Frascari NeuroArchitecture

COPYRIGHT 2011 MARCO FRASCARI

11Tuesday, June 7, 2011

THOUGHTS ON NEURO-ARCHITECTURE

Marco FrascariOAA MEETING

TORONTO 19th & 20th MAY 2011


With the amazing breakthroughs taking place in the neurological and cognitive sciences, we are on verge of a vital revolution in a number of related fields, such as linguistics, educational theory, medicine, philosophy, urbanism, architecture and the arts.


At first sight neuroscience and architecture might appear to have little in common.

Nevertheless, advances in neuroscience are now able to give a reason for the ways we perceive the world around us and navigate in it and for mechanisms embedied in our physical environment that can affect our cognition, problem solving ability, and mood.


A r c h i t e c t u r a l p r a c t i c e a n d neuroscience research use our brains and minds in much the same way.

H o w e v e r , t h e l i n k b e t w e e n neu ros c ience knowledge and architectural design—with rare exceptions—has yet to be made.

The concept of linking these two fi e l d s i s a c h al le ng e w o r t h considering.


The basic axiom of neuroarchitecture is:

Edifices Edify us as we edify them

We Make Architecture &

Architecture Make Us


Architectural ConsciousnessExplaining consciousness is one of the last great unanswered scientific and philosophical problems. Immediately known, familiar and obvious, consciousness is also baffling, opaque, and strange.

How and when did we become conscious?

What exactly is consciousness?

What is more precisely architectural consciousness?

A gift from God? Some kind of emergent property of our brain? A sequence of electrical sparks off electro-chemical neural activity?.


Since Architecture must satisfy the different representational, functional, aesthetic, and emotional needs of organizations and the people who live or work in these structures.

Neuroscience can give to architects a better understanding of the way they have always been working.


It is commonly thought that the physical sciences have dominated the stages of human knowledge and making while the future will be dominated increasingly by biological sciences and especially by neurobiology.

Physics and chemistry have dominated the making of building and now their contributions are considered mature disciplines contributing to architecture. Trough these, architects have been able to subjugate positively and at times negatively the environment but with the aim always to increase comfort and well-being.


I believe that the physical environment of architecture has been more and less understood and controlled and thet the time has come to devote our attention to the contribution of the biological science to increase our architectural well-being which beside improving our health and genetic inheritance by eradicating diseases and physical suffering should consist in making individuals happy and alleviating “the psychological misery of mankind.”


An understanding of the principles of neuroscience, particularly in the

areas of sensual perceptions and spatial orientation, can inform the

conceiving of built world to include environmental features

that minimise negative physiological, cognitive,

phycological and emotional effects on the inhabitants


1. CREATIVITY: Generating fresh ideas to bring into being something new and useful and with a real character by avoiding unnecessary repetition, but still having a collective body of work

2. INSIGHT: R e m o v i n g p e r s o n a l experiences, taming the ego and tackling each project by keep ing an open mind, listening to other's ideas a n d r e a l i s i n g t h a t architectural design is not simply about building a monument to myself

3. AUTHENTICITY Fi lter ing poor external influences and fads that directly or indirectly can often find their way into design.

4. C O M M U N I C AT I O N S : I m p r o v i n g t h e interconnections with and between clients and builders, which can make or break a project.

An awarness neuroscience can help architects to deal with the following four

points


A few parts of the brain are free to roam over the worldand to map whatever sound, shape, taste or smell or texture that the organism’s design enables them to map. But some other brain parts — those that represent the organism’s own structure and internal state — are not free to roam at all; they can map nothing but the body, and are the body’s captive audience. It is reasonable to hypothesize that this is the source of the sense of continuous being that anchors the mental self to architecture.


Neuro-architectureNeuro-architecture is based on the premise that artificial elements added by humanity have a significant impact on the function of the brain and nervous system. In some cases, the impact may be beneficial, while in other situations the form and structure of the building may create a negative reaction on some level.

It is understood that the impact may not be overt at first, and could in fact effect changes to the way the nervous system functions over an extended period of time.


A SHORT EXPLANATION OF NEUROSCIENCE


NEURONS & NeuroScience


Neurons



The imaging of the brain


when something grabs your attention—say, you spot a friend across the street—the specific neurons governing perception of that region of visual space (orange) become activated. Simultaneously, inhibitory neurons (blue) suppress the nearby brain cells responsible for perceiving surrounding areas (dark brown).

