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The Brain On Architecture - Health - The Atlantic
The Brain On Architecture - Health - The Atlantic
The Brain On Architecture - Health - The Atlantic
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http://www.theatlantic.com/health/print/2014/11/the-brain-on-architecture...
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shelters an inner row of angular semidetached office structures that face each other across a
travertine courtyard. Bisecting it all is a channel of water that seems to pour into the Pacific
below. The buildings, fashioned of concrete accented with teak, focus ones gaze on the horizon
so you are one with the ocean, observes admirer Jim Olson, a partner in the Seattle firm Olson
Kundig Architects.
By showing 12 architects photos of contemplative and non-contemplative buildings from facade to
interior, the researchers were able to observe the brain activity that occurred as subjects "imagined
they were transported to the places being shown."
All of the architects were white, right-handed men with no prior meditative training, creating the
necessary (if comical) uniformity for neuroscientific researchthe team wanted to ensure that the
brain scans would not be influenced by factors unrelated to the photos, like gender, race, or
handedness. For instance, the brain scans of left- and right-handed people often look different even
when subjects are performing the same task.
In addition to posing an interesting control on the experiment, the decision to use architects was a
strategic one meant to increase the researchers chances of achieving conclusive results. Though
everyone encounters architecture, studies on the built environment struggle for funding because, as
Bermudez remarked with a sigh, its difficult to suggest that people are dying from it. Architects were
a natural choice for the pilot study because, the team reasoned, their critical training and experience
would make them sensitive to features of the buildings that a lay person might overlook.
He conceded that the team "totally loaded the deck" by examining a horde of architects as they
perused photos of the "most beautiful buildings mankind has ever produced. Among others, the sites
in the contemplative experimental group include La Alhambra, the Pantheon, the Chartres
Cathedral, the Salk Institute, and the Chapel of Ronchamp. In response to a critic at the presentation
he gave at the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) shortly after the study's conclusion,
Bermudez explained that the goal of the pilot study is to reveal something interesting that warrants
additional funding for an extension of the experiment using the general population. It may be a
limitation of the system, Bermudez added, but its what everyone has to do.
The challenge began when the researchers set out to measure an experience few have paused to
identifythey deployed online surveys in Spanish and English to gather testimony on extraordinary
architectural experiences (EAEs), or encounters with places that fundamentally alter ones normal
state of being. Critically, most of the buildings or sites mentioned in the 2,982 testimonies were
designed with contemplation in mind, whether spiritual, aesthetic, religious, or symbolic, leading the
researchers to conclude that buildings may induce insightful, profound, and transformative
contemplative states, [and] buildings designed to provoke contemplation seem to be succeeding to a
great degree. In addition to churches, mosques, and other types of religious buildings, some art
galleries, monuments, homes, and museums are examples of contemplative architecturethe
Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Louvre in Paris, and Frank Lloyd Wrights My Home in Fallingwater were
in the top 10 sites referenced in the surveys.
Anticipating skeptics who would claim that these experiences are subjective, the researchers expanded
the question to draw on the established neuroscientific subfield of meditation, with some important
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differences. Related studies to date have focused on internally produced states that are easily
replicated in the lab, and on aesthetic evaluation, or the activity that occurs in the orbital frontal cortex
as we make snap judgments about whether we find things ugly or beautiful.
Bermudez and his team expected that architecturally-induced contemplative states would be strong,
non-evaluative aesthetic experiences eliciting more activity in areas associated with emotion and
pleasure, but less activity in the orbital frontal cortex.
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