Mind in Architecture

Whereas allegory and metaphor are perfectly valid exercises in architectural design, architects at times need to be reminded that people initially do not experience their habitats in this way. The general ambience of a perceptual field is what people first encounter, in large part through our peripheral vision, as Juhani Pallasmaa has noted. And biological judgments are already being made by such things as the touch of a door handle or handrail, the proportioning of stair risers and treads, the texture of the floor material, the resonance or ambience of the spaces, the hand of fabrics, the smell of materials, and the presence of natural light. These biological responses occur before someone stands back and reflects on the overall experience.

What any object affords is the result of the nature of our bodies and brains — our perceptual apparatus, or neural binding capacities, our affective responses, our motor programs — as they interactively engage patterns and structures of our environments. So, for a human being with fingers, hands, and arms, a ceramic cup affords pick-up-ability, whereas for an ant it might provide climb-up-ability.

In addition to “domesticating” physical space for human use and grasp, architecture “tames” time for human understanding.

What we do depends on what we have perceived, but what we perceive depends on what we do — and our actions include exploration in search of knowledge of the world relevant to our unfolding goals and plans.

You do not get to eternity by turning your back on time, but by going through the region of the temporal. You do not get to infinity by turning your back on the finite, but on the contrary by embracing the finite, going into and passing through it — to emerge on the other side.

A clear example of how knowledge from neuroscience can, and should, change the design decisions made by architects is in the design of special places in most hospitals called NICUs — the intensive care units that specialize in the treatment of ill or premature newborn infants. … The NICU environment provides challenges as well as benefits. The protected microenvironment includes continual bright lights, a high noise level, reduced physical contact, and painful procedures that unduly stress the infants. From the early years, it was reported that children who were cared for in NICUs grew up with a higher proportion of disabilities, including cerebral palsy and learning difficulties, than normal children.

As architects, we ostensibly shape matter — which sometimes behaves like a particle, at other times like a wave. Yet, like classical physicists, we tend to address the dimension of our work that behaves as if it were a particle. The subtler dimensions, the layers that engage emotions, provoke imagination, empathy and social contact, tend to be invisible, irreducible, and therefore undervalued, overlooked, and even denied.

Beholders’ eyes not only capture information about the shape, direction, and texture of the cuts or strokes, by means of embodied simulation, they emulate the actual motor expression the artist used when creating the artwork.

But there are subtler instances in which a deeper understanding of human biology affords a qualitatively superior solution. Consider, for example, the ascendance of the door lever as a design imperative imposed by biology. Seen from a strictly biomechanical perspective, a door lever is a far better tool than a traditional round doorknob for opening the latch. Pressure to adopt this superior solution came largely from recognition that it could benefit people with certain biological limitations (“physical disabilities”). Not surprisingly, the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) has mandated the use of door levers because their design is easy to grasp with one hand and does not require “tight grasping or pinching or twisting of the wrist to operate.”

Repetition gives us rest, because we are not required to scrutinize every part of it. Comfort derives from ease of visual processing. Wilde suggests that the regularity of background sets the stage for truly imaginative work, for something new to emerge.

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