}uhani Pallasmaa

Towards a Neuroscience of Architecture:

Embodi ed Mind and Imagination
While the brain controls our behavior and genes control
the blueprint for the design and structure of the brain,
the environment can modulate the function of genes and,
ultimately, the structure of our brain. and therefore they
change our behavior. In planning the environments in
which we live. architectural design changes our brain and
behavior.'
[Fred Gage]
Architecture: An Impure Discipline
Architecture is a hybrid and "impure" discipline. The practice of ar-
chitecttue contains and fuses ingredients from conflicting and irrec-
oncilable categories such as material technologies and mental inten-
tions, construction and aesthetics, physical facts and cultural beliefs,
knowledge and dreams, past and future, means and ends. Besides its
truditional reliance on the tacit knowledge of timeless practices of con-
struction, architecture relies largely on theories and findings of other
meas of research and knowledge, instead of possessi ng an independent
theoretica l foundation of its own. During the past decades, architecture
has been viewed from various theoretical perspecti ves, provided by,
for instance, psychology, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics and an-
thropology as well as deconstructionist and phenomenological philoso-
phies, just to name a few. lt is evident that in the field of architecture,
scientific criteria or methods have mainly been applied in its technical,
physical and material aspects, whereas the mental realm has been left
to individual artistic intuition. On the other hand, the fast development
of computeri zed digital tedu1ologies have provided an entirely new
Juhoni Pollosmoo

horizon for archHectural production. 1n fact, these technologies seem
to have developed beyond our complete grasp of what really is the
essence in the interaction of digital technology and the innate nature of
our biologically grounded perception, experience and lived reality. Tn
the face of the miracles brought about by technical innovations, we tend
to underestimate, or entirely neglect, the miracles of life itself.
The complexity of our neural system is beyond comprehension: the
human brain contains more than one hundred billion neurons, and
each neuron has in average 7000 synaptic connections. That amounts to
the staggering fact that eacl1 one of us has roughly 500 trillion syn-
apses.2 Along with the current discourse arising from ideas of human
embodiment and the new emphasis on sensory experiential qualities,
various findings and views emerging in the neurosciences are promis-
ing a deeper understanding of the mental implications and impacts of
the art of building. In addi tion to its essence as an artifact, architecture
now needs to be sken in its biological and ecological context. Recent
findings in the complexities and plasticity of the human brain and neu-
ra l systems emphasize the innately multi-sensory nature of OLLr existen-
tial nnd archi tectural experiences. These views challenge the traditional
and still prevailing visual understanding of architecture and suggest
that the most significant architectural experiences arise from existen-
tial encounters rather than retinal percepts, intelligence and aesthetics
of the new. Tn these encounters the world and the perceiver become
merged, and the boundary between outer and inner menta l worlds turn
vague, as they merge. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty argues, "The world is
wholly inside, and 1 am wholly outside myself".
3
Most importantly, the recent discovery of mirror neurons begins to
help us to understand the origins of empathy and emotion, and how we
can experience emotion and feeling in material and spatial phenomena.
!low can a painting, consisting of paint on canvas, and a building made
of dead matter, make us feel anguished or happy, bored or stimulated,
rooted or alienated? Why does the stair hall of Michelangelo's Lauren-
tian Library, built of mere pietra seren.a, make me weep?
Today, scientific experiments reveal the processes taking place in the
human brain as well as their specific locations, dynamics and interac-
tions. Yet, experiencing mental and poetic meaning through space,
form, matter, and illumination is a phenomenon of different category
and order than observations of electro-chemical activities in the brain.
Architecture and Neuroscience
That is why combining the quickly advancing neurological knowledge
to appropriate philosophical framing and analyses seems a particularly
suitable methodology in approaching the mysteries of artistic mean-
ing. This approach with a double focus has been appropriately called
neurophenomenology.
The Measurable and the Immeasurable
Instead of attempting to enter the ground of neuroscience, I wish to say
something about the specific mental essence of architecture, that ought
to be understood before any hasty conclusions are made about the rela-
tions of distinct brain activities and archi tectmal quali ties. Architecture
Above: We emulate the physiognomy of t he architectural setting t hrough our uncon-
scious sense of identification, muscular imitation and empathy, and we experience
touching sensations of melancholy. Michelangelo based even his architectural works
on the expressive dynamics of the human body, noL geometry.
