When Brains Meet Buildings

L. B. Allsopp, CHOICE Arbib covers brains and the environment, perspective on space, learning and memory, emotion, wayfinding, the architecture-ready brain, buildings with brains, and experience and design.

For couple of decades there has been an attraction between neuroscience and architecture. However, the real interactions between the two disciplines have rarely been presented or discussed. Due to the internal complexities of architecture and its dialogical relation with life, the largely preconscious and embodied intuitions of the creative mind tend to escape scientific definition. Michael Arbib's exceptionally wide scientific background, combined with his deep interest in the arts and architecture, makes him well equipped to cross this gap. His current book is a devoted study of the neural basis of architecture and the applicability of this knowledge in the design of buildings, especially intelligent buildings, which are deliberately conceived as extensions of our neural capacities." - Juhani Pallasmaa, Architect HonSAFA, HonFAIA, IntFRIBA, Academician, International Academy of Architecture, Professor emeritus (Aalto University, Helsinki)


This book is one of the most valuable contributions, from a neuroscientific perspective, of the interplay between the architectural environment and human beings."- Davide Ruzzon, architect, Director and Founder of Neuroscience Applied to Architectural Design, NAAD Postgraduate Course, at the University Iuav Venice and POLI Design Milan

Michael A. Arbib University of California at San Diego, La Jolla Emeritus, University of Southern California

Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Brains in Bodies in the - Social, Built and Natural - Environment 1.1. Linking Physical and Mental and Construction 1.2. Framing the AN Conversation 1.3. How Brains Meet Buildings 1.4 The Many Levels of the Brain 1.5. A Key Debate: Is Neuroscience Relevant to Architecture? Chapter 2. An Action-Oriented Perspective on Space and Affordances 2.1. In an Art Gallery: From Wayfinding to Contemplation 2.2. Affordances and Effectivities 2.3. The Thinking Hand 2.4. The Thinking Hand and Its Schemas 2.5. Schemas: Up to Society; Down to Neurons 2.6. The Thinking Hand and Its Brain 2.7. Design in Architecture and in Brain Modeling Chapter 3. A Look at Vision, and a Touch More 3.1. Engineering and Architectural Aesthetics 3.2. Neural Circuits for Vision 3.3. Learning and Memory 3.4. VISIONS: Scene Perception as a Form of Construction 3.5. Aesthetic Judgement of Visual Form 3.6. Schemas Within and Beyond Vision Chapter 4. Atmosphere, Affordances, and Emotion 4.1. Atmosphere Exemplified 4.2. Motivation, Emotion, and Brains 4.3. Atmosphere as a Non-Gibsonian Affordance 4.4. The Evocation of Atmosphere in Paintings 4.5. Seeking Neural Correlates of Environments Inducing Contemplative States 4.6. Experiences of Ultimacy Chapter 5. From Empathy to Mirror Neurons and Back to Aesthetics 5.1. Empathy and Einfuhlung in Life, Architecture and Art 5.2. Mirror Neurons and Their Larger Setting 5.3. How Neural Nets Enable Us to Learn and Remember 5.4. Modeling How Mirror Neurons Learn and Function 5.5. Empathy and the Brain 5.6. Einfuhlung and the Motor Component of Contemplation 5.7. Neuroaesthetics Revisited, and More Chapter 6. From Libraries to Wayfinding, Waylosing, and Symbolism 6.1. Libraries 6.2. A Cognitive Account of Wayfinding 6.3. It Takes More Than a Hippocampus to Build a Cognitive Map 6.4. Symbolism and Symbols Chapter 7. When Buildings Have "Brains" 7.1. Machines for Living In, Revisited 7.2. Can Architecture Be Smart, Can Intelligence Be Artificial? 7.3. The Interactive Space Ada 7.4. Neuromorphic Architecture: Neural and Physical Spaces for Buildings 7.5. Community & Biophilia 7.6. Where Might Neuromorphic Architecture Lead Us? Chapter 8. Evolving the Architecture-Ready Brain 8.1. Introducing the X-Ready Brain 8.2. From Mirror Systems to Complex Imitation, Pantomime and Pedagogy 8.3. From Pantomime to Protolanguages and On to Languages 8.4. The Language-Ready Brain is Also Construction-Ready and Drawing-Ready 8.5. The Neuropsychology of Drawing 8.6. Is Architecture a Language for the Architecture-Ready Brain? Chapter 9. Experience and Design: Case Studies 9.1. Imagination and Design: Our Initial Framework 9.2. Jorn Utzon's Experience and Design: The Sydney Opera House 9.3. Sketching and Model-Making: Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim Chapter 10. Experience and Design: Bringing in the Brain 10.1. Towards IBSEN: Modeling Imagination in Brain Systems for Episodes and Navigation 10.2. Multi-Modal Perception Within the Action-Perception Cycle 10.3. Linking Memory and Imagination: The Hippocampus and More 10.4. From Scripts to Cognitive Maps to Buildings 10.5. And So We Come to the End Which is a Beginning About the Author