Archinect - News

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:

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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...