Michelangelo. the vestibule of the Laurentian Library, Florence. 1524-59. From Lutz
Heusinger, Michelangelo, Scala, Florence, 1989.
Juhani Pallasmaa
is a real m that is deeply biologically, culturally and mentally grounded,
but today frequently neglected in theoretic studies, education as well as
professional practice. I hope that the biological sciences and neurosci-
ence, which are opening exciting doors to the essence of brain, mental
functions and consciousness, can valorize the interaction of architecture
and the human mind, and reveal the hidden complexities that have es-
caped rational ana lyses and measurement. In our consumerist society,
often dominated by shallow and prejudiced rationality and a reliance
on the empirical, measurable and demonstrable, the embodied, sensory
and mental dimensions of human existence continue to be suppressed.
''The genuineness of an expression cannot be proved; one has to feel it",
Ludwig Wittgenstein points out, and this applies to existential qualities
as we11.
4
Or, as jean-Paul Sartre argues: "Essences and facts are incom-
mensurabl e, and one who begins his inquiry with facts will never arrive
at essences ... understanding is not a quality coming to human reality
from the outside; it is its characteristic way of existing.''
5
I believe that neuroscience can give support to the mental objectives
of design and arts, which are in danger of being disregarded because
of their "uselessness" and apparent subjecti vity. The new biological
sciences can emancipate us from the limits of the "naive realism" of our
culture. Architecture has its utilitarian qualities in the realm of rational -
ity and measurability, but its mental values are most often concealed
in embodied metaphors and ineffable unconscious interacti ons; it can
only be encountered, experienced and lived.
Instead of attempting to suggest the new insights of the neurosci-
ence, that may be applicable in architecture, I have chosen to focus on
the mental dimensions of buildings, the essences that could be valo-
rized by new scientific research. I believe that neuroscience can reveal
and reinforce the fundamentally mental, sensory, embodied, and bio-
logical essence of architecture against today' s tendencies towards ever
increasing materialism, intellectualization, and commodification.
The Task of Architecture
TI1e purpose of our buildings is still too often seen narrowly in terms
of functional performance, physical comfort, economy, symbolic
representation, or aesthetic values. However, the task of architecture
extends beyond its material, functional, and measurable dimensions,
and even beyond aesthetics, into the mental and existential sphere of
Architecture and Neuroscience
life. Besides, architecture has practically always a collective impact and
meaning. Buildings do not merely provide physical shelter or facilitate
distinct activities. In addition to housing our fragile bodies and actions,
they also need to house our minds, memories, desires, and dreams.
Our buildings are crucial extensions of ourselves, both individually
and collectively. Buildings mediate between the world and our con-
sciousness through internali zing the world and externalizing the mind.
Landscapes, built settings, houses and rooms are integral parts of
om mental landscape and consciousness. Through structuring and
articulating lived existential space and situations of life, architecture
constih1tes our most important system of externalized order, hierarchy
and memory. We know and remember who we are as historical beings
by means of our constructed settings. Architecture also concretizes
"human instih1tions" -to usc a notion of Louis Kahn-the accumula-
tion and structuring of culture, as well as the layering of time. It is not
general ly acknowledged that our constructed world also domesticates
and scales time for human understanding. Tt is usually accepted, that
archi tecture gives limitless and meaningless space its human mea-
sures and meanings, but it also scales endless time down to the limits
of human experience. As Karsten Harries, the philosopher, suggests,
architecture is "a defense against the terror of time."
6
Architecture
slows down, halts, reverses, or speeds up experiential time, and we can
appropriately speak of slow and fast architectures; it is evident that in
our era of speed and acceleration architecttJre becomes ever faster. As
Paul Virilio has remarked, speed is the most important product of the
contemporary culture.
7
The human essence of architecture cannot be grasped at all un-
less we acknowledge its metaphoric, mental, and expressive nature.
