A Holistic Perspective of the Relationship of Humans and Architectural Space with Focus on Parapsychology

Although environmental psychology has resulted in a better understanding of the human-environment transactions for architects, this understanding have been limited to materialistic and physical effects based on reductionist views of the materialistic science. This level of reductionism affects our understanding of human-environment transactions, and can also result in neglecting the non-physical effects that are not explainable in pure physical terms. Therefore, it can be argued that familiarity with behavioral models that go beyond the materialistic limitations including the models which parapsychology suggests can offer a better understanding of the transcendental relationships of human and environment, and in particular with architectural space. Based on this observation the main questions of this study are as follows: 1) which are the key factors in human-environment transactions based on a parapsychological view? 2) How a parapsychological view of human-environment transaction can complement the classical view of environmental psychology? In this paper, we present a theoretical framework that can enable a deeper understanding of human-environment transactions based on the facts and theories of parapsychology. This research is based on logical argumentation, and because of its fundamental nature the focus of research has been more on the literature and theoretical arguments. The results show that the key shared concepts between architecture and parapsychology which can help us to better understand human-environment transactions include the field concepts of place memory, place energy, form and proactive consciousness, and the mechanism of resonance is the mechanism of choice for field communications, including correlations that are independent of time and physical distance. Based on these concepts, we present two conceptual models of this complementary view to compensate for the effects that are neglected in classical environmental psychology, and to reach a holistic view of the relationship between humans and architectural space. The results of this study can be useful for both architects and psychologists who are interested in holistic studies of environmental effects.