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Heatherwick's 'Humanise' campaign inspires 'joyful' architecture degree at UK university

2024-05-15T18:01:00-04:00

The UK’s Loughborough University has accepted Thomas Heatherwick's challenge to ‘humanize’ and create ‘joyful’ architecture with a new academic offering: A master's degree aiming to give students the opportunity to take part in a burgeoning movement created to solve a global “urban crisis” over the next decade. The 115-year-old university will become the first to affiliate itself with the Humanise campaign academically with new supplementary course content exclusive to its new Master of Architecture & Design program.

Courses will leverage research into architecture, neuroscience, and human psychology in accord with Heatherwick’s philosophy of design, which was recently the subject of a new treatise of the same title. The program's official launch is slated for the fall of 2025 and includes a series of lectures and workshops exploring the idea of emotion as a function of design, an announcement from the university read Tuesday.

Dr Robert Schmidt III of the School of Architecture, Bui...

OSD’s new South Cato Springs development provides nurturing space for neurodiverse adults in Arkansas

2023-06-28T18:57:00-04:00

A new neighborhood-scale development from OSD aimed at enhancing the lives of neurodiverse adults has broken ground outside of Fayetteville, Arkansas following a special ceremony held this week with the firm and its client, a local nonprofit organization called SLS Community.

Their master plan for a mixed-use and mixed-income tract called South Cato Springs will eventually endow the region with a workforce housing micro village that also features dedicated space for a new center for the University of Arkansas Medical School, recreation, and agricultural areas all surrounding a central town square on a plot located near Kessler Mountain Regional Park.

Image courtesy OSD

The firm says it will become an example of a concept it calls “mindful urbanism,” offering itself to the community as both an empowering care space and elevating pedestrianism that is built from and deeply rooted in the rich natural landscape surrounding its idyllic 230-acre site.

Image courtesy OSD

This objective will ...

Suchi Reddy on the bridge between neuroaesthetics and experience

2022-03-21T12:14:00-04:00

I think of architecture as embodied art. It's about holistically experiencing our world through all of our senses, and so architecture is the perfect matrix for considering neuroaesthetics. The same parts of your brain that teach you to think about the future are the same ones that are manipulated by your experience of space. The better your space is, the better you are going to be.

The outsized impact architectural forms have on the human psyche is still a growing field of research and has been behind Suchi Reddy’s recent installations at the Salone del Mobile and Smithsonian Institution as well as her ethereal design for the first Google storefront in New York City.

The Reddymade founder also spoke about her upcoming Canadian project entitled Becoming, and why the personal experiences behind her creative process have led to similar forms of heartfelt architectonic expression.

“The work is inspired by the liminal experience of an immigrant. Tectonically expressed as an arch form, it represents both a gateway and a process of transformation. Inspired by the multi-national demographics of Surrey, I felt it was important to propose an artwork that celebrates the process of becoming oneself, expressing the transmutation of people through cultures and lands as an el...

AIA announces four recipients of the Upjohn Research Initiative

2019-05-15T13:27:00-04:00

Supporting applied research projects that 'enhance the value of design and professional practice knowledge', The AIA Upjohn Research Initiative funds up to six research grants of $15,000 to $30,000 annually for projects completed within an 18-month period.

This year's grants recipients are:

Nexus between Sustainable Buildings and Human Health: Quantifying EEG Responses to Virtual Environments to Inform Design

Principal Investigators: Ming Hu (University of Maryland), Madlen Simon, AIA (University of Maryland)
Collaborators: Justin Benjamin, Assoc. AIA (Perkins + Will), Tim Bakos, AIA (Perkins + Will), Edward Bernat, PhD (University of Maryland)

The goal of this research project is to develop, test, and validate a data-driven approach using virtual reality and electroencephalogram technology for understanding the potential physiological influences of sustainable design features. In collaboration with an architecture firm and a neuroscience laboratory, the researchers propose technolog...