"Architecture is constructed mental space", my colleague Professor
Keijo PeUija used to say.
8
ln the Finnish language this sentence projects
simultaneously two meanings: architecture is a materialized expression
of mental space, and our mental space itself is structured by architec-
ture. This idea of a dialectical relationship, or inter-penetration, echoes
Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenologica l notion of "the chiasmati c
bind"
9
between the world and physical space, on the one ha11d, and
the self and mental space, on the other. In the philosopher's view, thi s
relationship is a continuum, not a polari ty. Tt is exactly this chiasmatic
merging and mirroring of the material and the mental that has made
'
Juhoni Pollosmoo
the artistic and architectural phenomena unattainable for an empirical
scientific approach; the artistic meaning exists fundamentally in the
experience, and that is always unique, situational and individual. Scien-
tific thinking needs to accept the first person perspective in phenomena
which do not have another projection. Artistic meaning exists only on
the poetical level in our encounter with the work, and it is existential
rather than ideati onal. Mcrleau-Ponty also introduced the suggestive
notion of "the flesh of the world", which we arc bound to share wi th
our bodies as well as with our architecture. In fact, we can think of
architecture as specific articulations of this very existential and experi-
ential flesh; through architecture we mold our domicile and ourselves.
In accordance with the motto of my essay, settings alter our brain, and
our brain (or neural entity) changes our behavior and the world.lt is
now known that the architecture of each person's brain is unique, and
its uniqueness stems partly from the places he/she has experienced.
10
Boundaries of Self
"What else could a poet or painter express than hi s encounter with
the world," Merleau-Ponty asks.ll An architect is bound to articulate
this very same personal encounter, regardless of the basic utility and
rationality of his task. This might sound like a self-centered posi tion for
the designer, but in fact, it emphasizes and concretizes the subtlety of
the designer's human task. In the essay written in memory of Herbert
Read, Salman Rushdie suggests: "In the creative act the boundary
between the world and the artist softens and permits the world to flow
into the artist and the artist to flow into the world."
12
Profow1d pieces
of architecture also sensitize the boundary between the world and our-
selves, and they sensitize us to our domi cile. The architectural context
gives human experience its unique structure and meaning by means of
projecting specific frames and hori zons for the perception and under-
standing of our own existenti al si tuation.
Merleau-Ponty formulates the idea of the world as the primary sub-
ject matter of art (and architecture, we may again add) as follows: "We
come to see not the work, but the world according to the work."13 We
are invited inside a unique ambience, an artistically structured world of
embodied experiences, which addresses our sense of being, and tempo-
ral duration in a way that bypasses rationality and logic. As Alvar Aalto
wrote: " ln every case (of creative work) one must achieve the simul-
Architecture and Neuroscience
taneous solution of opposites. Nearly every design task involves tens,
often hundreds, sometimes thousands of contradictory elements, which
arc forced into a functional harmony only by man's will. This harmony
cannot be achieved by any other means than those of art."
The Secret Code
The content and meaning of an architectural experience is not a given
set o[ facts or elements, as it is a uni que imaginative re-interpretation
and re-creation of a situation by each individual. The experienced
meaHings of archi tectu re are not primarily rati onal, ideational or verbal-
ized meanings, as they arise through one's sense of existence by means
of embodied and unconscious projections, identifications and empathy.
We are mentally and emotionally affected by works of architecture
and art before we understand them, or, in fact, we usually do not "un-
derstand" them at all. I would even argue that the greater the artistic
work is, the less we understand it intellectually. A distinct mental short
circuiting between a lived emotional encounter and intellectual Wldcr-
'
Above: An artist is worth a thousand centuries" (Paul Valery). The image is as vividly
present and live as any image painted today.
One of the large bulls in t he Hall of t he Bull s. Lascaux, ca. 15.300 BCE. From David
Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave, Thames & Hudson, London, 2002.
Juhani Pallasmaa
10 /
/ 11
standing is a constitutive characteristic of the artistic image. I wish to
suggest that art is unconsciously more concerned with our past than
the future; art desires to save or revitalize our mental com1ections with
the biological and animistic world. A poetic understanding takes place
through unconscious identification, simulation, and internalization.
