Psychology in post-war residential architecture Final Paper
Divya Chand, Kamila Kaczorowska, Monika Tylutka (Post-war history of Modern Architecture, Prof. Rika DEVOS)
I. Introduction In his chapter on ‘Richard Neutra and the Psychology of Architectural Consumption’ Sandy Isenstadt traces Neutra’s shift in emphasis after the second world-war, from industry and structural expression to consumer issues and psychological perception to legitimise the forms of his buildings- that largely remained similar in style. He argues that while Neutra criticised consumerist lifestyles, he still actively engaged with them, carrying the formative tenets of modernism in his toolkit, to make them more relevant to the changing society. (Isenstadt, 2000) Cities in the 1950s to the 70s experiences a massive post-war boom in production of residential architecture production in the Western world. As cities urbanized rapidly and often in a chaotic fashion, people began to question the effects of mass-production and mindless consumption on their lifestyles and well-being. With the growth of an urban middle class, consumer culture infiltrated architecture culture as well- people sought personal expression and relief in their spaces, as the larger city got out of control. This was accompanied by an anxiety in the role of the architectural profession in this period - architects pondered about their adequacy to cope and positively influence society, and in the creation of residential spatial experiences. Unlike early modernism, machine innovation was taken as given and nothing novel anymore and architects sought new ways to derive and legitimise forms. They sought answers beyond technology and began to reflect more critically on culture, society, vernacular patterns, community behaviours, psychological effects of spaces on a personal scale of the consumer and more. This paper highlights some literature that emerged in the post-war years in the field overlapping psychological and architectural studies, and the emerging field of environmental psychology. We then analyse the works of residential-design by some prominent architects of that era, specifically those who, like Neutra, used psychological theories to legitimise the forms they designed or those who collaborated with psychologists in developing schemes to respond to the anxieties of modern urban development. The Lovell House that launched Neutra’s career, is examined next to projects by Eliot Noyes, Marcel Breuyer, Chermayeff and Barragan, all built in the post-war years. The choice of houses is spread around the post-war years, and while this culture was most observed in the US, we also pick case studies to display the wider reach of the architecture-culture. This is done not just through a spatial analysis but also by studying what the architects wrote about their own projects or interviews of architects or clients of the projects. With a short overview of the house designs, we reach a conclusion about the limited scope of this nature of discource in these years, as designers could only indulge with it in particular high-budget projects and it did not infiltrate into larger public and commercial projects, eventually fizzling out. With political turmoil, frenzied urbanization, inequality in spaces and psychological distress, all being extremely present concerns for today’s urban society, we look at these scattered attempts to draw inspiration for the architecture culture of today.