14) Architecture molds our minds.

We need a theory that explains why different populations have different architecture; we need to try to understand the kaleidoscope of different ways of living and thinking in different architectural settings. While architectural forms appear largely static, they continually change through our vision and use. I would not be surprised if our ways of thinking reflect the local architecture we grew up with. While identities link our inner ideas with the outer world, architecture links the outer world with our inner ideas.

In architecture and cities, we encounter the “other”, both in terms of people and objects. We see who others are, what they think, feel, and believe by what is expressed in buildings and places. Some of the most remarkable differences of neighborhoods revolve around the concepts of individualism versus community-building—whether spaces make their inhabitants consider themselves to be independent and self-contained or interconnected with others. These differences translate to a more collectivist or individualistic architectural mind-set.

Some architecture makes us more individualistic, prouder of success, more ambitious for personal growth, and less connected to others. Architecture fostering individualism tends to influence people to value personal success over group achievement. This search for self-validation can be seen in design as well as in the emphasis of people living in individualistic environments to stress personal property and freedom.

Where architecture fosters community, people tend to have a more collectivist and holistic mind-set. Living in a slum, for instance, requires far greater cooperation. Where poverty compels innovation, locals get together to help one family by improvising floor space enhancements. Our thinking may have ever been shaped by the kind of architecture that surrounded us. A skyscraper is vertical, a profoundly hierarchical structure, with the top always representing the best, the bottom the worst, and the taller the building the better. Buildings touch the way we think, feel, reason, and compare ourselves with people living elsewhere. They can make us sensitive to being looked down on, or they can boost our self-esteem. Values and identities are represented in all architecture and cities, and furthermore, some collective sets of beliefs are more apparent than others.

Until the invention of cities, humans had their eyes on the natural world around them. Their world included rivers, forests, animals, and plants. Today 90 percent of what we see is architecture, 90 percent of our time we spent inside architecture. We are surrounded by architecture. Architecture influences the way we see the world and understand it.