As Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us”. His words are endorsed by the field of environmental psychology – the study of the way our physical environment affects our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. You might be wondering what this has to do with designer radiators for your home, just a minute!
Environmental psychology tells us that your behaviour is immediately influenced by your setting, so even something as simple as the arrangement of furniture in the room will influence the way you interact with others in that room. For instance, if you have the chairs and sofas facing each other, you’ve set up the room to encourage discussion; if everything faces the TV, then you’re discouraging interaction between the people in the room.
It’s not just about how people react within the setting. ‘Place identity’ is about how a place’s components satisfy you in a range of different ways – biologically, socially, psychologically and culturally – it reflects and defines your values, attitudes, feelings and beliefs. In other words, you incorporate your sense of place into the larger concept of self which incorporates your memories, conceptions, interpretations, ideas and feelings.
As a person lives and creates memories within a place, they build an attachment which brings about a sense of belonging and purpose. Or, as psychologist Karen Lollar put it, “The house is not merely a possession or a structure of unfeeling walls. It is an extension of my physical body and my sense of self that reflects who I was, am, and want to be.” Which is why having a beautiful home is vital for your sense of identity and behaviour.
Future attachments
In the past few years, environmental psychologists have observed that technology is bringing about huge changes in our relationship with our possessions. We can now use social media to tell people about who we are and what we like, so physical possessions are less important. And we no longer need to fill our rooms with records, CDs and books as we now store music and literature in the Cloud. And this will, literally, give us more space on our walls.
This helps to explain the growing need for designer radiators for your home, which is no longer the utilitarian lumps of metal you once had to have. Your radiator is now an integral part of your interior design which reflects your personality, style and values. In short, by incorporating designer radiators into your interior design, you’ll be turning your house into your home.
Visit one of our radiator showrooms in Bristol, St Albans, Clapham, Leamington Spa, Brighton and Islington to see our beautiful collection for yourself.
