Paul Rudolph and the Psychology of Space

Paul Rudolph's space study for the chapel at Boston's Government Service Center
(image: The Paul Rudolph Foundation)
The Hindu, an online version of India's national newspaper, refers to Paul Rudolph's use of psychology in a recent article titled 'Psychology of Spaces.' The author, Ranjani Govind, writes:

Dr. Shyam K. Bhat, a integrative medicine specialist and neuropsychiatrist, explains how architecture has a telling effect on human psychology. How would you react when someone said, “Architects and psychiatrists have a lot in common?”

Diverse fields, unlikely to come together, one would have thought. Not after hearing Dr. Shyam K. Bhat’s talk recently in Bangalore had a packed hall with doctors, architects and students who never actually stopped their volley of questions to understand the not-much-thought-about ideas on built space and its design consequences.

That architecture has a telling effect on human psychology was the underpinning point of his talk, ‘Psychology of Space,’ backed by studies, theories and experiences.

“An architect who practices in a holistic manner would incorporate insights from different fields including psychology, sociology and perhaps even vaastu, to arrive at functional, aesthetic and healing space,” says Dr. Shyam.

According to Dr. Shyam,

Paul Rudolph, the Carl Jung of architects, believed that architecture was basically about manipulating space, light, proportion, texture and material to fulfil the psychological needs of the occupants.

Famously, he said, “People, if they think about architecture at all, usually think in terms of materials.

While that’s important, it’s not the thing that determines the psychology of the building. It’s really the compression and release of space, the lighting of that space and the progression of one space to another.”