Evocative Objects: the Role of Architecture in Creating a Habit of Mind

Abstract

The aim of this article is to ask how architectural spaces work on those who occupy them. Using the example of the carved wooden roof bosses in the Upper Hall of Jesus College, Cambridge, I will investigate how objects could have been used to implement and enhance a late medieval/early renaissance “habit of mind.” It is my belief that certain objects could be defined as evocative objects because they evoke ways of being in certain spaces. In other words, they provide a framework, or a stage setting for particular actions. I argue that the carved bosses prompted the maintenance of specific actions that would have been known from other parts of college life. In doing so they sustained the established relationships among the community of fellows, juvenes, and staff. Among the scholars shared ways of being created a common experience given meaning by the academic standards of their day. This organization of categories of experience into truths created a version of shared reality which was central to the college as a social community.