The Salone del Mobile installation exploring design's impact on human biology

2019-03-26T10:31:00-04:00

The installation is called A Space for Being: Exploring Design’s Impact On Our Biology, and it digs into the topic of neuroaesthetics–basically, the study of how beauty affects your brain. It’s three rooms that will be set up in Spazio Maiocchi, built in conjunction with architect Suchi Reddy. They’re not exactly identical, but each room decorated with the same furniture line from Muuto...

In 2018 Google debuted its first home installation at the Milan Furniture Fair, aka Salone del Mobile. Although the company's debut of its domestic software was not something new or revolutionary, it allowed for the multi-billion dollar company to enter the realm of spatial design through their industrial design products. For this year's Salone de Mobile, Google has teamed with Suchi Reddy, founder of Reddymade Architecture, Muuto's Design Director Christian Grosen, and the team from the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University to create an immersive design installation which addresses the topic of neuroaesthetics.

Google makes its debut at Salone del Mobile 2018 with a special exhibition at Rosanna Orlandi’s iconic gallery in Milan. Image courtesy of Google

Google has already established itself as a front runner in enhanci...

Paul Goldberger on the science behind sublime architecture

2017-10-12T19:31:00-04:00

Clearly, Goldhagen is not a writer who approaches her subject with a sense of tentativeness. But once you get a little deeper into this book, it becomes clear that her hubris (if we can call it that) coexists with a sense of earnestness and civilizing intentions. Goldhagen is an engaging and generous writer, alert to the subtleties of human experience, and she has written Welcome to Your World with a desire to genuinely reveal something new to us about how cities, buildings, and places affect us

Paul Goldberger dissects Sarah Williams Goldhagen's book, Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives, itself a dissection of the human mind and how neuroscience can explain our ability to detect when architecture is merely good — and when it is awe-inspiring.

Click here to find more on the topic of neuroscience and architecture.

Brain Space: One-to-One #37 with Michael Arbib, former vice president of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture

2016-09-12T17:37:00-04:00

For nearly 30 years, Michael Arbib taught computer science, neuroscience, engineering, psychology, and mathematics at the University of Southern California, and is known for his prolific work on brains and computers: essentially, what the mechanisms of one can teach us about how the other works. Gathering together all aspects of his work, he’s sharpened his focus on the connection between architecture and neuroscience, and developed the concept of neuromorphic architecture.

He is now associated with the NewSchool for Architecture and Design and UC San Diego, and has played a major role in the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, based in La Jolla, California. We spoke about the Academy’s upcoming conference, and what architecture practice can realistically take from neuroscientific research.

Listen to One-to-One #37 with Michael Arbib:

iTunes: Click here to listen and subscribe to the new "Archinect Sessions One-to-One" podcast
SoundCloud: click here to follow Archinect
RSS: subscri...

Questioning urban truisms with artificial intelligence

2016-08-10T14:11:00-04:00

computer vision and artificial intelligence are the keys to a debate behind a door that’s been locked for a long time: the social impact of design in cities. [...] "Now that we have new tools to measure aesthetics, we can estimate its consequences" [...] [MIT Media Lab associate professor Cesar Hidalgo] wants to develop more empirical ways to study cities and the way they’re perceived—and, in turn, provide better science to the policy-makers who shape legislation.

More on neural networks and aesthetic quantification:

The Conscious Cities Conference is fast approaching! Register now

2016-02-22T03:00:00-05:00

The inaugural Conscious Cities Conference is a little over one week away. Happening at Arup's London office on March 1, the one-day conference is the UK's first event of its kind and is part of the year-long Health, Wellbeing and Architecture programming from the Museum of Architecture and THECUBE. Don't forget to register if you haven't yet.

The Conscious Cities Conference will delve into the evolving relationship between human behavior and the built environment, and the economic impact it creates. The conference will address four different themes that focus on the connection between neuroscience and architecture, with leading experts from both fields responding to thematic questions throughout the event.

