Design psychologist examines the ways our pasts influence the choices we make in our living spaces.
By: Dara-Lyn Shrager
Design psychologist Toby Israel lives on a quiet street in Princeton. Her house looks a lot like the other houses in her neighborhood. But stepping into her kitchen, I find myself in the heart of her home and her work.
Her recently published book, "Some Place Like Home," introduces the new field of design psychology. Using interviews with three famous architects, including Michael Graves, Ms. Israel examines the ways in which our pasts influence the choices we make in our living spaces.
In an alcove at the end of her kitchen, Ms. Israel welcomes her guests to climb onto "the spirit seat" and begin to consider the relationship between the space we live in and the concept of "home." The spirit seat is actually a hollow tree trunk, six-feet long and at least three-feet wide. The top of the trunk has been carved to accommodate a down futon so that the overall effect is a giant, comfy kitchen bed.
"Would you like to try it out?" Ms. Israel asks me, moments after I arrive at her home.
Lying on my back, looking through the skylights overhead, I think about Sleeping Beauty.
"I used to play in the woods as a child," Ms. Israel reveals.
"We all have an environmental autobiography," she says. "It’s the personal past history of place that we replicate or reject in the space where we live."
In her book, Ms. Israel spends time with Michael Graves at his Princeton home. Together, they discover something astounding about his internationally-recognized design style.
As a child in Indianapolis, Graves remembers visiting the stockyards with his father and being captivated by their appearance.
"An exaggerated building with great elevated passageways all made of wood which crisscrossed in the air … It was not just the passageways, but that you looked down at the animals in their pens." ("Some Place Like Home," Page 24.)
Mr. Graves’ home in Princeton, known as The Warehouse, was originally built as a furniture repository for Princeton University. It possesses the same organization of long, thin rooms as the stockyards. And the same vaulted ceiling space. And an almost uncanny resemblance in architectural style to those animal pens.
Interviews with Andres Duany and Charles Jenks, also world-renowned architects, yielded similar results. That is to say that elements of the past are present in many aspects of their professional work and personal choices for living space.
In Mr. Duany’s case, his childhood in Cuba and the simple Cuban peasant houses he remembers there reappear, in various forms and interpretations, in his work.
Mr. Jenks, whose grandparents lived at 1 Mount Vernon Place in Baltimore, recreated versions of the staircase and dome from that famous landmark in several of his building projects.
"In the mythology of my grandfather’s house there was the staircase and dome that were so important and when I went back to Baltimore (to visit Mount Vernon Place) I thought I’ve also done this, but I thought rather simply, ‘Mine’s better.’" ("Some Place Like Home," Page 78).
Putting this new psychology to work, Ms. Israel purchased her home in Princeton five years ago because it closely resembled the home of relatives in Englewood with whom she had shared many happy childhood memories.
"I was able to find a house that looked like the one where my cousins lived," Ms. Israel explains. "And then I was able to draw on stories of my grandmother’s childhood in Hungary to make my kitchen the kind of warm and welcoming place I had heard so much about from my family."
She even managed to recover and restore a statue of a young woman that had belonged to her grandmother. This important link to her family’s past perches gracefully at the end of Israel’s "spirit seat."
As a private consultant to designers, house hunters, homeowners and architects, Ms. Israel brings the experience of designing space to a new plane. As co-supervisor of curriculum and instruction at The Charter High School for Architecture and Design in Philadelphia, she helps students focus on the importance of design.
Her work now takes her all over the world, where Ms. Israel she lectures in the emerging field of design psychology. And people are beginning to listen very closely.
"The tragedy of Sept. 11 underscored, as few events have in our history, the crucial and psychological importance that buildings hold for us." ("Some Place Like Home," Page IX).
Toby Israel’s new book, "Some Place Like Home," is available at Micawber Books, Barnes & Noble, the Michael Graves Design Store and can be ordered through www.wiley.com.
For more information or to schedule a consultation, contact Toby Israel Consulting Inc. at (609) 683-1317 or email [email protected].