Thus, paying attention to one thing makes it harder to notice what is around it: while you are focusing on your friend, you will fail to notice the cat slinking past you on the sidewalk.


Walter Benjamin pointed out:

"Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. […] In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with regard to buildings. Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction."

"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in Illuminations

(London: Cape, 1970) p. 241.

Palais des Beaux Art in Lille designed by Ibos and Vitart


VISCERAL NEURONS

Think Twice: The Gut's "Our Second Brain" Influences Mood and Well-Being


Neuroscientists have begun to dissect the nature of attention and identify its neural correlates. The initial brain areas that process a visual scene use circuits that lay out visual space like a map. When you decide to consciously pay attention to a speciic location of this “retinotopic” space, neurons from higher levels of your visual system increase the activation of the low-level circuits and enhance their sensitivity to sensory input. At the same time, neurons in the surrounding regions of visual space are actively in- hibited.


Some brain regions can map nothing but the body, and a r e t h e b o d y ’s captive audience. These regions may form the basis of t h e m i n d ’s representation of the ‘self’.


The brain region linking the brain to experiences with architecture is the parahippocampal place area (PPA). The PPA is a subregion of the parahippocampal cortex that plays an important role in the encoding and recognition of scenes (rather than faces or objects).


Neuro-TestingTo realize how our brain generates its own way


Magicians and architects were taking advantage of cognitive conditions long before any scientist had identified them


Conjurers Phibert de l’Orme John Dee


A Diagram of the change of body, brain and architecture relationship

Galilean Paradigm


PaulDelaroche

In 1837 Delaroche received the commission for the great picture, 27 metres (88.5 ft) long, in the hemicycle of the award theatre of the École des Beaux Arts. The commission came from the Ecole's architect, Felix Duban. The painting represents seventy-five great artists of all ages, in conversation, assembled in groups on either hand of a central elevation of white marble steps, on the topmost of which are three thrones filled by the creators of the Parthenon: architect Phidias, sculptor Ictinus, and painter Apelles, symbolizing the unity of these arts.30


NeurohistoryA historian of medieval Europe by trade, Smail ranges across tens of thousands of years in On Deep History and argues for the continuity between prehistory and history and particularly between paleolithic and postlithic humans.

His reasons for suggesting this continuity are compelling and simple: written records do not define history, it is evident that ancient humans had forms of culture, any boundary we draw between ‘them’ and ‘us’ is arbitrarily imposed and finally that human culture has a real relationship with the human body.

Neurohistory of a sort has been suggested by cultural historians examining the history of emotions, but Smail argues for the inclusion of all kinds of human behaviours as candidates for examination through neurohistory. In particular, he is interested in the use of new knowledge in the neurosciences in the development of historical narratives. Smail is not suggesting that we reduce history to a search for genetic mind states, but instead that we take into account the fact that cultural experiences (drinking coffee, riding rollercoasters, listening to Sunday sermons, singing) impact our physiological state and our neurochemistry.


Deep HistoryValcamonica


Naquane rock


Construction Workers


Before writing there was architectural construction drawing

Reconstruction of a Camonian Hut


AUREA AETAS (Golden Age) = Deep History

Aurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo,

Aurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo,36


Cesariano & G.Semper

Semper’s understanding of the origin of the wall as a hanging textile, a colourful weave providing vertical enclosure was alredy clear in Cesariano’s illustratrion.


Neuroeconomy. Neurophilosophy. Neuropolitics. Neurotheology. You neuro-name it. In reality, however, these names are nothing but neuromarketing. That is, “neuroeconomy” is just the application of concepts from neuroscience to issues relevant to the field of economics. It’s still economics. And it’s still neuroscience.

Neuro-cuisine will be about the neuroscience behind the dining experience, from cooking to eating.


Neurocuisine/NeuroarchitectureI will refer to architecture and cuisine as neuro-analogical events to try and to answer some interesting questions about our daily encounters with food and buildings.


As you can imagine, the complexity of executive functions demands a dense and widespread underlying network of brain tissue that can feed this wide array of processes.The core of this network sits on the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC), which is the part of the brain that lies right behind the forehead. From an evolutionary perspective, this is the most newly developed brain area, accounting for almost 35% of the brain’s weight in humans.

Next time you are cooking, think of the complex network of brain cells that are feeding each and every single step in your kitchen. Watch out not to burn your oil while you’re at it!


From Mud Pies to Brick

Making(deep history)


Bricks & Pasta


Macaroni and the

grand tourYankee Doodle went to townA-riding on a ponyStuck a feather in his hatAnd called it macaroni.