Professor Carlo Ratti, director of MIT's SENSEable City Lab, will deliver the keynote speech. Other confirmed speakers include:

Philip Tidd, Consulting Practice Area Leader, Principal, Gensler
Dr. Jon Goodbun, Senior Lecturer in Architecture, University of Westminster
Panos Mavros, res...

Register for the Conscious Cities Conference, featuring keynote Carlo Ratti of MIT's SENSEable City Lab

2016-02-08T20:31:00-05:00

The Conscious Cities Conference will delve into the evolving relationship between human behavior and the built environment, and the economic impact it creates. Taking place at Arup's London office on March 1, the one-day conference is the UK's first event of its kind and is part of the year-long Health, Wellbeing and Architecture programming from the Museum of Architecture and THECUBE.

The collision of technology with the millennial mindset of knowledge exchange and collaboration is changing the way people work and live. As a result, architects, planners, developers and policy-makers must respond to the urgency for cities to meet these new needs by creating the right infrastructure to support growth.

Conscious Cities will address four different themes that focus on the connection between neuroscience and architecture, with leading experts from both fields responding to the following questions:

How does the built environment affect behavior and cognition?
How can the latest findings in n...

A neuroscientist's approach to urban design

2015-09-23T12:50:00-04:00

In past experiments, [neuroscientist Colin Ellard] monitored sweat glands with special wristbands to measure stress levels. In Toronto, he has added special headbands that measure brain waves. [...] “I think this kind of research, by showing how people respond to the places that are here, can highlight some of the key principles that can be useful in designing better public places.”

More on the intersection of brain sciences and cities:

We're suckers for any architecture that looks like us

2015-08-19T17:55:00-04:00

It is believed that all mammals, including humans, have a ‘figural primitive’ in the brain, a pattern with two dots representing eyes, a vertical line representing a nose and a horizontal one for the mouth, at the ready to perceive upright face-like input instantaneously. [...] So when we look at buildings that suggest a face, we feel a kinship, maybe a little love, maybe in reunion with an extended family member.

As advancements in neural imaging technology allow for more accessible and legible understandings of our brain, architectural theory has begun borrowing more and more from neuroscience. The two disciplines' explicit collaboration is part of the agenda of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, and is increasingly adopted in academic design research.

For more on architecture and neuroscience:

Further strides made in Nobel-winning research on the neuroscience of navigation

2015-04-30T14:57:00-04:00

Place cells, which fire when the brain recognizes a corresponding geographical landmark (like your house, or the Space Needle) [offer] a two-dimensional map of familiar environments [...] Grid cells ... are not tied to particular places — but are adjusted as needed to mark off the space around us [...] Now, researchers from University College London have shown how grid cells help us combine mental maps, joining rooms into a house, blocks into a neighborhood and neighborhoods into a city.

Some background on the Nobel Prize-winning medical research can be found here: Nobel Prize in Medicine Is Awarded to Three Who Discovered Brain’s ‘Inner GPS’

Archinect's Lexicon: "Neuromorphic Architecture"

2015-03-16T20:28:00-04:00

neuromorphic [nʊər oʊ môrf ik] architecture: in the words of Dr. Michael Arbib at the 2014 Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture conference: “what happens if architecture incorporates in itself some of the lessons of the brain. If, in a sense, you give a brain to a building.”

Arbib, professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience and Psychology (among others) at USC, first formally proposed the term in a 2012 paper for Intelligent Buildings International: “Brains, machines and buildings: towards a neuromorphic architecture". The abstract for the paper explains the intent behind such neuromorphic architecture as: "exploring ways to incorporate lessons from studying real, biological brains to devise computational systems based on the findings of neuroscience that can be used in intelligent buildings". The paper continues with the argument that, under the premise that future buildings will be "perceiving, acting and adapting entities," neuroscientific research will lend a degree of empir...

