The place you live will be one of the biggest reflections of who you are.  Sociologists say they can tell your socioeconomic status, your class standing, your lifestyle, and other societal categories by the place you live.  But can they tell who you really are?  Can they really categorize you?

Personal expression through your home may  enlighten you as well as the "experts."  It may be something small like how you place your furniture, or something larger like a whole floorplan.  Whatever it may be, it might reflect a small part of you.

The following pages can be used as a tool.  An aid to help open our minds to different styles and different ways people around the world can express who they are by their homes.  Styles that you may or may not be able to relate to.   Styles that may seem specfic to one culture.  Styles that you may have no interest in.  So what is the point of showing different styles of little interest?  Hopefully, these pages will prove to be a starting point.  The beginning of who you really are, not who everybody says you are.

Models for the modern society
 

Sociologists today can categorize modern society into three general lifestyles.  Lifestyles that, more or less, we all can be categorized.  Maybe not now, but someday: 1.  The Businessman: He/she spends all their time on business and career.  Wants to live near work.  Leisure, pleasure, even activities with children (if any) revolve around business.  He/she seeks success. 2.  Ideal Father/Mother: Is good at his/her job, but not afraid to live far from work.  A handyman around the house.  Does what is best for his/her children -- looks for the best schools, best community, etc. 3.  Person who lives for joy of it: spends money on the up-to-date.  He/she patronizes restaurants, nightclubs, and clubs.  Likes to live in the middle of things.  "Suburbia is endsville" (Michelson, 1976, p. 61-62).

Affordable apartments in California.

So eventually, you will fall into one of these categories: careerism, familyism, and consumerism.  You may already be in one of these categories.  And you may change categories as you grow older.  Furthermore, you may methodically pass each category as you age.  So what does this tell us?  About us as individuals, very little.  But it does simplify the bigger picture.  Designers have a better idea of how someone is like -- what his wants and needs are -- if he/she is familiar with his background in society.  The designer can gain a lot of useful information from a person's socioeconomic backrground, environment, and so fortn.  A man with a family will certainly be different from a single businessman, for example.  In these cases, it is up to the client how deep he wants to get involved with the design and the designer's responsibility to keep the client  involved.

"The scale and organization of building processes are critical to the nature of the environment they create and its subsequent effect on people involved with it...Our assumption of the ability of bureaucratic action to generate a good environment is false.  A good environment necessitates the humane touch from people-generated actions" (Bender, 1973, p. 51).  The client is always all-important.

Alternative Thinking
 

Two things are evident when we act upon our surroundings: our true nature is determined and how our new surroundings will be changed will reflect upon that. "We change our surroundings less because we wish THEM changed than because we wish to be changed ourselves.  It is WE that wish to be warmer, drier, or happier" (Bender, 1973, p. 153).  So our surroundings do reflect us, but the way we change our surroundings also reflects upon us.  "And when we work, we primarily perform work not on other things but upon ourselves.  We change other things in order to change ourselves in the process, and in order that the things we change might in turn bring changes within us.

A row of shotgun houses.

When we change our surroundings, we usually, concentrate only uponone aspect of it, the design of objects.  We consider them divorced from how they become meaningful to people, why they are desired, how they are used, and what effect their making has upon the people involved" (Bender, 1973, p. 153).

Hence, we have people who specialize in the changing of these surroundings.   We mostly leave these people -- architects and designers -- with the task of being "creative," while others whose skills are "untrained" are considered "uncreative"(Bender, 1973, p. 153).

An example of a "creative" solution is the shotgun house.  Because it originated in the warm climates of West Africa, the Caribbean, and the Southern United States, the house has a simple, open plan so that a cool breeze can flow through the front porch to the back door.  The shotgun also has a religious significance.  The term  shotgun is similar to the word "shogon," which means "God's House."
 
 

Examples of sukiya architecture.  An exterior of a teahouse (left) and its interrior.

Feng Shui is another practice that recognizes the importance of the relationship between the user and the space.   It deals with the relationship between our external environment and our inner world.

"Feng Shui is an art -- the art of analyzing and balancing the natural flow of energy in the home or office thereby realizing one's full potential. It leads to growth in efficiency, harmony, wealth and prosperity"(http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/fengshui ).  Feng Shui has been around for more than 3,000 years. The principles are universal.  They pertain to all people, ages and cultures. In recent times, Feng Shui, which originated in the Orient, has been embraced by the West, successfully. "We live amidst, absorb and influence nature's forces of polarity (Yin/Yang) and the laws governing the spiraling movements of energy and growth.  The method of achieving the goals of harmony and prosperity is through specific placement and orientation of furniture, artifacts, color, lighting and pictures.  Areas of the office and home reflect our inner energy and intent. The act of altering the physical space in which we live and work is a very powerful generator of change" (http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/fengshui).

A school based on Feng-shui.

Dream

"Architecture is like a smile.  Consider a smile.  We have all seen them grow, bubbling to the surface, breaking out joyfully, reflecting a deep inner peace or radiant ecstasy or momentary amusement.   We also know of times when, instead of reflecting and growing out of an inner meaning, they are fabricated as a mask, intended to hide our true feelings, meant to convince others and perhaps ourselves that we feel differently than we do.  But whether the visible smile emerges as a sign of what is there or as a symbol of what we wished to be there, what is inside cannot be hidden.  Our cells speak directly to their brethren, regardless of our will.  We are aware of our total being and feeling, and that of others, directly and strongly, and the conscious molding of the visible and controllable expressions of our inner states only registers to us and to others as a discordant note - a signal that we either are unaware of our inner nature or afraid to let it freely exist and grow and change and be changed by others.

The way things happen in what we make is not much different from the way things happen within us.  Buildings and other things we make are extensions of us.  They reflect outside us how we feel and what we are just as our smiles reflect on our surface.  In the same way as a smile they can be manipulated consciously by us in an attempt to communicate something which is not true.  And in the same way they fail to do that, and only register more clearly are unwillingness to understand and live with what we are.

Surface appearances are at best outer signs of inner meanings.  They reinforce our direct awareness of what brought them into being, but only emerge out of and as a result of inner forces, processes, and changes and the dynamic balances which occur through their ever-changing interactions.  Being consciously apprehended, they can be faked, but the inner nature cannot" (Bender, 1973, p. 154-155).

Our dreams shape us.  Everybody is unique in their own way, and that is why designs are all different.  Every building, every design is different.  Every building and design leave an imprint.  Whether it is the designer's or the client's, a story is told.

It is important to remember that everyone is not the same.  Thus, personal expression should be unique to you and only you.  Personal expression then becomes one of the most powerful tools of architecture, but, at the same time, one of the most difficult to handle.

Are we all sure of who we are?  Don't be afraid to search.