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I NEED MY SPACE

We all understand this need to have our own space and not to be crowded in by other people, at least for some part of our life. So before we at last turn exclusively to the behavior of humans, it is valuable to describe two more animal distances for which there seem to be obvious human parallels; the minimum and maximum distances maintained between animals of the same species under particular circumstances. The lesser of these distances is the minimum distance a species will maintain separating its members under normal circumstances. Confusingly Hediger first used the phrase ‘personal distance’ to apply to this, and hence the common use of ‘personal space’ . This use of the word ‘personal’ is understandable, since the distance is not one universally followed by a species but rather depends upon the social status of the individual animal in its society. Dominant animals are given greater personal distances by the other members of their family, group, tribe, pack or whatever soc...
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OUR SPATIAL NEEDS

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Think of the very high level emotional needs we expect space to help us to satisfy. Most of us hate being bored, and want some form of amusement or entertainment. We might see this as a need for stimulation, and we demand that the spaces around us should provide this. On the whole we also seek to avoid high levels of uncertainty and change, and we require a degree of stability and structure in our lives. We might see this as a need for security, and so we require a space to keep us secure. Most of us seem to have a strong desire to belong somewhere. Many people I have known who have traveled widely in their lives describe an increasingly strong need to return to their roots in later life. We might see this as a need for identity and to belong somewhere, or in other words a need to be located somewhere. All these are examples of needs that a space we inhabit can help to satisfy. Robert Audrey was the first to suggest that not only do we seem to have these three important need...
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HOW ARCHITECTURE IS SOCIAL ART

(Tom Markus 1993): I take the stand that buildings are not primarily art, technical or investment objects, but social objects. Places are often very complex in terms of the opportunities they afford us for analysis. Two people visiting the same place at different times in their lives may be able to extract quite different character from it. Of course buildings can be seen in many different ways. For instance be viewed as works of art, as technical achievements, as the wallpaper of urban space and as behavioral, cultural, psychological, social and partly cultural phenomena. One of the intriguing and endlessly fascinating things about the study of architecture is that one may come at it from so many different angles. Some authors, and regrettably very many architects, will try to have you believe that their perspective is somehow right and superior to all others. This is not new; Putin claimed his ‘Gothic’ architecture to be the only truly Christian one (Putin, 1841). Gr...
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