Unpacking the Social Space Playbook: Key Insights for Hospitality Design
Our built environments have a profound impact on how we think, feel, and behave, often in ways we don’t fully realise. While modern advancements in technology and design have transformed the spaces we inhabit, the hardwiring of our Stone Age ancestors remains deeply ingrained in our behaviours and preferences. From the symmetry of natural forms to the interplay of light and texture, evolutionary psychology explains why certain spaces evoke comfort, inspiration, or even unease. By understanding these ancient patterns and their influence on human behaviour, designers can create environments that align with our innate instincts while embracing modern aesthetics and functionality. This interplay of past and present provides valuable insights into the art and science of designing for human behaviour.
Evolutionary Hardwiring
At the core of it all, humans are actually far more similar than they would like to believe. In truth, no one is entirely unique. While we may express ourselves in ways that are perceived as unique and look very different externally, internally, by and large, we are all quite similar and motivated by similar triggers and social conditioning.
Evolutionary psychology holds that although human beings today inhabit a thoroughly modern world of space exploration and virtual realities, they do so with the ingrained mentality of Stone Age hunter-gatherers. Homo sapiens emerged on the Savannah Plain some 200,000 years ago, yet according to evolutionary psychology, people today still seek those same traits that made survival possible then.
With agriculture emerging approximately 10,000 years ago, it suddenly allowed people to accumulate wealth, live in larger numbers and greater concentrations, and freed many from hand-to-mouth subsistence. This agricultural period spawned a relatively quick transformation into modern civilisation and ushered in a big impact of advanced technology and communications on our social behaviour. Evolutionary psychologists argue, however, that there has been no consistent new environmental pressure on people that required further evolution. No eruptions of volcanoes or glaciers have so changed the weather or food supply that people’s brain circuitry has been forced to evolve. Thus, evolutionary psychologists argue that although the world has changed, human beings have not.
In short...
"You can take the person out of the Stone Age, but not the Stone Age out of the person."
As far as our habitat goes, consider that for 99% of human evolution and history, we lived intimately involved with the natural ebb and flow of nature. This means not only its dangers but also its proportion, natural light, textures, tonalities, colours, and smells. Our built environment has only been around for 1% of our evolutionary development. Thus, principles of nature are embedded or coded within us all in fascinating ways. This begins to explain why certain volumes, proportions of space, and light have such a profound impact on us, often without us realising what caused it.
Alan Lightman, in his book The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew, claims that nature’s impact is far more profound than we may have understood before. One only needs to think about the petals of a flower, the wings of a butterfly, or even the symmetry in our outer body appearances to begin to understand the impact nature has on how we think visually. Symmetrical objects and images fit neatly into the patterns that our brains recognise as familiar.
“The architecture of our brains was born from the same trial and error, the same energy principles, the same pure mathematics that happens in flowers, jellyfish, and Higgs particles.”
This idea is echoed by Johan Wagemans, an experimental psychologist from Belgium who specialises in visual perception and how our brains constantly organise the incoming flow of information. He holds that symmetry is one of the major principles driving the self-organisation of the brain.
On the other hand, though, we easily bore from symmetry overload. Johan Wagemans found that although our brains favour the order of symmetry, it is not necessarily more beautiful. This is where the Japanese concept of Fukinsei, the idea of creating balance in the composition or “counterweight” of dissimilar objects, comes into play. This principle has equal bearing on art arrangements on a wall as it does on the way we lay out spaces and furniture. There is an “optimal level of stimulation,” says Wagemans. “Not too complex, not too simple, not too chaotic, and not too orderly.”
With all of this in mind, we have created a bit of a playbook of items to consider and specific behaviours to be aware of within the context of the social space of Hospitality Design.
We have identified
The eight primary social behavioural considerations,
The eight primary or preferred layout considerations,
and
The eight factors that impact what food restaurant guests would order.
We will cover those three topics over the course of our next three newsletters, released every Friday.
Information Reference Index:
The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew
How Hardwired is Human Behavior?
Why Do We Get So Much Pleasure from Symmetry?
Detection of Visual Symmetries
Evolutionary Psychology and the Built Environment
The Psychology of Natural Design
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