Young men who had been to Italy on the Grand Tour had developed a taste for macaroni, a type of Italian food little known in England then, and so they were said to belong to the Macaroni Club.

The Earl of Sunderland KG, PC


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Garter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Garter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privy_Council_of_England

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privy_Council_of_England

MARIE ANTOINE CARÊME (1784 - 1833) “architecture the most noble of the arts and pastry the highest form of architecture”

"Cooking, like architecture, manifests itself in building. The cook, like the architect, draws on an infinite array of creative resources, which make it

possible to create wonders from basic construction materials. But even

using the finest marble or the best caviar, success is not guaranteed.

Architecture, like cooking, evolves and lasts in the form of memories,

tastes, and temperatures."

Ferran Adrià, Head chef, El Bulli Restaurant,

Barcelona


Food, food preparation, and the desire that drives the conceiving and the making of cuisine creations have been thought to be too corporeal for being of pure theoretical importance, only cultural and anthropological studies have focused on food, but only as material record of a culture not as source of epistemological understanding. Now with a neuroscientific approach the dimension it

becomes epistemological


Who do not understand the neuro-relationship between cusine and

architecture makes real cake-architecture


Sapience, the ability to think about apperception, sensations, feelings and inspirations. Sapience, a sapid word, is related to the Latin verb sapere, meaning to taste or to

know.

Italian has generated a small change in spelling


Eating with your eyes


synaesthesia is a common and harmless perceptual/brain condition

Imagine a world of magenta Tuesdays, tastes that have shapes, and wavy green symphonies. At least 1% of otherwise normal people experience the world this way—in a harmless neurological condition called synaesthesia.

In synaesthesia, stimulation of one sense triggers anomalous perceptual experiences. For example, a voice or music may be not only heard but also seen, tasted, or felt as a touch.

Synaesthesia is a fusion of different sensory perceptions: the feel of sandpaper might evoke an F sharp, a symphony might be experienced in blues and golds, or the concept of February might be experienced above the right shoulder. Synaesthetes are typically unaware that their experiences are unusual.


Synesthetes perceive by merging primary and secondary qualities in the cloven world of the res extensa and res cogitans.

Synesthetic inter-sensory associations are emotional states of affairs appreciating that there are ineffable things you hear, invisible things that you see, and impalpable things that you touch, that are describable but beyond words. Nevertheless, these experiences are accompanied by a sense of certitude (the "this is it" feeling) and a conviction that what is perceived is actual and valid. They are noëtic illuminations based on facts that are experienced indirectly but at the same time coupled with a feeling of certitude.


Saul Steinberg’s interpretations of

synaesthesia


THE “GALILEAN PARADIGM” HAS RUINED THE GENERAL UNDERSTANDING OF ARCHITECTUREThe following quotation from Galileo is the origin of the Galilean Paradigm

(of course GG was a much better guy).

'Philosophy is written in that very great book-the Universe-which is always open before our eyes. However, we cannot understand it unless we first learn to understand the language and the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which means it is impossible, humanly speaking, to under-stand a word of it.' This has been interpreted as GG’s rejections all such sensible qualities as colour, taste, smell, sound, etc., from the physical world and ascribes to it only extension, figure, position, motion, and mass which can be measured and treated mathematically.


One of the primordial functions of the brain, then, is to obtain knowledge about the world. How it does that is a problem that, today, belongs firmly in the field of neuroscience in its broadest sense. But long before neuroscience existed as a discipline, the same problem exercised philosophers. Indeed, the problem of knowledge, of how we acquire it and how certain we can be of what we know, has been a cornerstone of philosophical debate ever since the time of Plato.

How the brains of architects obtain knowledge about the built environment has never seriously investigated


For instance, by applying neuroscience to

architecture, architects ` would understand how

the design of classrooms can support the cognitive

activities


Neuroscience can give direction for making

better rooms for resting 56


Neuroscience can give direction

for making better rooms for eating

Sarah Wigglesworth - The meal


In other words Neuroscience can give direction for making better

architecture for the every day life


Many buildings that look great in photography or in portfolios trigger anxiety and a stress response in their everyday users.