Wh ile rational understanding calls for a critical distance and separation
from the subject, poetic "understanding" requires neamess and empa-
thy. In fact, art is not about understanding at all, as an artistic image is
an existential encounter which momentari ly re-orients our entire sense
of being. Great works possess a timeless freshness, and they project
their enigmas always anew, as if we were each time experiencing the
work for the first time. I like to revisit archi tectural and artistic master-
pieces around the world in order to repeatedly encounter their magical
sense of newness and freshness. I remember many of these master-
works by heart, }jet they always appear enigmatic and w1expected as
they embrace me in their unique ambience. The greater the work is,
the stronger is i ts resistance to time. As Paul Valery, the poet, suggests:
"An artist is worth a thousand centuries."
15
The oldest rock paintings
of Africa and Australia give evidence of experiential artistic val ues that
have already survived four hundred cenh1ries.
The interaction of newness and the primordial in the human mind
is yet another aspect of the artistic and architech1ral image that can
be w1derstood through neurological research, I believe. We humans
are essenti ally creatures that are suspended between the past and the
future more poignantly than other forms of life, "ve are unnoticeably
viewing the future through our collective bio-cultural past. The com-
mon view that art is interested in and a harbinger of future is certainly
a J1asty assumption- the main concern of art is to maintain our bio-
logical and historical integrity.
Identification and Empathy
As neurological research has recently revealed, we have a surprising
capacity to mirror the behavior of others, and even to unconsciously
animate and mimic inanimate material constructions and objects
through our imagination. "Be like me"
1
is the call of a great poem
according to Joseph Brodsky.
16
A building certainly makes a similar
invitation; a profound piece of architecture invi tes and guides us to be
better and more sensitive human beings. The world of art and archi-
Architecture and Neuroscience
tecture is fundamentally an animistic world awakened to life by the
projection of our own intuitions and feelings. In this very sense, the
artistic intention is in conflict with the scientific view.
We have an amazing capacity to grasp complex environmental
entities through simultaneous multi-sensory sensing of atmospheres,
feelings, a11d moods. This capacity to instantaneously grasp existential
essences of vast entities, such as spaces, places, landscapes and entire
ci ties, suggests that we intuit entities before we identify their parts
and details. "The quality of the whole permeates, affects and controls
every detai l,"
17
as John Dewey, the visionary philosopher, pointed out
eighty years ago. This view of the dominance of unified entities over
"elements" has been strongly suggested by neuroscience, and it casts
a serious doubt on the prevailing elemental theories and methods of
education. The attempt to teach a complete experiential entity gradu-
ally through its "elements" is doomed to failure- we learn to swim only
by experiencing water through our body, not by intellectually knowing
its chemical constitution.
Human Biological Historicity
We need to accept the essential historical and embodied essence of
human existence, experience, cognition, and memory. In ou.r bodies
we can still identify the remains of the tail from our arboreal life, the
plica semilrmaris in our eye corners as the rema.ins of our horizontally
moving eye-lids from the Saurian age, and even the remains of gills
in our lungs deriving from our fish life hundreds of millions of years
ago. We certainly have similar remains in our mental consti tution
from our biological and cultural historicity; one aspect of such deeply
concealed memory was pointed out by Sigmund Freud and Carl G
Jw1g, namely the archetype.
18
l want to add here that Jung defined
qrchetypes dynamically as certain tendencies of distinct images to
evoke certain types of associations and feeli ngs. So, even archetypes
are not concrete or given "building blocks" in artistic creation, as Post-
Modernism seemed to believe- they a.re dynamic tendencies with a life
of their own. Architecture, also, has its roots and mental resonances in
our biological historicity. Why do we all sense profound pleasure when
sitting by an open fire if not because fire has offered our predeces-
sors safety, pleasure and a heightened sense of togetherness for some
seven hundred thousand years. Vitruvius, in fact, dates the beginning
}uhoni Pollasmaa
12 /
/ 13
of architecture in the domestication of fire. The taming of fire actually
gave rise to unexpected changes in the human species and its behavior:
"Control over fire changed human anatomy and physiology and be-
came encoded in our evolving genome", Stephen Pyre suggests.
