Looking for a way out of the "Stone-pit"

Interview with a psychologist Svetlana Kolosova

     - Svetlana Valentinovna, many of your colleagues believe that all human diseases are caused by imperfect organization of the living space. Do you share this point of view?
      -- It seems to stand together with reality. Have you ever wondered why the expression «stone-pit» is still existing? It is still used in spite of the fact that this horrible instrument of torture has long since perished together with the Middle Ages where it originated. The expression is especially popular among the population of megapolices. The explanation lies in the field of psychology of perception. We live in the environment of psychological discomfort; congestion of houses is constantly pressing, constraining and subjecting a person. As a result of continuous impaction stress builds up, and that leads to depression and lose of control of one’s behavior in the social environment. Have a look around and you will see the reason for many of our diseases. What kind of houses do we build? Layout of rooms, wall color scales are virtually murderous for our mentality. There is a catastrophic lack of lively colors – yellow, green, red. Uniform washy tones of gray and brown are prevailing. And that is what is constantly feeding our fine sensory perception. That is why it gets «choked up» so fast! We become less receptive to harmony, we lose our ability to perceive the world’s beauty. Besides, blunt feelings are a step to aggression. There is another adverse factor – high-rise buildings. Living on high floors is harmful even for a steady mentality.

      - Indeed, I have recently moved from the 11th to the second floor in a different building. I felt almost at once that it’s much easier to work there. Seeing birds and greenery out of the window...it all creates a different mood. How can you explain this?
      - You were living in an undesirable height zone where the air is considerably tenuous. On higher floors a person starts losing the feeling of psychic support which disappears almost completely on the floors higher than the 21st. The connection to the ground is lost, the bottom falls out, a man is «cut off» from the biological environment where he had been settling down for endless thousands of years. As a result his psycho-physiological integrity is lost and depression steps in. It’s not a secret that people living on high floors are often very light sleepers.
      When people organize their living environment ineffectually, the living space is closing in. One can take functional use of the balcony, for example. The older generation remembers having tea, doing morning exercises, admiring a good view from the balcony... Nowadays one tends to hide from the depressing view of cheerless uniform high-rise «boxes». Where? To the rooms... And balconies get filled with various junk. There is a way out though; one can spend some money for comfort, pane the balcony and turn it into a living space once more: make it a small conservatory, a workshop, or recommence having tea-parties...

      - By the way, to speak of the senior generation. Elder people often have warm memories of communal flats. «Lived in close quarters, didn’t we, but it was the more the merrier ». Could it be that there was some positive psychological field there?
      - We are as much in need of communication, as of personal space. A person needs a place outside of his own room or apartment where he can communicate with his neighbors, contemporaries, interesting people. We often lack (or do not have at all) both the personal space and space for communication. This probably causes the nostalgic feelings for communal flats. One more example: there are practically no yards left in Moscow. Could this be a probable reason for the rise of criminogenic incidents noted by sociologists and law-enforcement authorities? Everything is connected within the society – economy, design, house planning and mentality are integrated. Washy colors, narrow streets, congestion, impaction – all this taken together disfigures interpersonal relations, makes them abnormal. To find an optimal decision of the problem the city authorities should think about including psychologists and sociologists, demographers and medical doctors into house building project groups, not just architects and builders. Architecture should reveal inner personal reserves, activate one’s creative growth. It is essential to do everything that is possible for the environment to have positive influence on the soul through sense organs.

      - What could a psychologist recommend here?
      - First of all it is important to determine clearly who this living area is for: elder or younger people. The elder are in lesser need of access roads, they need more shops and parks situated not far from the house. For younger people schools and kindergartens situated about the house are more important.
      Psychologist’s advice may be useful in house planning too. For example, it is necessary to consider the fact that a corner irritates the eye. Retina studies have shown that a corner is the same as dead-end to the human eye. When the eye sets against the corner it kind of gets stuck there. So it turns out that there are four dead-ends in the four corners of your room. Now multiply that by the number of rooms in your flat... It is not surprising that sometimes we feel discomfort even in spacious apartments. The corners also dictate us the choice of furniture - it is mostly angular. To the mind of psycho-physiologists, rounded shapes have better prospects. Inclined planes are also good – they give an illusion of movement; they should be used even in ceiling designs.
      There is one more reasonable advice that a psychologist could give to builders: try to avoid long and narrow «gut»-shaped rooms. It is impossible to create friendly environment in such a room, and it is always uncomfortable to live in. Housing is always a painful problem. It is evidently better to live in your own one-room apartment than in a communal flat. But to live in the four corners of a single room leads to psychological discomfort. One can’t do everything in one and the same room. I suppose that wholesome life starts with two rooms in the least. The more, the better.
      The construction of stair wells should be comfortable for people to go out into vestibules where they can communicate with neighbors. Vestibules should be spacious and cozy. Tambour doors in our houses are not the best solution. Let’s take a further look at the problem. Various towns of Russia have recently started to realize ecological programs aimed at curing people of a habit to live in the littered environment. In Moscow this program includes practically all parks, streets and yards. Polls held by sociologists and ecologists show that the first, seemingly small steps in improving the environment taken by the city authorities and citizens themselves lead to formation of the communicative space. People start living richer and more interesting lives once out of the bounds of their own flats. In this matter initiative «from the masses» is extremely important. Each of us should change something inside oneself. Then our life will gradually become more harmonious too.

Recorded by Arutyun Amirkhanyan