This article was originally published in the Architecture Snob magazine, issue December 2022.
Today, we spend about eighty to ninety percent of our time inside buildings. We now also know that our brains and bodies are affected by contact with architecture, and the interest in understanding the environment’s impact on human wellbeing is growing.
There are many new studies on this topic released every year, and architectural studios are employing the services of human experience researchers and consultants.
This article was originally published in Polish language, in the IARP magazine (Chamber of Architects of the Republic of Poland), issue Z:A 86.
In the first part of this article, we talked about the pioneering individuals and institutions that create new knowledge between architecture and neuroscience. We have also described the brain systems important for understanding the experience of architecture.
In this second part, we will look at how architects can use this knowledge to design spaces that enable human flourishing.
Previously, we saw that although some aspects of experiencing architecture are an individual matter, the activation of many structures and brain circuits is universal to most people.
Evolutionary psychology explains this is because humans and their predecessors spent millions of years in the same natural conditions (so-called “environment of evolutionary adaptation”).
Today, we use the same brains, mostly unchanged in the last two hundred thousand years, to experience man-made architecture.
This article was originally published in Polish language, in the IARP magazine (Chamber of Architects of the Republic of Poland), issue Z:A 86.
The twentieth century was a time of progress in structural engineering. It resulted in taller, more solid, and technologically innovative buildings. However, recent decades have seen an increased interest in the human experience of space.
Today, people spend about eighty to ninety percent of their lives indoors. This fact makes it crucial to investigate the relationship between the experience of architecture and its impact on human health and well-being.
Until recently, the study of the effects of architecture on humans was the domain of environmental psychology. But in the past few years, we have gotten new tools to study the neural mechanisms underlying the perception of art and architecture.
I started as a psychology student at a university in Wales. I enjoyed the course a lot, but I had no idea where it would lead me. I have always been drawn to topics not yet categorized into specific subfields, to phenomena not yet explained.
At that time, what interested me most were seemingly random questions. Things like why the Vietnam War veterans addicted to heroin stopped quickly after returning to the US. Or why working in a cozy café might be more productive for some than at a tranquil library.
In my third year, when we started designing our own research, I came across the term “environmental psychology.” And it turned out that this field perfectly captured all the questions I found intriguing but couldn’t categorize. Discovering that it had a name allowed me to dive deeper.
We now know that the way we design places can influence how attached people will get to them. Multiple factors take part in this. For example, the meaning of the place for a specific person, the level of emotional connection, and the quality of what we call “cognitive maps”.
These maps are built in our mind through physical exploration of an environment and the activation of “place cells” within the hippocampal formation, located in the medial temporal lobe of the brain. Cognitive maps are both the basis for our understanding of spatial relationships and drive our ability to navigate our environment.
The way we think about designing our cities and about the purpose of architecture is changing rapidly. In the Anthropocene era, where human activity is now determining the health of our planet, we face new challenges to solve every day.
Compared to the past, building our environments in this age is more complex in some respects and simpler in others. Here we refer to simplicity in ethics as simplicity for conscience, drawing on the philosophical teachings of the Iranian religion Zoroastrianism with its threefold path to follow ‘good thoughts, good words, and good deeds as an example for generating simplicity in conscience.
Ruch & Partners architects Ltd. Chesa Madalena. Image: Ruch & Partners architects Ltd.
Some time ago, I participated in an architectural educational trip to Switzerland. Starting from Saint Etienne, France, we would travel to a large part of the country to visit several architectural works. Among them, the Thermes de Vals by Peter Zumthor, the Rolex Learning Center of SANAA, the Kirchner Museum of Gigon / Gruyer, and the work of the Swiss Hans Jorg Ruch, in which the architect himself would guide us.
We started our tour at Mr. Ruch’s small architectural office, where 4 or 5 people worked calmly against the backdrop of the mountainous Swiss landscape. During the day, we visited his various local works, mainly in the Swiss countryside. At the end of the day, we arrived at a historic residence in a small Swiss village, Zuoz.
I still did not suspect that this would be one of the most intense architectural experiences of my life.
In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in understanding how we are affected by the built environment, on various scales from rooms to buildings, all the way up to the largest cities.
When Brains Meet Buildings argues that cognitive and neuroscience can greatly increase that understanding – learning through both neuroscience in its strict sense of the study of brains and through cognitive science, the study of mind and behavior without a necessary concern for “how the brain does it.”
The book offers a riff on a famous speech by John Fitzgerald Kennedy: “Ask not only what neuroscience can do for architecture, but also what architecture can do for neuroscience.”
Originally published in Officelayout magazine No. 186, July-September edition, 2021. Published with permission of the Officelayout editorial board.
With contribution of Martina Frattura & Natalia Olszewska.
The combination of neuroscientific research findings exploring neuronal processes behind mental states, and new approaches in lighting design, becomes an important strand of innovation that truly places an individual’s well-being at the center of the lighting and product design
Neuroscience has become a key innovation factor in the field of lighting design as it makes it possible to correlate human physiological and neurophysiological characteristics, with the architectural features and environmental conditions of the context in which a person is located.
Understanding of brain workings can make an enormous difference in architectural design and, also so, in lighting design, because the possibility of identifying more clearly the factors affecting people’s psycho-physical states, leads to the definition of new evaluation criteria on which design choices can be based.
In recent years, smart cities have dominated the talk about the built environment with terms like IoT, big data, and digital twins. But there is a much greater need when it comes to improving our cities – the one of people and communities in place. And we call the approach which addresses this need – Conscious Cities.
Conscious Cities are not separated from smart cities though. They improve smart cities by emphasizing inclusion and wellbeing, supported by a scientific understanding of the psychological and social aspects of the person-place interactions.