19
Some
linguistic scholars have suggested that also language originates in the
primordial act of gathering around the fire. Such bio-psychological
heritage, especially the spatial polarity of "refuge" and "prospect'', has
been shown to be significant in Frank Lloyd Wright's houses by Grant
Hildebrandt.
20
The studies of proximity conducted by the American an-
thropologist Edward THall in the 1960s revealed unbelievably precise
unconscious mechanisms in the use of space and its culture specific
parameters and even meaningful chemical communication between
our endoctrine glands, which have been considered to be closed from
the outside world and thus only have an internal metabolic function.
21
Such studies are surely only a beginning in re-rooting modem rnan, the
Homo Faber, back in his biological roots, and neuroscience can be ex-
pected to valorize the internal workings of these genetic aud instinctLial
behaviors and reacti ons. Neurological studies can also be expected to
reveal the neural ground for our fundamental spatial and environmen-
tal pleasures and displeasures, as well as feelings of safety and fear.
Nemological research has suggested that all reactions of biological
life can be deduced back to the pleasure principle, and undoubtedly
even today's technologized and "intelligent" buildings need to identify
these primal human needs.
Understanding Architecture
Merleau-Ponty makes the significant remark, "The painter takes his
body with him ... lndeed, we ca.IU1ot imagine how a mind could paint''.
22
The same must certainly be said about architects, as our craft is unavoid-
ably constituted in an embodied manner of existence, and architecture
articulates that very mode of being. This argument tums more complex
when we acknowledge that the notion of the "body" is not self-evident-
we have at least four bodies: physical body, emotional body, mental
body, and social body. In my way of thinking, architecture is more an art
of the body and existential sense than of the eye, and more of emotive
and unconscious feelings than rational deduction. This is where the logo-
centric and over-intellectualized theorizing of architecture, so popular
in the recent past, has gone decisively wrong. But, again, neuroscience
Right: Alvar Aalto's extended Rationalism. The fusion of t he opposite image of a geo
metric architectural interior and an amorphous forest space.
Alvar Aalto. Villa Malrea, Noormarkku, 1938-39. Ent ry hall and living room. Photo by
Rauno Traskelin.
Architecture and Neuroscience
can valorize these hierarchies and priorities.! believe that neurological
research will confirm that our experiences of architecture are grounded
in the deep and unconscious layers of the human mental life.
What T have said so far probably suggests an opposition between
the scientific and artistic approaches. I wish to reiterate that they arc
two fundamentally different modes of knowledge: methodically for-
malized knowledge, on the one hand, and lived, existential knowledge
on the other. But I wish to suggest an attitude of mediation, particu-
larly in my own field of architecture.
I am not speaking against attempts to grasp the structure or logic of
experiential phenomena; I am merely concerned with a reductionist or
biased understanding of architectural phenomena. The study of artistic
phenomena also calls for appropriate methods of study. In the mid-
1930s, Alvar Aalto wrote about "an extended Rationalism", and urged
architects to

rational methods even to the psychologica l and

mental areas. Aalto states: "We might say that one way to produce a
more h.umane built environment is to extend our defini tion of Rational-
ism. We mLJSt ana lyze more of the qualities associated wi th an object
than we have done so far."
23
Aalto continues: "It is not the rationaliza-
tion itself tha t was wrong in the first and now past peri od of modern
architecture. The wrongness lies in the fact that the rationalization has
not gone deep enough. Instead of fighting rational mental ity, the new-
est phase of Modern archi tecture tries to project rational methods from
the technical field out to human and psychological fields ... Technical
functionalism is correct only if enlarged to cover even the psychophys-
ica l field. That is the only way to humanize architecture."
24
Aalto expresses a desire to expand the rational method to include
phenomena explored in the fields of "neurophysiology and psychol-
ogy". He writes, "My aim was to show that real Rationalism means
dealing with all questions related to the object concerned, and to take
a rational attitude also to demands that are often dismissed as vague
issues of individual taste, but which are shown by more detailed analy-
sis to be derived partly from neurophysiology and partly from psy-
chology. Salvation can be achieved only or primarily via art extended
concept of Rationalism".
