An Architect and a Neuroscientist Discuss How Neuroscience Can Influence Architectural Design

A roundtable with John P. Eberhard, director of research planning at the American Institute of Architects, and Fred H. Gage, SfN past president

NQ: Why are architects and neuroscientists beginning to work together?

Eberhard: Architecture has the most impact when the ideas used in building design reflect our understanding of how the brain reacts in different environments. Neuroscientists can help architects understand scientifically what have historically been intuitive observations.

Gage: Neuroscience has reached a point in its understanding of the brain and how it is influenced by the environment that neuroscientists can work with architects in their designs for environments that enable people to function at their fullest within those environments.

NQ: How can one transform the intuition of the architect regarding what makes for good design into scientific study?

Eberhard: This is very tough, but we are in the process of doing that. The research we are undertaking during the initial stages of development of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) will explore ways in which links might be made between the intuitive understanding of architects and the rapidly growing knowledge base of neuroscience. For example, we believe that providing windows for children in a classroom is a good idea, but we don’t know why. We hope that neuroscientists can answer questions such as this in terms of what happens in children’s brains when they are in an environment with windows. About one year from now, we hope to have specific hypotheses to test.

Gage: Part of what we are trying to do in bringing the knowledge of neuroscience into architecture is to establish a systematic way of gathering information for architects to use when they make decisions about design. The underlying premise of this initiative is that the brain is significantly more structurally plastic than was thought in the past. And more evidence is accumulating that activity-dependent experiences influence the underlying structure of the brain. If this is true, then the buildings that we spend all of our time in––living, working, and playing––can influence the underlying structure of our brain, and therefore affect our behavior.

However, we have absolutely no clue about how the design or the shape of a building affects our behavior. What we do have are the architects’ intuitions about what makes for good design. We would like to add some empirical evidence that could substantiate some of these intuitions.

NQ: Are there good examples of how neuroscience has influenced architecture?

Eberhard: The work of Stanley Graven on understanding how neonatal care units should be designed to better provide for the developing brains of premature infants is one of the only examples currently available. Graven has shown that both visual and auditory development may be impaired in premature infants exposed to inappropriate lighting and noise levels in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Architectural designs that allow focused lighting and dimmer controls could help individualize light levels for infants according to their stage of development. Likewise, NICUs could be designed with silent alarms (such as blinking lights), paging systems with vibrators rather than beeping sounds, and other substitutions to soften the noise level common in these units.

Gage: Very few examples exist. There may be those that came about through serendipity, but very few have come about systematically.

NQ: Are there some architectural parameters that universally induce certain emotional states and responses?

Eberhard: Again, this is a hypothesis we hope to test over the next few years. There are intuitive observations by architects about such responses. For example, everyone who visits the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., especially at night, has an emotional experience that they long remember. We don’t know why, but those who make such a visit universally report it.

Gage: Yes, that is one of the underlying hypotheses we’d like to test: Are there elements of design that evoke universal responses?

NQ: Can anecdotal architectural success stories lead to the development of robust hypotheses that can be tested?

Eberhard: Case studies are not the correct way to think of what we want to do. That is a social science approach. I want to find people who are already undertaking neuroscience research, find out what problem they are looking at, and try to restate that research as an architectural question.

Gage: You can think of intuition or anecdotal pieces of information as leading to a hypothesis. Then an experiment can be designed around that hypothesis. The anecdotal information provides the baseline data, or historical data, that are part of any good experiment in which a scientist reads the literature, finds out what is known about a particular topic, from that knowledge generates a hypothesis, and from that hypothesis designs an experiment that controls for the appropriate factors.

NQ: How do you think the findings of neuroscience will influence how architects work in the future?

Eberhard: Much as the practice of medicine was changed by the identification of the germ theory of disease, the invention of the microscope, and the creation of a pharmaceutical industry, so it is likely that in 10 to 20 years the practice of architecture will be greatly changed by the findings of neuroscience.

For example, by understanding the biological basis for workplace stress, we can design environments that help induce wellness, rather than illness.

Gage: Rather than thinking of scientific evidence as constraining architects in their work, our view is that this empirical evidence will be freeing for architects, because they can use it to bolster their own creativity. An empirical approach to architecture can provide a rationale for making design choices about a building that can then be put forward to other decision-makers.

For example, for architects to say to a state legislature that they think it is true that having windows in the classroom is good for children’s cognitive activity does not make for a convincing argument. Scientific evidence to back up the statement can influence decision-makers to follow the design choices of architects.

NQ: What do you consider to be some of the major challenges in fusing the work of neuroscientists and architects?

Eberhard: We must identify basic concepts important to understanding human experiences in buildings that can be linked to research of interest to neuroscientists.

Gage: There are skeptics to this sort of work among both neuroscientists and architects. Scientists may believe it is too difficult to control for all the factors that may influence an individual’s behavior in a particular architectural setting. I would answer that there is a range of levels of analysis in neurobiology. We need to be clear that this research will be on the level of systems neurobiology; as in, for example, evaluating a patient’s response to a drug in a hospital setting. The better we design an experiment, the better the results will be.

To the architects who believe that imposing scientific empiricism on architecture will rob it of its artistic element, I would answer that scientific evidence can bolster creativity by providing some validation for architects’ intuitions.

NQ: How do you envision partnerships between organizations like the American Institute of Architects and SfN?

Eberhard: We hope to build intellectual bridges between architecture and neuroscience by jointly sponsoring meetings and workshops. For example, SfN and ANFA are currently considering co-sponsoring an event to help the public learn more about the connection between neuroscience and architecture.

ANFA is also planning to co-sponsor with other organizations a slate of workshops for 2004 that will address topics likely to be among the first to be studied by neuroscientists and architects. A follow-up to the 2002 workshop on neuroscience and health-care facilities will be held in August 2004 in Woods Hole, Mass. A workshop on sacred places will be held in Columbus, Ind., in April 2004, and a workshop on neuroscience and the design of elementary schools will be held in late 2004 or early 2005.

Gage: I can image in the future that architecture schools will have courses in basic neuroscience, and that graduate schools in neuroscience, in collaboration with schools of architecture, could provide teaching assistance. There will likely then be students from each program who may conduct research at the interface of these two disciplines. SFN in conjunction with AIA could provide a fellowship program to foster this type of work and help train the first generation of neuroarchitects and architectural neuroscientists.