Robin Hood Gardens, Alison & Peter Smithson

In the late 1960s, the Smithsons were given the opportunity to realise their vision of modern housing by designing an estate of 213 homes at Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar, east London. They conceived it as a series of “streets in the sky” mixing single-storey apartments with two-storey maisonettes and including a wide balcony on every third floor which, they hoped, the residents would use for children’s play and chatting to neighbours like a traditional street. Sadly Robin Hood Gardens was plagued by structural flaws and a high crime rate. It was often derided as an example of modernist architectural folly rather than the role model for progressive social housing that Alison and Peter had hoped.

'Mistakes were another way of developing and testing ideas.' Peter Salter


'Architecture is not made with the Brain'The Labour of Alison and Peter SmithsonEssays by Niall Hobhouse, Louisa Hutton, Bruno Kru

A unique record of the symposium hosted by the AA to celebrate the work of Alison and Peter Smithson, this publication also includes specially commissioned essays, among them an important piece on Robin Hood Gardens by Dirk van den Heuvel - co-curator, with Max Risselada, of 'Alison and Peter Smithson: From the House of the Future to a House of Today', Design Museum, London (2004).

However, architecture is really made with the brain + body + existing environment


http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/PUBLIC/AAPUBLICATIONS/outofprint.php?item=232




MIRROR NEURONS

According to Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: They will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments


The functions of Mirror Neurons are essenial in

the facture of architectural drawings


EmotionsEmotions are also vital to the higher reaches of distinctively human intelligence. Damasio demonstrates that contrary to some popular notions, emotions do not ‘get in the way of’ rational thinking; emotions are essential to rationality.

Storytelling is an essential and emotional ability, the tool by which our brains interpret life minute by minute. The human brains are wired for it. We respond to storytelling automatically as we store memories and use storytelling commonly in life interactions. Human skills with stories make them comfortable tools to use in any kind of human endeavor and venture.


Architectural legibility and floor plan complexity

many think that the readability of plan means easy way-finding

Follow the red dots Cognitive Way-finding


Finding one’s way within a building or among buildings to reach a destination, or remember the location of relevant objects are some of the elementary tasks of human activity. Fortunately, human navigators are well equipped with an array of flexible navigational strategies, which usually enable them to master their spatial environment. In addition, human navigation can rely on tools that extend human sensory and mnemonic abilities.


Walking down a hallway we hardly realize that the optical and acoustical flows give us rich information about where we are headed and whether we will collide with other objects

Follow the blue steps


ARCHITECTURAL STORYTELLING


The telling of a story is at the origin of all human communications and neural

world making (cosmopoiesis).


According to Antonio Damasio, D o r n s i f e P r o f e s s o r o f Neuroscience and director of Brain and Creativity Institute at t h e Un i ve r s i t y o f So u t h e r n California, storytelling is vital for the functioning of the human brain. The telling of a story is at the o r i g i n o f a l l h u m a n communications and,as Damasio poins out, its non-verbal origin at the core of consciousness. The acceptance of storytelling as a procedure can be used both for teaching and for conceiving proper urban environments.


Dinocrates and the story of Mount Athos


Storytelling and architectural presentation

In his book “The Feeling of What Happens,” Damasio dwells on the relevance to the human organism of telling stories; he affirms that storytelling is at the core of human consciousness in its non-verbal origin. Knowing springs to life in the stories that are told in the brain, they inhere in the constructed neural patterns that constitute the nonverbal accounts.


Damasio points out that we hardly notice this kind of storytelling-making that is taking place in our brains because the images that dominate the mental display are those of the things of which we are conscious—the objects we see or hear—rather than those that summarily constitute the feeling of us in the act of knowing.


Sometimes all we notice is the whisper of a subsequent verbal translation of a related inference of the account: yes, it is we seeing or hearing or touching, life images playing out in the theatre of the mind. Instead of a cameraman or a sound editor, nature has provided us with eyes and ears and muscles to pan our internal cameras from scene to scene. Instead of a nicely packaged DVD, we end up with memories.


Photorendering presentations

The tradition of architectural storytelling is vanishing drastically. Even if architects wear “Armani Suits” to replace the Lion skin and hold a red rose or a laser pointer instead of a club, they are mostly swapping storytelling with lengthy synopsis of factual notions relaying on a new authority developed with the digital presentations (3-D Cad Models, Photo Renderings, 3D walk-through). These presentations are thought and staged as the ideal solution for professional works that must appears as “factual projections” of future buildings. The resulting request is that at the end of construction, a building must precisely look as shown in the architect’s presentation. Alternatively, the photographic images of the buildings taken at the end of construction must appear identical to the images previously shown in the photo-renderings.