25
Eight years later, Aalto takes this concept one
step further: "I would like to add my personal, emotional view, that
architecture and its details are in some way all part of biology."
26
This
is a suggestion 1 wish to support.
Architecture and Neuroscience
..
Above: Alvar Aalto. Villa Mairea, Noormarkku, 193839. Main staircase. Drawing cour-
tesy of the Alvar Aalto Foundation.
Juhoni Pallasmaa
;
.
16/
/ 17
Intuitive "Neurologists"
Semir Zeki, neurologist who has studied the neural ground of artis-
tic image and effect, regards a high degree of ambiguity, such as the
unfinished imagery of Michelangelo's slaves, or the ambivalent human
narratives of Johannes Vermeer's paintings, as essential contributors
to the greatness of these works.
27
In reference to the great capacity of
profound artists to evoke, manipulate and direct emotions, he makes
the surprising argument: "Most painters are also neurologists ... they
are those who have experimented with and, without ever realizing
it, tmderstood something about the organization of the visual brain,
though with the techniques that are unique to them."
28
This statement
echoes interestingly an argument of the Dutch phenomenologist-
therapist J.H. Van den Berg: "All painters and poets are born phenom-
enologist."29 Artists and architects are phenomenologists in the sense
of being capable of "pure looking", an unbiased and naive manner of
encountering things. Jonah Lehrer's recent book, Proust was a Neurosci-
entists, popularizes this topic by arguing that many masterful artists,
such as Walt Whitman, Marcel Proust, Paul Cezarme, igor Stravinsky,
and Gertrude Stein, ar1ticipated certain neurological findings of today
in their art often more than a century ago.3U In his significant books The
Above: An experience of an artistic work calls for the fusion of perception, memory,
identi fication, imagination, and compassion.
Rebecca Horn, Buster's Bedroom, film, 1990. From Rebecca Horn: Diving Through
Buster's Bedroom. Ida Gianelli, ed., The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles,
Fabbri Editori, Mi lan, 1990.
Architecture and Neuroscience
.....
Architect's Brain: Neuroscience, Creativity and Architecture, md Architec-
ture and Embodiment: The Implications of the new Sciences and Humanities
for Design, Harry F. Mallgrave has connected the findings in neurosci-
ence with the field of architecture directly in accordance with the objec-
tive of our seminar.3
1
In Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain, Semir Zeki
suggests the possibility of "a theory of aesthetics that is biologically
based" .
32
Having studied animal building behavior and the emergence
of aesthetically motivated choice in the animal world for forty years, I
personally have no doubt about this. What else could beauty be than
Nature's powerful instrument of selection in the process of evolution?
joseph Brodsky assures us of this with the conviction of a poet: "The
purpose of evolution, believe it or not, is bcauty."
33
ln his study on the
neurological ground of art, Zeki argues that "art is an extension of the
functions of the visual brain in its search for essentials."::w I see no rea-
son to limit this idea of extension, or externalization to the visual field
only. T believe that art provides momentary extensions of the func-
tions of our perceptual and neural systems, consciousness, memory,
emotions, and existential "understanding". The great human quality of
art is that it permits ordinary mortals to experience something through
the perceptual and emotive sensibility of the greatest individuals of
human history. We can feel through the neural subtlety of Bnmelleschi,
Mozart, and Rilke, for instance. And again, we can undoubtedly make
the same assumption of meaningful architecture; we can sense our own
existence amplified and sensitized by the works of great architects of
history from lctinus and Callicrates to Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis
Kahn. Great architechtre elevates our experience of ourselves and it
emanates unspoken but contagious existential wisdom.
The Role of Imagination
It is arguable that the most human of our capacities is that of imagina-
tion. Imagination is often thought of as a kind of daydreaming, and
sometimes even as something suspect. Yet, even perceiving and memo-
ri:dng places, situations and events, engage our imaginative capacities.
