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How does architecture evoke fear?
A low-key haunted house guide for Spooky Season
Claustrophobia
This one is a classic. Small, tight spaces percolate your anxiety and induce a depressive state. If you place your walls right, you might induce a sense of dread and desperation.
Dead Ends
Humans have strong feelings about ends, even mentally produced ones. So you can imagine how terrifying it can be when you find yourself against a dead end. There’s nowhere to go but to where you came from. It can stress you in multiple ways,
1 - question your capacity of wayfinding, making you feel more lost than you actually are.
2 - lose track of your own location, which sounds similar to the previous, but it’s actually more to your mind’s sense of awareness and understanding of context.
#1 affects the ego. #2 triggers survival instinct. Both can be real scary.
This is a great Segway to transition into culturally inspired fears that get heightened by architecture.
In lieu of dead ends.
A dark alley-like space
— now imagine if it’s a dead end
- We associate these conditions with danger, theft, and murder. People get found lifeless. Things jump out behind the dumpster.
Big objects within an even larger space.
— Or anywhere that you could potentially hide behind without being noticed.
While grand, large rooms full of colonnades can inspire uneasiness. Your view has permanent, almost infinite blocks…
Infinite spaces
- the concept of infinity is used both by science and the mystic and because of it can induce fear in multifaceted ways.
