The Great Outdoors
As we close in on July 4th, many of us find ourselves thinking about bbq’s, fireworks, family and friends. There is magic to the day and its celebratory status in the world of holidays. No day says outdoors more than July 4th. In honor of the day that connects us all to the great outdoors, I thought I’d focus on what it is about outdoors, and more importantly the connection of outdoor to indoors, that makes us feel good.
I recently read an article on today’s homebuyer preferences and surprisingly it wasn’t the usual list of predictable attributes. Instead, it focused on consumers shopping for a better version of their lives and themselves. Feelings, emotional connectivity, and lifestyle are motivating homebuyers more than technical attributes. Location, price, finishes and the other rational aspects that influenced purchasing decisions are now being overshadowed by more sensory things, and the top of the list is outdoor space. Patios, terraces, gardens and covered outdoor rooms all rank high when it comes to this.
What is it about the outdoors and specifically the indoors connecting to the outdoors that heightens the senses in almost every human being? I have a theory, and most I’ve explained it to seem to concur. Whether you subscribe to creationism or evolutionism, the theory remains the same. Adam and Eve lived in a garden and Cavemen lived under rock overhangs. Long before we inhabited structures (something built by humans) we lived under the sky, exposed to the sun and sheltered only by what nature had to offer – trees, caves, rocks etc. For thousands of years humans inhabited this Earth unconstrained by walls and roofs.
It wasn’t until Gobekli Tepe (9500 BC) that humankind began to understand shelter and its ability to defend us from enemies and the elements. As structures evolved, we became more protected and, in the process, less connected to the outdoors. From the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Greece to the Medieval era of castles to the palaces of the Renaissance and finally the Industrial Revolution, structures functioned as shelter and became barriers between man and the outdoors. Over thousands of years, we became less freely connected to nature and more bound to dark interior shelter. We traded protection from enemies and elements to isolation resulting in an entirely new and non-natural way of living.
It's fair to say that the outdoors and the positive feeling we have when we’re connected to it is in our DNA. There is a reason we feel good when we are outdoors and then walk into a home that keeps us visually connected and living to the outdoors. Homes no longer need to separate us from what is innate in all of us, and the homes that achieve this are the homes people seek today. This has become a driving philosophy in all we pursue and design at Bassenian Lagoni Architects.