The acts of experiencing and memorizing are embodied acts, which
evoke imaginative realities with specific meanings. The existence of
our ethical sensibility alone calls for imaginative skills. Recent shtd-
ies have revealed that the acts of perceiving and imagining take place
Juhoni Pollasmoo
in the same areas of the brain, and consequently, these acts are closely
related.
35
Even perceptions call for imagination, as percepts are not auto-
matic products of the sensory mechanism; they are essentially creations
and products of intentionality and imagination. We could not even see
light without our "inner light" and formati ve visuCi l imagination, Ar-
thur ZCi jonc, the physicist, Mgues.
36
To concl ude, "Reali ty is a product of
the most august imagination," WCill ace Stevens, the poet, suggests.
37
We do not judge environments merely by our senses, we also test
and evaluate them through our imagination. Comforting and inviting
settings inspire our unconscious imagery, daydreams and fantasies. Sen-
suous settings sensitize and eroticize our relationship with the world. As
Gaston Bachelard argues: "[T]he chief benefit of the house [is that] the
house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house
allows one to dream in peace ... [T]he house is one of the greatest pow-
ers of integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of .mankind".38
I
Collaborative Understanding of the Mind
The wideni ng interest in the neuroscience of archi tecture has already
led to the establishment of the Academy of Neuroscience for Archi -
tecture (ANFA) in San Diego, California. in addition to its research
projects, the AcCidemy hosts annual conferences on various aspects of
the neuroscience of architecture. In November 2012 the Frank Lloyd
Wright School of Architecture and the Academy organized a sympo-
sium entitled "Minding Design: Neuroscience, Design Education and
the Imagination" at Taliesin West, Arizona, which brought together
scientists and architects. Today there are two schools of architecture
which include neuroscience in their programs, the NewSchool of Ar-
chitech lre + Design (NSAD) in SanDiego, California, and the University
of Arizona in Tucson, Ari:wna.
39
The interaction of neurosciences and architecture offers vast poten-
tial to enhance the quali ty of our settings. Any scientific proof of men-
tal phenomena and their consequences concerni ng the characteristics
of the environments of our lives will certainly help to make claims for
better architectural qualities better acceptable in our surreally material-
ist culture. This conversation is in its beginning, and so far it has been
largely directed by neuroscientists. It is obvious that the neurological
investigation of architectural experiences and meanings has to be based
on a deep dialogue between scientists and the makers of architecture.
Architecture and Neuroscience
F
NOTES
Fred Gage, " Neuroscience and Archi-
tecture." as quoted in Melissa Farling,
"From intuition to Evidence," in Sarah
Robinson and Juhani Pallasmaa
ed . MindingDesign: Neuroscience,
Design education and the /magi-
nation [Scottsdale, Arizona: Frank
Lloyd Wright School of Architecture,
unpublished manuscript , 2013}, 3.
2
Sarah Robinson, "Nested Bodies," in
RObinson & Pallasmaa, ed .. Minding-
Design. 15.
3
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phe-
nomenology of Perception, trans.
Colin Smith [London: Routledge,
1962}, 407.
4 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations as quoted in Bernhard
Leit ner, The Wittgenstein House [New
York: Princeton Architect ural Press,
2000]. 188.
5 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Emotions: An
Outline of a Theory (New York: Carol
Publishing, 1993], 9.
6 Karsten Harries, 'Building and the
Terror of Time,' in Perspecta: The Yale
Architecture journal, no 19 (Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982}.
7 Paul Virilio, Katoamisen estetiikka
[The aesthetics of Disappearance],
[Tampere: Gaudeamus, 1994).
8 Keijo Petaja [1919-1988} was an archi-
teet, professor and co-founder of the
Finnish journal of architectural theory
Le a m ~ 8/eu. 1 n Finnish the sentence
reads, "Arkkitehtuuri on rakennettua
m1elentilaa:
9 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'The In-
tertwining-The Chiasm; in Claude
Lefort, ed., The Visible and the
tnv1sible (Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 1969).
