Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 16 Number 3, December 2015
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Robinson, Sarah and Juhani Pallasmaa (Eds). Mind in Architecture. Neuroscience, Embodiment, and the Future of Design. Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press, 2015. 272pp., 47 color illustrations, 24 b&w illustrations. ISBN 9780262028875. Hardcover £24.95
Reviewed by
Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
This book comprises a collection of essays written by architects, neuroscientists, and scholars that account for an introspection of architecture as art and as science. The authors converged here analyze the state of the art in contemporary research on architecture and design, offering different insights from a variety of disciplines. The structure of the book is composed of eleven chapters and an introduction by Sarah Robinson, one of the editors alongside Juhani Pallasmaa.
Since the 1st century BCE, when Vitruvius, considered to be the first Roman architect from whom there are surviving records, already averred the art of building and insisted on the importance of sciences, such as optics and cognitive processes of perception, in relation to architecture, this discipline has evolved gradually. In the 17th century, Francis Bacon took this relation further and formally talked about architecture as a science itself, a statement that would be inquired by different personalities from distinct areas of expertise, such as the architect Le Camus de Mézières, the anatomist Claude Perrault, or the philosopher John Dewey. Bötticher has even regarded architecture in the 19th century as a symbolic process in which “ornamental vocabulary must be crafted into a language” to represent an “ideal organism” (12) and a large body of theory was developed by Gottfried Semper. The 20th century saw the emergence of new building materials and a new way of conceiving design, as well as a strong belief of the power of architecture to influence social change.
More recently, architecture has been closely associated with neuroscience. As Mallgrave points out “the word ‘aesthetics’ indeed comes from the Greek aesthetikos, which simply means ‘sense of perception’ or ‘to perceive’” (21). It is not surprising then that architects find it essential to investigate how design has an effect on our neural system and cognitive processes. In the first pages of Mind in Architecture, research carried out in cognitive linguistics, developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, is evoked in the form of the conceptual metaphor THE BODY IS A BUILDING, whose sense goes beyond the verbal spectrum and hones in upon our experiencing of the world. Buildings are agents, “breathing entities” that acquire human abilities, like that of protecting, and make us conscious of our bodily structures (THE BODY IS A CONTAINER, spatial orientation, balance, forces, motion). This book examines the relationship between architecture and mind, and explores the future potentiality of design from an interdisciplinary point of view.
The book commences with an essay by Harry Francis Mallgrave, who delves into the origins of architecture. According to the author, the built environment affects us in such a way that our cognitive development is influenced, as well as our sensorial experience. The discovery of mirror neurons in the late 20th century has been crucial in order to understand how we judge a work of architecture and why we consider it beautiful.
Philosopher Mark Johnson posits his theory on meaning-making process, best known as embodied meaning, which is based on the premise that meaning is created through bodily movement in relation to the built environment and its structure. He reflects on how neuroscience and neuroimaging allow us to actually see what, how, and when the activation of functional clusters of neurons is triggered. Seeing an object, interacting with it, or just thinking of it involves the neural simulation of sensory-motor and affective processes and, therefore, shapes our conceptualizations of the space we dwell.
Juhani Pallasmaa, architectural theorist, practitioner, and coeditor of the book, highlights the need for neuroscience as a field that can enlighten “the interaction of architecture and the human mind” (51), something that has been neglected under the scope of rationality and utilitarianism. As he puts it, the design of a building has the power of transforming a physical space into an existential and lived space; he, as the architect, becomes part of the experience; the building invites us to experience the world through it, not with each sense separately but rather with one’s whole being.
Michael Arbib, a theorist on computational neuroscience, divides the relationship between neuroscience and architecture into two sections: on the one hand, he talks about the “neuroscience of the experience of architecture” (82), and tries to answer to what extent neuroscience can shed light on how an architect designs a building for those whose experience is completely different from his/her own; on the other hand, he puts neuromorphic architecture on the stage and hypothesizes that the building could be a cognitive entity and thus possess a brain.
Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist exposes the capabilities of the two hemispheres of the brain and focuses on the importance of paying attention in order to understand how we perceive the world. He explains that the right hemisphere cognizes things as a whole and that this is the way we should be looking at architecture. He diminishes the urge upon studying how the brain works and advocates for an understanding of the brain as “embodied and embedded in culture, as are we” (117).
John Paul Eberhard, founder of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, talks about the double helix of architecture and neuroscience, from which he draws his theory on how this relationship is to be discovered, rather than construed. He ascertains that everything is in our DNA blueprint: genes establish the structure of the brain which, in turn, determines our behavior and is altered by the built environment that surrounds us. Therefore, “architectural design changes our brain and our behavior” (135) and, consequently, the helix is primal and elemental.
Sarah Robinson, architect and coeditor of the book, utilizes the metaphor of buildings as extensions of our bodies to explain the importance of innate metaphoric thinking applied to architecture and the complex concept of the body and bodily engagement. She vindicates Gibson’s “Basic Orienting System” to disclose the manifold nature of our interaction with our environment and proposes a diversion from the paradigms of Western thought in order to fully appreciate the potentiality of research on cognitive and neuroscience in relation to architecture.
Vittorio Gallese, cognitive neuroscientist and one of the team members who discovered mirror neurons, and architect Alessandro Gattara submit an experimental aesthetic approach to the role played by cognitive neuroscience in architecture. They talk about the empathic body and intercorporeality, which is the realization of mirror neurons, as the main source of knowledge of others and of aesthetic experience. They conclude that further research is needed, especially on the emotional experience response of beholders in different architectonic spaces that have an impact on a daily basis, such as offices or retail stores.
Melissa Farling, FAIA and researcher, sustains Eberhard’s theory and asserts that research on neuroscience and architecture “has the potential to take an architect’s intuition to another level” (183), that of immersion in our environment. She is an advocate of sustainability and urbanism, and expounds about the necessity of a multidisciplinary education in which architects learn the importance of empathic connections. To evidence the relevance of neuroscience-architecture research, she explains some strategies that can be actually applied in different contexts, such as homes, schools, institutional facilities, and spiritual spaces.
Thomas D. Albright, current president of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, exposes architecture as a multifaceted source of information, just like the brain. According to him, our understanding of the brain and visual system, which is crucial to architectural experience, are still evolving, therefore new ways of thinking are to come. Ultimately, architects create with a sense of order because that is how our brain system is designed, thus our built environment reflects the way our perception works.
Scholar Alberto Pérez-Gómez immerses us in the historical evolution of philosophy in the last centuries and takes a close look at romantic philosophy, which has influenced greatly the way we conceive architecture nowadays. He expresses his conviction on the potential of cognitive sciences’ and phenomenology to provide future insights for architecture and supports the use of digital tools accompanied by a proper education on embodied perception of emotional and meaningful space.
Mind in Architecture gathers the voices of eminent architects and neuroscientists whose essays acquaint us with architecture as a science in which the energy of the body and the agency of the building (2) merge to render sapience on a revolutionary matter with latent power to increase awareness of our embodied mind and bodily experience. As stated throughout the book, meaning is relational and experiential, and neuroscience is the discipline that can elucidate how we feel and perceive the built environment and to what extent it affects us.