Information is antithetical to the essentially useful deformations generated by storytelling. Information conveys dry, isolated facts and figures; it explicates

impersonal objects and events.

Storytelling explains nothing and implicates presents and absents. Fundamentally, this is the reason why it

does not matter how many times a story is told as it is always food for thought.


LOUIS KAHN AND THE BEGINING OF

NEUROARCHITECTURE


L.I. KAHN’S SALK INSTITUTE77


San Francesco Abbey Assisi Italy


Cloister San Francesco, Assisi


L.I.Khan


• Stepping into the light [A.Damasio]

• Light [L. I. khan]

81


IAfter Salk’s statement in 2003 AIA announced two unprecedented research initiatives, one with the Salk Institute, and the o t h e r w i t h t h e U . S . G e n e r a l S e rv i c e s Administration and the National Institutes of Health. They are intended to show empirically that different physical environments affect brain activity and e v e n c h a n g e b r a i n structure. The projects, though in their infancy, could have a major impact on how the workplace, buildings and even towns and cities are planned, designed and retrofitted 82


ANFA Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture

Founded by John P. Eberhard


Main Readings on the TopicA very large body of neurological investigation over the last forty years has clearly delineated a unified biological theory of mind and body. The neurologist Semir Zeki has called for the creation of Neuroaesthetics, the art historian John Onians has recently published a book entitled Neuroarthistory and Harry Mallgrave has discussed the Architects’s Brian from L.B.Alberti to nowaday.


Architect’s sight as Blindsight

Blindsight is a phenomenon in which people who are perceptually blind in a certain area of their visual field demonstrate some response to visual stimuli

the exploration of the sense of smell, touch, taste, and hearing as main design guidelines. In doing so, an architecture can be developed which moves beyond the visual reliance of spatial understanding.

The sense of touch became of primary interest as it is an immediate connection between oneself and the world.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindness

A NECESSARY ANTI-CARTESIAN DIGRESSION AGAINST THE SEPARATION OF MIND AND BODY


I think, therefore I amRené Descartes

I yam what I yam. That’s all that I yam. Popeye the Sailor Man



FIVE SENSES


Architecture is cosmopoietic feats able to fashion signifying universes out of the sensual material of the world. The world of senses begins in the periphery of our bodies and moves to inner and higher levels of perception. From there, in analogical manner, the senses rule the way we willfully and wittily act in our world is at the basis for a sated human sapience.


COSMOPOIESISCosmopoiesis can be described as ‘world-making.’

In Ways of Worldmaking. Nelson Goodman observes, a ‘world’ is not only the physical universe, but also the cultural artifacts, the systems of organization and meanings created by a group of people at any one time.

In this way, the formation of structure and spaces in architecture plays a significant role in the creation of and contribution to a world.


An architectural cosmopoiesis contemplates the different ways architects have thought about the construal of a world in their

architectural conceiving.


You cannot walk within the

buildings designed by Carlo Scarpa

with your hands in the pockets

(Arrigo Rudi in a seminar at UP)

Medieval representation of the senses


As a function of the skin, then, the haptic—the sense of touch —constitutes the reciprocal contact between us and the environment. It is by way of touch that we apprehend space, turning contact into communicative interface. As a sensory interaction, the haptic is also related to kinesthesis, or the ability of our bodies to sense their own movement in space.


MANO OCULATA


MANO OCULATA


MANO OCULATA


I take the haptic to be the main agent in the mobilization of space–both geographic and architectural–and, by extension, in the articulation of the spatial arts themselves, which include motion pictures.


Olivetti Shop San Mark Square Venice



When my time comes, cover me withthese words, because I am a man of

Byzantium who came to Venice by way ofGreece.'

Carlo Scarpa



BUILDING IN TIME VS BUILDING-IN-TIME

Duration and temporality in architecture


chronotherapeutics

Chronotherapeutics are controlled exposures to environmental stimuli that act on biological rhythms in order to ac h i e ve t h e r a p eu t i c effects in psychiatric conditions


Cognition & DurationIn pre-modern Europe, architects built not just using imagination, drawings, brick and mortar.

Architects built with time, using vast quantities of duration as a primary means to erect buildings that otherwise would have been impossible. Not mere medieval muddling-through, this entailed a highly developed set of norms and efficient practices.

A powerful temporal program, involving an uncodified set of building principles, guided the long-term planning and making great architecture for a vita beata.


Time in the mind: Using architecture to think about time and

using time to think about architecture.