"Sculpting the Architectural Mind" conference examines neuroscience's effects on architecture education

2015-03-04T21:19:00-05:00

Last August, on the Apollonian campus of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, neuroscientists and architects came together to flush the architecture profession with a bit more cerebral rigor. Under the guidance of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA), that 2014 conference hoped to provide architects with salient neuroscientific data to use in practice. While still considered somewhat of a niche agenda, advances in brain science and brain-computer interfaces have already been adopted by architectural research; if not for scientific experimentations, then design ones. And that research is happening thanks to the experimental frontiers only possible in academia. But aside from experimental novelty, neuroscience stands to help architects better understand not just their process, but subsequently, how the discipline is taught.

A new conference hosted by the Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture, “Sculpting the Architectural Mind: Neuroscience and the E...

The Brain on Architecture

2014-11-10T13:47:00-05:00

The provisional conclusions of the study are that the brain behaves differently when exposed to contemplative and non-contemplative buildings, contemplative states elicited through “architectural aesthetics” are similar to the contemplation of traditional meditation in some ways, and different in other ways, and, finally, that “architectural design matters.”

Editor's Picks #390

2014-10-23T11:56:00-04:00

Amelia profiles the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture aka ANFA and ponders the lessons from her time spent down in San Diego for ANFA’s annual three-day conference at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Does neuro-architecture truly hold the promise of translational design?

midlander dreams "I have a hard time seeing how this provides more meaningful feedback than occupant surveys...That said...I can't wait until I can wear some headset that makes revit models of whatever I'm thinking!" while Chris Teeter a regular advocate for the use of the "the old EEG headset" was pleased "great piece and like how you link all your news posts into a feature story..Although, much of what is going on now is data gathering, it is considerably more useful than just survey stats".

For a more speculative version of Deans List, Archinect spoke with Hernan Diaz Alonso, upcoming Director at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles.

News

"Archinect Sessions" a new weekly podcast hosted by Paul and Amelia, releas...

What makes a building sacred?

2014-10-22T13:47:00-04:00

The new science of neuroaesthetics [...] tells us much about the way pure form is dealt with by the brain. [...] V S Ramachandran, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, and William Hirstein, a philosopher at Elmhurst College in Illinois, argue that we are innately attuned to recognise things as unified objects – such that we find brushstrokes or architectural features that can be mentally assembled into a coherent whole more beautiful.

Nobel Prize in Medicine Is Awarded to Three Who Discovered Brain’s ‘Inner GPS’

2014-10-07T13:15:00-04:00

The three scientists’ discoveries “have solved a problem that has occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries — how does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us and how can we navigate our way through a complex environment?” said the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, which chooses the laureates. The positioning system they discovered helps us know where we are, find our way from place to place and store the information for the next time

Back in 1971, John O'Keefe identified "place cells" in the brain – neurons that were selectively activated in relation to the subject's place in an environment. He concluded these nerves were composing a mental map of the space, and the collection of multiple place cells constituted a spatial memory of the environment.

Then in 2005, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser identified another group of nerve cells, the so-called "grid cells", that create a coordinate system in the brain. Together, place cells and grid cells create a precise understanding of space in the brain, allowing for navigation and spatial memory.

Archinect is at the Salk Institute, covering the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture Conference

2014-09-19T12:47:00-04:00

Look for coverage of the confernce here on Archinect next week. For now, follow Archinect on Twitter, or via #anfarch

#anfarch Tweets

The ANFA Conference will explore, from a scientific basis, the range of human experiences with elements of architecture, through collaboration between architects and neuroscientists. The goal is to inspire ideas and new collaborations that will ignite change and unlock the potential of Neuroscience for Architecture.

Developing an "urban neuroscience" to build better cities

2014-02-05T13:53:00-05:00

If we want to know how to make a better city, the place to start is at ground level, using observation and measurement ... to build a psychologically grounded view of the relationship between the physical design of a city and what happens there. [...] How do we develop an experimental science of urban design? In the research laboratory for immersive virtual environments (Relive) at the University of Waterloo, we have turned to simulation methods to help build such a science.