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Psychadelic Influence on 60`s Architecture
Olivia Filaferro
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Intro. The 60`s is known as a decade full of hippies, music, drugs, and sex. Discoveries about all parts of life were made. This includes; spirituality, sexuality, art, music, idealogy, and even architecture. I believe it was the drugs that brought epiphanies to the youth, and adults; in particular, acid. LSD, or Lysergic acid diethylamide, became very popular with the hippies once the effects became known. I have yet to find a description of the trip that can accurately express the experience. I have asked or read about many people who have taken LSD and common responses were: “I can`t describe it in words,” it`s like you`re in a different dimension,” “I have a whole new outlook on life now,” “it changes you as a person,” etc.
Table of Contents: Ideology Space and Form... Unity... Emotion... Sensory... Spirituality...
Style Trippy Design... Color... Op Art... Tie-Dye...
Architecture Geodesic Domes... Futurism... Hippie Architecture... Temporary Living...
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Ideology
Space and Form One`s perception of space and form is usually confined by boundaries. Boundaries like how a room is made of 4 planes connecting at a corner. But with psychedelics, there are no boundaries or confinements. Everything flows together, corners seem to blur, and the rooms can finally breathe. All prenotions of space, form, inside and outside, now flipped polarity, upturned hierarchy, and were perceived as a completely different elements. British Psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond experimented with LSD and observed how the room bulged with a sense of “imminent collapse”: “I knew that behind those perilously unsolid walls something was waiting to burst through.” Many psychedelic users started questioning their place in the universe and formed a new awareness for the space around them, leading to a new era of design.
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“The new design ambiguity corre“The walls of the room no longer seemed to meet at right angles” He stared at a chair, admiring the supernatural
sponds to current spaced- out highs by aiming at expanded consciousness
smoothness and tubularity of its legs. “Draperies became
through expanded spaciousness.” -
living hieroglyphs, while the flannel folds of his own trousers
Desing Critic C. Ray Smith
appeared as a labyrinth of mythical complexity.”- Aldous Huxley
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Unity The experience of feeling one with self , time, and the environment around you. Boundaries are now dissolved and you feel a new relationship with those around you. LSD gave many people a new outlook on their connection with the universe and their community.
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Dome-like structures provide a sense of community and unity because all who inhabits that space is sharing it. Domes provide an all-inclusive community where commonly, 20 or so hippies would all sleep in a circle inside these dome structures.
“The centre and periphery of things seem to come together.� - William James, 1882, under the influence of Nitrous Oxide.
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Emotion Psychedelics have been observed to heighten the effects of emotion. For example: being inordinately happy, sad, angry, euphoric, in awe, etc. They expressed this emotion through: Art, dance, rebellion, music, sex, protest, etc. Many explain it as feeling new kind of love and appreciation for life.
Make Love Not War campaign was a response in opposition to the Vietnam war started by the hippies. This reflects a new connection between passion and politics.
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Sensory The senses are the most affected aspect of the brain by psychedelics. Light illuminates, colors are intensified to a pitch that can`t be seen by the normal eye, and a heightened recognition of distinctions in hue and tone. The normal brains` cognitive and behavioral operations are altered in regards to memory, attention, communication, decision-making, creativity and abstract thought. This sheds light to the statements of feeling in a different dimension, as all normal sensory functions work in a way the mind isn`t accustomed to. Overloading the senses and being in spaces that challenged normal reality during their psychedelic trips is what many researchers, scientists, artists, architects, and hippies were trying to understand and experience.
Sensory overload was the intended outcome of many experiments with psychedelics in order to replicate that feeling of spaciousness for people not under the influence. Architects used this information to guide his or her designs, creating the era of hippie architecture.
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A callaborative group called USCO (The Company of Us) used “strobe lights, kinetic sculptures, prisms, smoke, and loud screeching sounds to create states of sensory overload.‘ “We try to vaporize the mind by bombing the senses,” said one light artist.” This started ideas of images mixed with vibrating patterns. LSD effects were observed to be the most stimulated by the overlay of light and sound.
Spirituality
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Religion and spirituality has been the center of many lives throughout history and has affected many aspects of living. In the 60`s, many psychedelic users have claimed to see and experience new religions and paths of light to follow to a deeper meaning of life. To reach maximum spiritual connection, hippies out themselves in isolation, often with others who are trying to achieve the same goal of altered- consciousness. Communities and retreats began to develop in isolated areas for these religion seekers to find their paths and experience their religious dynasties.
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“There are moments when I feel I am witnessing the begginnings of new religions... It has everything to do with light -- and everybody feels it and is waiting -- often, desperately. -- Film Director, Jonas Mekas
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Trippy Design
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A new common form of art emerged from the hippie generation known as trippy design. There were definitely inspirations from other designs but with a psychedelic twist to make a unique genre of design. Kaleidoscopes, spirals, and wavy patterns were some of the inspirations. Trippy designs can range from simple geometric designs to crazy abstract ones. Trips
Style
can cause visions and hallucinations to artists and then they recreate that in their designs.