(a) They moved the wall forward two meters.(b) They moved the meeting forward two hours.

People talk about time in terms of space more often than they talk about space in terms of time

This pattern in language suggests that our conceptions of space and time might be asymmetrically dependent: we construct representations of time by co-opting mental representations of space, but not necessarily the converse.

People often talk about time using spatial language (e.g., a long vacation, a short concert).Do people also think about time using spatial representations, even when they are not using language?

The relationship between space and time in language is asymmetrical

(a) They moved the wall forward two meters.(b) They moved the meeting forward two hours

(c) The service was slow(d) The window was slow


The effective presence of tectonic condensation and the poignancy of building details and constructs results from what Warburg identified as the “pathos formula” (Pathosformel). Through tectonic pathos, i.e. built storytelling, the energy embodied in artifacts and their factures can be reactivated beyond the threshold of rational understanding. In brief, the work of architecture is interplay of the sum of sensual perception and thought


Mantova

Domus Nova

Piazza Erbe & Piazza

Broletto


MantovaPiazza

Broletto107


Bologna Case

Beccadelli


John Ruskin’s Venice (1819-1900),


Ca Da Mosto

Casa fondaco


Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini

I lived there for a year


Carlo Scarpa & Castelvecchio in Verona a modern case

for Building-in-time


Carlo Scarpa & Castelvecchio in Verona a modern case

for Building-in-time


Catelvecchio memorable key-joint

where past is present

113


AD 1957An exhibition on

Medieval Veronese Artentitled

“Da Altichiero a Pisanello” is the beginning of Scarpa’s never ending intervention


Pisanello (or Antonio di Puccio Pisano or Antonio di Puccio da Cereto), or

erroneously called Vittore Pisano by Giorgio Vasari, (c. 1395- probably 1455)


Altichiero da Zevio (also

called Aldighieri da

Zevio)

c. 1330 - c. 1390)


3 building campains

ｬ Museo di Castelvecchio (1A phase) 1957-1964




Castelvecchio before WWI


Castelvecchio before WWI



The Restoration After WWI


Castelvecchio after the bombing of the WWII




NEUROSCIENCE AND HAPPINESS


Unfortunately many architects do not think anymore within architecture, but

merely think about architecture.

Architectural happiness is not the result of emotional states translated into the built world. It is more about having a building that can be all that

it can; that is fulfilling both human and

architectural potentials.


Lombroso & Adolf Loos


Emotions: Wrong Slipers in the Wrong Room

Loos’ storytelling of the poor-rich man


Adolf Loos and I - he literally and I grammatically - have done nothing more than show that there is a distinction between an urn and a chamber pot and that it is this distinction above all that provides culture with elbow room. The others, those who fail to make this distinction, are divided into those who use the urn as a chamber pot and those who use the chamber pot as an urn. [Karl Kraus]


Happiness is not to live in a trash-building

In many constructions, the devising and nurturing of architectural happiness has been prevented by the fu s ion of fash ionab le elations with financial gratification.

This fusion has changed the thought process of many architects: they do not think anymore within architecture, but merely think about architecture.


A GOOD LIFE

The essential goal for neuro-architecture is to foster a vita beata (good life) and it is impossible to achieve such an outcome if the architects conceiving such dwellings do not have themselves a vita beata.

Nevertheless, within the devastating memory loss generated by the project of modernity, too many architects sadly regard the making of architecture as occasions of economic greed, but not as generator of their good life.

The vita beata results from, and must be embodied in, an architectural landscape conceived for a “good existence.”


Architects who are aware of neuroscience can make better place for thinking


The application of the rules of modern architecture has

generated an incredible number of functionally

conceived places for urban existence. There places for

buying, selling, banking, cooking, eating, sleeping,

washings, playing, working, practicing sports, learning, and so on. However, only a

few of these places have “thinking” as the dominant

dedication. 132


In many urban bodies, the devising and nurturing of architectural happiness has been prevented by the fusion of fashionable elations with financial gratification. This fusion has changed the thought process of many architects and urbanists: they do not think anymore within the body of the city, but merely think about the body of the city. 133


Caffeine belongs to the xanthine chemical group. Adenosine is a naturally occurring xanthine in the brain that is used as a neurotransmitter at some synapses. One effect of caffeine is to interfere with adenosine at multiple sites in the brain including the reticular formation.

Caffeine also acts at other sites in the body to increase heart rate, constrict blood vessels, relax air passages to improve breathing and allow some muscles to contract more easily.

