Why We Live in Cubes
Why We Live in Cubes
Come home with me. Not literally. Just in your mind.
You leave wherever you’ve been. Work, maybe. Or the store. Or some other cube where you spent your hours. You walk or drive through streets lined with rectangles. Buildings rising in right angles. Windows, doors, signs, all straight lines meeting at ninety degrees. The geometry is so consistent you stopped noticing it decades ago.
You arrive at your home. What shape is it?
In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it’s a cube. Or a collection of cubes joined together. Four walls perpendicular to the floor. Ceiling parallel to the ground. Every corner a perfect right angle. You step inside this box, close the door behind you, and spend most of your remaining hours there. Sleeping in a rectangular bed. Staring at rectangular screens. Eating at rectangular tables.
Sometimes I catch it at night. I’m lying in a rectangle, staring into another rectangle, and my mind is still trying to ‘solve’ the day. Then I step outside, look at a tree, and the problem dissolves into a shape with no edges.
I’ve been thinking about this for years. Watching it. The geometry of human habitation. How it shapes us in ways we never consciously examine.
Nature doesn’t build cubes. Look anywhere outside human construction. Trees spiral upward, branches fractalizing into smaller branches into twigs into leaves. Rivers curve and meander, following the path of least resistance through landscapes that slope and undulate. Mountains rise in irregular peaks. Caves form in organic chambers.
Even crystals follow strict geometry, but the cube is not the default shape of living systems.
Birds make rounded nests. Bees construct hexagonal honeycombs, a shape that maximizes storage while minimizing material. Spiders spin circular webs. Termites build mounds with curved chambers and natural ventilation. Animals that burrow create tunnels that bend and twist.
But humans, somewhere along the line, decided to live in boxes.
Why Boxes Won
There’s a practical argument, of course. Cubes are easy to build with straight materials. They stack efficiently. They tile together without gaps. You can calculate their volume with simple math. All true.
But efficiency for what purpose? And at what psychological cost?
The Cube as Teacher
Here’s what I’ve observed over years of paying attention to this. When you spend your life inside linear spaces, you start thinking in straight lines. Not by teaching. By exposure.
The cube teaches without speaking. It teaches limits.
Think about the spaces designed specifically for control. Prison cells. Interrogation rooms. Cubicles in open-plan offices. Hospital rooms. The architecture of limitation is often rectangular.
Not accidental. The shapes work on the psyche. They contain. They restrict. They train.
Curves, Domes, and Sacred Space
Ancient peoples understood something about this that we’ve forgotten. Sacred spaces were often circular. Domed. Curved. The yurt of the steppes, round and portable, a miniature cosmos you could carry with you. The igloo, a sphere of snow protecting against the cold. The roundhouse of Celtic peoples, community gathered in a circle rather than sorted into corners.
Temples reached upward with arches and spirals. Gothic cathedrals pulled the eye up through pointed curves toward something beyond the ceiling. Mosques centered on domes that represented the heavens.
These shapes weren’t arbitrary. They often functioned as tools that guided attention, mood, and meaning.
Corners and Folk Memory
In some languages, corners literally name the angle. Folk superstition about corners exists for a reason people may not be able to explain.
I’m not saying burn your house down. That’s not the point. The point is to notice. Notice how the space you inhabit shapes the thoughts you think. Notice how hard it is to feel cyclical time when every surface around you screams linearity. Notice the subtle claustrophobia that has nothing to do with square footage.
The Shared Mind in the Angles
The egregore of modern civilization, the shared mind we live inside, hides in these angles. In the grid of city streets laid out with rulers. In the rectangular screens we stare at for hours each day. In the boxes we call rooms, apartments, offices, stores.
The geometry reinforces the philosophy. Linear progress. Straight paths. Right answers at right angles to wrong ones.
Some part of you remembers curves. Some part knows that existence spirals rather than marches in straight lines. That part feels cramped in the cube, even if you can’t articulate why.
How to Deprogram the Room
I’ve started seeking out different spaces. The forest where trees don’t grow in rows. The riverbank where water curves around stones. Old churches with arches and domes.
Even sitting under a tree with branches spreading in all directions above, there’s a different quality to thought. A different relationship with time.
The walls of your home are just walls. They keep the weather out and the heat in. They serve their function. But what they’ve done to our perception, over generations, over centuries of sleeping and waking inside boxes, that’s something else entirely.
The cube isn’t nature. It’s policy. And policy can be questioned, even when it’s so universal it became invisible.
FAQ
Does architecture affect psychology?
Yes. Repeated environments train attention, mood, and behavior through exposure. You absorb cues from space long before you form opinions about it.
Why are most rooms rectangular?
Straight lines are easier to build, measure, and repeat at scale. Rectangles tile efficiently, which makes them perfect for mass housing and modern planning.
Are circular or curved spaces better for wellbeing?
Often, they feel less restrictive. Curves can reduce the sense of being boxed in and can shift attention from rigid edges to flow, but design details matter.
What is sacred geometry in simple terms?
It’s the idea that shapes influence perception and meaning. In practice, it’s how architecture can direct attention, emotion, and the sense of what’s “bigger” than the room.
How can I change my space without rebuilding my home?
Add curves and organic forms: plants with spreading branches, circular light, soft textiles, curved furniture lines, and more time outside the grid, even if it’s just under a tree.
This is the third essay in a series exploring our relationship with time, perception, and the structures we’ve inherited without questioning. Next: the difference between living as a vibration and living as a line.