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Color in Space
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Color is commonly associated with specific feelings and emotions. Psychedelics heighten your sense of color and is said to make them more vibrant. Therefore, you experience it differently. Architects of the 60`s used acid to experiment on themselves, as well as others, to understand this experience and its visual effects. As the new wave of hippies emerged out of the 60`s, they wanted to create space with the color
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Hippies used colors to set moods in the certain spaces. These places ranged from hangouts, rock concerts, raves, spiritual places, and even the living room. The color was usually casted by light or painted on the walls and/or furniture. Psychedelics enhance color, and being engulfed in that color is an experience that is unexplainable.
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Op Art Op Art and Pop Art was a new category of art that emerged form the hippie generation. Many aspect of psychedelic experience is included in these images, including bright, vibrant colors, trippy design, illusions, etc. Instead of trying to portray the perception of space, op art focuses on the color, flow, and hallucinogen experience.
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Tie-dye
Op Art was commonly incorporated in: Album Covers, Advertisements, Magazine Covers, Propoganda, Commercials and more.You can see the inverted color and illusionary design with a variety of fonts and texture to highlight bold elements of a trip.
Hallucinations are an effect of psychedelics that create illusions in peoples` minds. Psychedelic users claim that they feel like they are being sucked into the trip, like a vortex, and making it the theme of their designs. Tie-dye patterns were one of the most common in fashion and arts-and craft. The Tie-dye kit expanded the definition of tie- die to pretty much anything you can do with a squeeze bottle of dye.
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Architecture
Hippie Architecture
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Architecture in the 60`s pushed boundaries that have previously been hesitant to be broken. LSD broke these boundaries on a broad spectrum. The design could be simple and straight forward with a spacial purpose, or completely abstract form and color based off feelings in a psychedelic trip. Geodesic domes, futurism, brutalism, tee-pees, shacks, etc. are all styles of architecture created during the hippie era. The practice of achieving spacial-consciousness led many of the designs, especially the ones of free form including: spirals, great curves, twisty turns, and has a certain uniqueness that can not be exactly replicated. Spaces designed to practice spirituality usually consisted of: dome-like structure, large rooms, low furniture, controlled natural lighting, and other purposeful elements. Color and light in spaces were usually purposeful for the specified use of the space. These ideas have developed into modern hippie architecture, which consists of more vast structures, occasionally with a deformation of form that could be supported at a large scale. Trippy, colorful, and art colored facades that convey hippie ideals were most common, as the structures weren`t necessarily built for psychedelic users, but to maintain the trippy spacial form and excitement of bright colors, crazy art, and light reflection.
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i c c s D e o d me o e G s
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Geodesic Domes were one of the biggest emergences from 60`s architecture and commonly preferred by psychedelic users. The dome represented many of the altered aspects of a psychedelic trip. They bring a sense of unity that is experienced only in this big, empty, circular space with light reflecting around you. Hippies loved these spaces to practice “new religions” when tripping and connect with their spirituality when they`re not. Domes in general brought trippy effects, but with a geodesic skin, it has a radiating effect and reminds of a kaleidoscope design. Many architects and psychedelic users were inspired by “Domebook 1” and “Domebook 2” by Lloyd Kahn which documented a series of experiments conducted by a group of students who went on a retreat and built domes while documenting their experiences and how they built them.
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One`s eyes can easily center onn any of the mandalas formed by the strut. All vibrations-sound, light, heat, and all our awareness-begin in the center and radiate outward and rebound back and forth from the center.”Alan Shmidt, who considers using the dome during meditation as a form of arhitectural yoga.
“Getting centered”, “In a dome, there is an inward focus”, “Like a giant Retina, the dome scans the heavans... its translucentsking registers each energy transformation of the cosmic lights show.”- all things said by dome builder, John Prenis
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Dome-like architecture emerged out of the 60`s using a variety of materials that gives a spacial effect using its composition.
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Futurism In the early 20th century, Italian artists introduced the idea of futurism. After the war, futuristic art resurfaced in the United States during the time they launched Apollo I. The style reflected the experiences of outer space and what could be thought of the future.
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Repetitiveness, spheres, drastic curves, rings, perception of gravity, deep color, and outer space inspiration were the leading elements in the 1960`s futuristic architecture era.
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Temporary Homes
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Hippies were know as a rebellious generation whom traveled the world with little money and supplies, but a lot of drugs. In order to accomplish this, they needed an alternate way to live, creating the emergence of the hippie van to travel around the country/ world. Teepees and self- built shacks emerged in communities as many of them traveled together. Their structures were usually described as bodged and half- built, as many people not educated in building or designing took on the challenge of constructing their own homes. They used many techniques to live that were inspired by the Native-American way of life. Because these were a temporary place of living, the huts and shacks weren`t built with the same structural integrity and precaution. Unfortunately most of them burnt down, with very few standing today.
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“On a wind- and- wave- swept beach, a driftwood community is created, destroyed, recreated, and invested with ritual.” -- the “score” in an Environmental Experiment.
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