Safety and Comfort
WRITTEN BY: MICHELLE SILLS | OCTOBER 9, 2023
Chicago Marathon from the apartment.
Today, I sat peering out my window, watching the Chicago marathon runners swiftly going by. With little to do and some food to make for the upcoming week, the temporary isolation gave me time to meditate on a project I worked on this past year, The Legend of the Prairie Mother. A whimsical blend of architecture and a bio-cultural manifesto gave us this rare opportunity to explore a poignant problem in our world with blue-sky thinking. It reminded me of some critical questions and issues in our world and how we can solve them. The most significant question is how we can, as a human civilization, put the Earth’s needs first while progressing our current way of living and cultivating and encouraging a reciprocal relationship with the land while also serving ourselves.
Since the beginning of its history, architecture has been about providing a psychological safety net. Our ancient ancestors lived in caves and huts that protected and provided shelter from the unyielding world around them. Safety through shelter might be a key component of our evolutionary history, and at a small scale, not disruptive of the natural order. This concept reminds me of a cocoon, a refuge, a place where we should feel devoid of any harm. But a more profound question arose: what does safety mean? Does it mean being protected from the elements? Is it about being shielded from external threats? To me, safety is about feeling protected and being assured that no matter what, this structure, building, or home will guard me.
All these thoughts were interrupted by the jarring news of an attack on innocent Israeli citizens. Such incidents force me to reevaluate my definition and feelings associated with safety. Living in a privileged, free country, I often take our security for granted. A common way of life for people in Israel and Palestine is to have a safe room built into their house, usually the room the children sleep in at night. To me, this feels like just a band-aid to a much larger safety conversation—can architecture genuinely provide the level of safety these civilians need? Where our architecture can only protect us so much—whether it be a natural catastrophic event or an attack from other civilizations—how can we work with the tumultuous outside forces rather than against them to negotiate a better shield of safety?
Even living in a country generally considered safer than the borders of Palestine and Israel still begs the question—do we ever feel safe, or is there an underlying sense of unease, even here in the United States? Perhaps it’s our inherent evolutionary nature, where, at one time, trusting outsiders might have meant life or death. When I walk down the streets of Chicago, passing countless strangers, I can’t help but consider how each of them might perceive their own sense of safety. Do they feel bonded by perceived commonalities in their local community, thus creating a psychological safety net in shared values and interests? Or do they NOT feel safe and are putting on a front to exude a false sense of confidence?
Our massive strides in industrialization, while making our lives comfortable, might not necessarily make us feel safer. Perhaps comfort in excess has become our primary focus, sidelining the genuine need for safety—and this has become our downfall in modern society. With more comfort comes less desire to challenge oneself, fueling a false sense of safety, and a pleasant affect takes over, pushing actual safety to the side. Some might argue that being too comfortable is detrimental, and genuine growth and gratitude might come from embracing moments of discomfort. Safety and comfort in battling for a top position in our post-modern era might be the cornerstone of my upcoming project. Perhaps there’s something here where we perceive comfort as safety, creating a false and problematic narrative of our wants versus our needs.
I hope that if we stick to the basic needs of architecture, we can achieve a more harmonious relationship with the world around us, removing excess from our lives and focusing on what truly matters. For us to truly feel safe and at peace, maybe it’s time for a radical cultural shift. Not just in the superficial sense, like relocating our homes closer to our workplaces or choosing a more eco-friendly mode of transportation. But something more profound. It might just come down to reassessing what we truly need from our built environments and allowing nature to fill in the gaps—providing us with the ultimate balance between our basic needs and wants.