10
Michael Arbib, 'From Hand to Symbol
and Back Again' [paper presented at
luhoni Pollosmoo
Minding Design: Neuroscience. De-
sign Education and the Imagination
Symposium at the Frank Lloyd Wright
School of Architecture, Scottsdale,
Arizona, November 9, 2012].
11 Maurice Merleau- Ponty, Signs, [Evan-
ston, IL: Northwestern Uni versi ty
Press, 1982}, 56.
12 Salman Rushdie, ' Eiko mikiil:ln ole
pyhaa?' [Isn't anything sacred?] in
Parnasso, no. 1 [Helsinki: 1996), 8.
13 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as quoted in
lain McGilchrist "The Master and His
Emissary: The Divided Brain and the
Making of the Western World," [New
Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 2010), 409.
14 Alvar Aalto. 'Taide ja tekniikka; [Art
and Technology) lecture at the
Academy of Finland, October 3, 1955.
Transcript published in Goran Schildt.
Alvar Aalto Luonnoksia, [Helsinki:
Otava, 1972}. 87-88.
15 Paul Valery, Dialogues (New York:
Pantheon, 1956}, XIII.
16 Joseph Brodsky, 'An immodest Pro-
posal', in On Grief and Reason (New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997},
206.
17 John Dewey, Art As Experience as
quoted in Mark Johnson. The Meaning
of the Body: Aesthetics of Human
Understanding (Chicago and London:
The University of Chicago Press.
2007}, 73.
18 carl G. ]ung et al. eds., Man and His
Symbols, [New York: Doubleday,
1968). 57.
19 Stephen ). Pyre. Fire: Nature and Cut-
ture, (London: Reaction Books, 2012),
47.
20 Grant Hildebrandt, The Wright Space:
Pattern and Meaning in Frank Lloyd
Wright's Houses [Seattle: University
20/
/ 21
of Washington Press), 1992.
21 Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimen-
sion (New York: Anchor Books, 1990),
33-34. The writer refers to endocri-
nological research by A.S.Parkes and
H.M.Bruce. The researchers even
launched a term "exocrinoloy" to
supplement the notion of endocrinol -
ogy.
22 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy
of Perception (Evanston, IL: North-
western University Press, 1964). 162.
23 Alvar Aalto, 'Rationalism and Man." in
GOran Schildt, ed., Alvar Aalto in His
Own Words (New York: Rizzoli, 1997),
91.
24 Aal to, ' Rationalism and Man:' 102.
25 Aal to, 'Rationalism and Man," 92.
26 Alvar Aal to, 'l he Trout and the
Stream', in Arkkitehti 1948, Goran
Schildt, ed .. Alvar Aalto in His Own
Words (Now York: Rizzoli, 1997), 108.
27 Semir Zeki, Inner Vision: An Explora-
tion of Art and the Brain [Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1999), 22- 36.
28 Zeki, Inner Vision, 2.
29 J.H. Van den Berg. as quoted in Bach-
elard, The Poetics at Space, (New
York: Beacon Press, 1994] XXIV.
30 Jonah Lehrer, Proust was a Neurosci-
entist (Boston-New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 2008].
31 Harry Francis Mallgrave, The
Architects's Brain: Neuroscience,
Creativity, and Architecture, (Chich-
ester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). and
Architecture and Embodiment: The
Implications of the New Sciences and
Humanities for Design (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2013].
32 Zeki, Inner Vision. 1.
33 Joseph Brodsky, "An Immodest Pro-
posal," in On Grief and Reason (New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997],
208.
Architecture and Neuroscience
34 Zeki, Inner Vision, 1.
35 llpo Kojo, ' Mielikuvat ovat aivoille
todellisia' [Images are real for the
brain], Helsingin Sanomot (Helsinki,
March 26, 1996]. The article refers
to research at Harvard University
under the supervision of Dr. Stephen
Rosslyn in the mid-1990s.
36 Arthur Zajonc, Catching the Light:
The Entwined History of Light and
Mind (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1995). 5.
37 Quoted in Lehrer, Proust was a Neu-
roscientist, VI.
38 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of
Space, 6 .
39 Melissa Farling, "From Intuition to
Evidence: in Robinson & Pallasmaa,
ed., MindingDesign, 8.
\