Lavazza Cafe: Ferran Adria’s Espresso


VeniceThe european gate for COFFEE


Florian the oldest surviving coffehouse


A Place for thinking



Florian


Pedrocchi & PedrocchinoPadova By Giuseppe Jappelli






We make architecture and architecture makes us.

By focusing on what the architectural nature of the urban environments inherently multisensory experiences, we can explore what are hints and clues of the neural patterns of cognitive perception and thoughts detectable in architectural drawings and theoretical writing and the corresponding manifestation in architectural and urban environments.


Within the overwhelming amnesia generated by the project of modernity, too many urbanists and architects have forgot that cities can become

engines not just of economic growth, but also of happiness.


Wonder147


Saul Steinberg Architetto

Semel Architectus Semper Architectus


Movie in the Brain

149


Saul Steinberg’s hands performing (doodling) a

drawing


DOODLING AS architectural storytelling

Bauplan bauhouse


“My line wants to remind constantly that it's made of ink, I appeal to the complicity of my reader who will transform this line into meaning by using our common b ack g r o u nd o f culture, h is tory, poetry.”


These emblems of a draftsman generating himself, his line and his environment epitomize Saul Steinberg’s work: his drawings are about the ways body and brain make art.

Steinberg did not represent what he saw; rather, he depicted consciousness in styles borrowed from other arts, high and low, past and present. From Paul Klee to latrine graffiti

In Steinberg’s graphic imagination, the very artifice of images already becames the means to explore social and political systems, human foibles, geography, architecture, language and, of course, art itself, i. e . The embedment of humanity


Bauplan bauhouse


S. Steinberg’s view of Venetian Sensorial

Consciousness


storytelling explains nothing and implicates presents and absents. Fundamentally, this is the reason why it does not matter how many times a story is told as it is always food

for thought.


ABY WARBURG, scion of a Hamburg banking family, had no interest in ledgers or letters of credit; he had, however, a passion for books and pictures. He resigned his interest in the family firm and in the 1880s embarked on career as a collector, critic, and scholar.


Palazzo di Schifanoiaa Renaissance palace in Ferrara,

Emilia-Romagna (Italy) built for the Este family.

The name "Schifanoia" is thought to originate from “schifar la noia” meaning literally to “scorn boredom”

Hall of the Months

a place of storytelling


Each month is in turn divided into three horizontal bands.

In the upper one (the World of gods) are the triumphant chariots of pagan gods, surrounded by mythological or ordinary life scenes. The world of man, upon which are inflicted the divine laws, is painted in the lower part showing the activities of the court and the townsfolk, and in which the figure of the patron, Duke Borso d’Este is portrayed, glorified as a wise and fair governor of his states.

The third band is placed between men and gods and shows Western and Egyptian Zodiac signs, evidence of the great importance held by astrological “science” in the Estense court.


We make architecture and architecture makes us.

By focusing on what the architectural nature of the urban environments inherently multisensory experiences, we can explore what are hints and clues of the neural patterns of cognitive perception and thoughts detectable in architectural drawings and theoretical writing and the corresponding manifestation in architectural and urban environments.


What are hints and clues of the neural patterns of cognitive perception and thoughts detectable in architectural drawings and theoretical writing and the corresponding manifestation in architectural and urban elements?


consciousness embodiment

econiches and embedment

generate beatific architecture


Architectura Beata

The thoughts in the act of conceiving architecture and the architectura beata are the result of epicurean virtues ruling the conception and

erection of edifying buildings within the world;

i.e., the making of a cosmopoiesis.


Mario Ridolfi


Mario Ridolfi’s detail



THE INFINITE OF THE NON-FINITO

THE FUTURE OF NEUROARCHITECTURE


Inconpiuto SicilianoAn Internet site dealing with unfinished

contemporary Italian buildings


• Incompiuto Siciliano is a project in progress that aims to identify and classify the aesthetic and formaI characteristics of unfinished public architecture in ltaly. The survey, carried out by Alterazloni Video together with Enrico Sgarbi and Claudia D'Aita, has so far resulted in tne classification of around 500 unfinished architectural projects.

• The Italian region with the highest number of


Playground within the Archeological Park of Giarre (CT), Italy.

One of building listed in the Incompiuto Siciliano and used to demonstrate how to transform uncompleted and abandoned building.

