which is the reason for some separations. The facade of the house allows us to drop the facade we put up in public, and be a more relaxed version of ourselves. Separating the office from our houses allows for a physical split of work and play, a small split of inner personalities. Cultures need different things in their fixed spaces, such as different amounts of privacy, lighting and functions. For instance, it mentioned that dining rooms, so important for social occasions in some cultures, are disappearing in American suburbs. It is because of these differences that traded design ideas between cultures are usually slightly modified to better fit the culture it is being introduced to. Otherwise the inhabitants may not feel at ease in this location. Arabs in American homes tend to feel restricted by the low ceilings and confining rooms, yet at the same time feel uncomfortably exposed to the outside world. 


Semi-fixed-Feature Spaces:
These semi-fixed spaces have a large impact on the way people behave in certain environments. Behaviors change to fit a certain space, mentioned by Winston Churchill in the quote above. He worried that a different arrangement in the House of Commons would "alter the patterns of government" without the way the seating was situated. An experiment of the arrangement of furniture in a hospital proved this phenomenon related to patients happiness and amount of conversation. The instigator of the experiment called those spaces which seem to encourage conversation "sociopetal" and those which seemed to discourage conversation "sociofugal."  Hall also pointed out that neither category of semi-fixed-feature spaces are necessarily good or bad, but each have appropriate situations. Also, each depends on the culture involved in the situation.