Every interior betrays
the nonverbal skills of its
inhabitants. The choice of materials, the distribution of space, the kind
of objects that command attention or demand to be touched – as compared to
those that intimidate or repel – have much to say about the preferred sensory
modalities of their owners.
Their sense of organization, the degree of freedom left to imagination, their coerciveness or aesthetic rigidity, their sensitivity and fields of awareness – are all revealed in their houses.
Child psychiatrists use play techniques to observe children expressing their foremost concerns through creative activities.
Psychiatrists working with adults need only study the material environment with which individuals surround themselves to secure fresh insights into their relationships to objects, people and ideas.
The contrast between a meticulously kept mansion inhabited by an elderly couple and a small home filled with children, where marks of living are found everywhere, is one that needs no comment.
NOTE:
The text above is excerpted from Jurgen Ruesch and Weldon Kees' Nonverbal Communication, Notes on the Visual Perception of Human Relations, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1956, where I've lately found my rootless self rooting around.
The extraordinary interior photographs above show the Belgian Symbolist artist Fernand Khnoppf's (now unfortunately destroyed) Villa Khnopff on the Avenue des Courses, near the Bois de la Cambre, in Brussels. An article describing the house by Hélène Laillet, which was originally published in The Studio, LVII, December 1912, no. 237, p. 206 and The International Studio, XLVIII, January 1913, no. 191, p. 201, is found Here and is well worth reading.
Khnoppf' lived and worked alone in his meticulously kept mansion (the exterior appears above this note) without a companion or children. It's my kind of house, actually, and reminds me of interiors that my mother would also have found appealing or designed for our type of family living. I suppose it's not for everyone and it's a far cry from the space I inhabit now.
I personally have no design talent whatsoever; I can't make a room comfortable or practical, let alone add any flair or aesthetic savor to an interior space. (My mother's considerable gifts in that regard were passed on to my brother, I think.)
But I wonder, in terms of Ruesch and Kees' analysis, if what we aspire to but do not create ourselves also conveys significant clues as to the nonverbal skills or qualities of the "imagining inhabitants." I just don't know.
Apart from Khnoppf's masterpiece, I think my favorite interior ever was the standard junior suite accommodation formerly (I haven't been there in years, so I'm assuming there have been changes) offered by the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. The suite was visually perfect in all respects -- straight and curved lines all in place, soothing and enlivening colors rightly arrayed and arranged, exquisite textures, order reigning. The only problem was that if you moved around in the room at all, if you displaced a single item from its assigned position, you wrecked the place. I occasionally had two or three week stays there and I was constantly cleaning my own room. Those were the days (after a fashion).
Their sense of organization, the degree of freedom left to imagination, their coerciveness or aesthetic rigidity, their sensitivity and fields of awareness – are all revealed in their houses.
Child psychiatrists use play techniques to observe children expressing their foremost concerns through creative activities.
Psychiatrists working with adults need only study the material environment with which individuals surround themselves to secure fresh insights into their relationships to objects, people and ideas.
The contrast between a meticulously kept mansion inhabited by an elderly couple and a small home filled with children, where marks of living are found everywhere, is one that needs no comment.
NOTE:
The text above is excerpted from Jurgen Ruesch and Weldon Kees' Nonverbal Communication, Notes on the Visual Perception of Human Relations, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1956, where I've lately found my rootless self rooting around.
The extraordinary interior photographs above show the Belgian Symbolist artist Fernand Khnoppf's (now unfortunately destroyed) Villa Khnopff on the Avenue des Courses, near the Bois de la Cambre, in Brussels. An article describing the house by Hélène Laillet, which was originally published in The Studio, LVII, December 1912, no. 237, p. 206 and The International Studio, XLVIII, January 1913, no. 191, p. 201, is found Here and is well worth reading.
Khnoppf' lived and worked alone in his meticulously kept mansion (the exterior appears above this note) without a companion or children. It's my kind of house, actually, and reminds me of interiors that my mother would also have found appealing or designed for our type of family living. I suppose it's not for everyone and it's a far cry from the space I inhabit now.
I personally have no design talent whatsoever; I can't make a room comfortable or practical, let alone add any flair or aesthetic savor to an interior space. (My mother's considerable gifts in that regard were passed on to my brother, I think.)
But I wonder, in terms of Ruesch and Kees' analysis, if what we aspire to but do not create ourselves also conveys significant clues as to the nonverbal skills or qualities of the "imagining inhabitants." I just don't know.
Apart from Khnoppf's masterpiece, I think my favorite interior ever was the standard junior suite accommodation formerly (I haven't been there in years, so I'm assuming there have been changes) offered by the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. The suite was visually perfect in all respects -- straight and curved lines all in place, soothing and enlivening colors rightly arrayed and arranged, exquisite textures, order reigning. The only problem was that if you moved around in the room at all, if you displaced a single item from its assigned position, you wrecked the place. I occasionally had two or three week stays there and I was constantly cleaning my own room. Those were the days (after a fashion).