Proposal for transforming the existing built structure in an acceptable presence in the Park


San Petronio (Bologna)



SANT ANDREA MANTOVA


Giulio Romano, Transept San Andrea (Mantova)


Alberti, Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini


Leon Battista Alberti Palazzo

Rucellai


Palladio

Palazzo Porto in Piazza Castello (VICENZA)


Palladio, Loggia del Capitanio

(Vicenza)


The most Incomplete Palladio’s Villa Porto (Molina di Malo)


Casa CogolloVicenza

Know as

Palladio’s House


Casa Cogollo

Immorsature (stone-teething or stone tenons)

for the continuation of the facade


Michelangelo Non-FinitoPrigioni & Pieta Rondanini


NON FINITOIn discussing neuroarchitecture and architectural imagination, it is essential to avoid economic models derived from modern financial experience that postulate at definite finishing point for the making of any object.

As result of this predicament, modern professional, historians and critics focus on the pristine image of architecture, on completed forms of buildings or drawings rather than when they had been used and they are ready to be demolished, shredder, transformed or assimilated in something else as it happen to good food that can be appreciated when it is destroyed, eaten or reused as leftovers ... .


Palladio’s House or Casa Cogollo

Bertotti Scamozzi’s drawing showing the facade as finished architecture


Possible extensions of the Cogollo’s House Facade


L.Battista Alberti Palazzo

Rucellai completed


The infinito of the non-finito



SnøhettaOpera House, Oslo



The Oslo Opera House seems to be washed ashore


Oslo Opera House rising out of the Oslo Fjord



ARCHITECTURAL DURATION

Architects built with time, using vast quantities of duration as a primary means to erect buildings This is powerful temporal program, involving uncodified sets of tectonic principles


San Salvatore SpoletoItaly

The basilica of San Salvatore (4th-5th century) incorporates the cella of a Roman temple and is one of the most important examples of Early Christian architecture. It was rebuilt probably after an earthquake and fire by the Lombards during the 8th century.






SLOW COOKING ARCHITECTURE

TECTONIC PATHOS


Mater Misericordiae Angelo Mangiarotti

Baranzate milano 1957





tectonic pathos, i.e. built time storytelling


The Ningbo Historic Museum was designed by

Wang Shu of Amateur Architecture Studio


http://www.world-architects.com/index.php?seite=cn_profile_architekten_detail_en&system_id=5254

http://www.world-architects.com/index.php?seite=cn_profile_architekten_detail_en&system_id=5254





211

MODERN VERSIONS OF THE NON FINITO

IN ARCHITECTURETHE STONES AND THE GABIONS ARE THE CLUES FOR MAKING A COMPLETE NON FINITO


Mortensrud church / JSA212


Jensen & Skodvin ArkitektkontorDesign Period: 1998 – 1999


http://www.jsa.no/

http://www.jsa.no/

The church is situated on the top of a small crest with large pine

trees and some exposed rock.Geometrically

speaking the church is an addition to the

existing ground, no blasting and

excavation was necessary except

carefully removing the thin layer of soil.




Public library in Villanueva, Colombia







GIUSEPPE UNCINI. Sculptor 1929–2008

Between 1958 and 1959, during a visit to a shop for building materials, Giuseppe Uncini had the idea of using the cement for his works. From this reflection that Primocementarmato: bare concrete skeleton on a network and iron, in the words of the artist himselforiginates the idea, which he hoped "that the mode was the technical concept and the concept the way of technique. "





Igualada Cemetery (also known as Cemetery Nou) was built by Carme Pinòs and Enric Miralles after an architectural

competition held in 1984.


The emotional impact of the project focuses on visual forces which appeal to the memories of mourners and visitors. The dynamic shape of walls, ramps and landscape are used as an expression of life’s fugacity. Enric Miralles was buried in one of the tombs after his death on July 3rd in 2000






FINALE SHOWING MY BOOKS


This book deals with the critical nature and crucial role of architectural drawings. A manual which is essentially not a manual; it is an elucidation of an elegant manner for practising architecture.

Organized around eleven exercises, the book does not emphasize speed, nor incorporate many timesaving tricks typical of drawing books, but rather proposes a slow, meditative process for construing drawings and for drawing constructing thoughts.

Presently available on the market: you can find it on amazon.ca


An old book (out of print)


A PLANNED BOOK

In a Near Future on the Market; probably next year

The Happiness and Misery of Architecture:A FEW SUBSTANTIATIONS REGARDING THE ARCHITECTURAL MÉTIER


Thank you for your attention


Documents

Frascari NeuroArchitecture