Brain research holds promise
for new lab design strategies
By Frederick Marks, AIA
If you are familiar with Puccini’s 19th Century opera “La Boheme,” you will recall the circumstances of the “artiste,” whose live/work setting is a garret, wanting of both basic and material comforts. The composer expressed at the time a perception that austerity suited the act of creativity.
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Scientists were once cast in similar light—seen as aloof and indifferent to amenities within their milieu. What appeared to matter was fixed bench space, overshadowing other considerations such as room for socialization, adequate ventilation, occupant safety, daylight, and décor. But a change has taken place. Today’s society has elevated the application and prestige of science. As a result, the surroundings in which this activity takes place have become expansive and luxurious.
As consulting architects and engineers, we have benefited from a surge of new work to replace aging and inadequate structures devoted to everything from life sciences to aeronautical engineering. And each new facility comes with pronouncements about how recruitment, retention, and productivity have been improved. But does design really matter? Was the discovery of the human genome facilitated by the workplace having an atrium? Have test scores for students improved because of the introduction of movable furnishings in teaching labs? Is territoriality the same for every person and for every scientific pursuit?
Asking these questions of an individual who has just moved into a new facility will not get to the root of the answers. In a phenomenon referred to as the “Hawthorne Effect,” worker productivity improves simply because investigators express an interest in the sample group they are communicating with. In the case of a building upgrade, people will initially react positively simply because they were given attention. It is possible that creativity and productivity will be fostered less by building design than by the fact that creative and productive scientists want to work in facilities by well-known creative and productive architects.
What is missing for the design professional is more rigorous research on how and why the mind and brain react to built space, so that future decisionmaking can be based more upon tangible, verifiable evidence.
What evidence exists The 21st Century has witnessed unprecedented growth in both technical and conceptual advances in the study of the mind and brain. Most of the attention has been focused on medical research. But at the same time that disabilities such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease have been studied, data about perception and spatial orientation have lead to conclusions about how environmental features can minimize negative physiological, cognitive, and emotional effects.
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It was once believed, based on a system of phrenology developed by the 19th Century German physician Franz Joseph Gall, that the brain was divided into dozens of personality organs. Today it is recognized that there are no single centers for vision, speech, or sensation, but multiple, discrete regions where interconnected processing occurs. For instance, through the prefrontal cortex, highly integrative computations of information are recognized and then applied to such things as the development of art and science.
The brain contains ~100 billion cells or neurons. In the hippocampus, an area known to be important for retrieving long-term memories (particularly those related to finding your way around), there are single neurons called “place cells.” In rats, these cells fire when the animal is asleep, replaying the day’s journey; they also fire when the animal is learning a task, replaying success and failures. How we use these neurons to think about space is still unknown. What is understood is that the brain systems that have allowed us to keep track of space and geometry have also made it possible for us to do abstract mathematics. This has led to achievements in engineering from the pyramids in Egypt to Frank Gehry’s Stata Center at MIT.
To discover how the mind-brain is organized, researchers have taken interdisciplinary approaches encompassing social science (anthropology, economics, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology); biological science (behavioral and cognitive neuroscience, physiology); engineering science (biomedical and electrical engineering, computer science); and medical science (neurology, psychiatry, and medical imaging). Sociology has helped us to better understand that a successful building is one that provides a feeling of safety and security, areas for retreat, connection to the outdoors, cohesion of the whole, technical support for the human activities, and a feeling of accomplishment. Neuroscience is teaching us that what we remember is continually being changed by new learning each time we experience an environment.
We shape our architecture, and it does shape us. And the meaning is different for every person, because it depends on each person’s encounter with the past.
A case for metrics The advertising industry has long been interested in documenting the habits of the consumer. A recent Time magazine article established that some $8 billion was spent in 2006 on market research for advertising. With the availability of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), studies are being conducted on what neurons fire given different product circumstances. Unfortunately, much of advertising is designed to exploit the gap between the impressionable right brain and the critical/analytical left.
For the architect and engineer, the desire to have more research that supports design decisions should be good for the profession, its clients, and society as a whole. The cost of construction has continued to go up exponentially, but the cost that an institution or private business pays for the people who use its buildings is equally if not more important when considering return on investment. The trend for change seems to be going in the right direction. Whether it is “biophilia” (love of living things) research on building sustainability or a resurgence of post-occupancy evaluation using contemporary methods, there is a greater sense that evidence-based design can play a role in the physical well-being of people.
When Frank Gehry addressed the Society of Neuroscience at its 2006 Annual Convention, he spoke of the need for an “informed intuition” when working on a project. One might argue that the less skillful the designer, the more important the information becomes in providing guidance towards a successful end.
The emergence of an academy In 1992, Jonas Salk addressed The American Institute of Architects (AIA) after his Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., designed by Louis Kahn, became the recipient of the Twenty-five Year Award. He spoke of his experience, while researching a cure for polio, of retreating to the Italian Abbey at Assisi to find inspiration. It was in this environment that he made his discovery, and upon returning home to Pittsburgh, he was able to validate his findings for a vaccine in 1955.
Salk had cause to believe that buildings and their surroundings directly influence the mind and brain. Through his encouragement, work began at the AIA to investigate what was occurring in neuroscience and how “predictive knowledge” might allow architects to assess the consequences of design decisions early and accurately.
In 2003, the not-for-profit Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) was founded by the AIA San Diego Chapter. Its mission since then has been to “promote and advance knowledge that links neuroscience research to a growing understanding of human responses to the built environment.” Along with having board members and advisers from The Salk Institute, ANFA has attracted the participation of prominent researchers from The Neuroscience Institute in La Jolla, The Scripps Institute, the Univ. of California-San Diego, the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, the Univ. of Pennsylvania, Harvard Univ., MIT, and the National Institutes of Health. The organization has been equally supported by architects of relative stature, including the past executive director of AIA and five of its past presidents.
One way that ANFA has developed a connection between architects and scientists is by conducting workshops, focusing on different building types. In 2006, one was held entitled “Neuroscience Laboratory Design: Understanding the Cognitive Processes of Neuroscientists at Work” at the Dana Center in Washington, D.C. Interdisciplinary groups examined potential performance outcomes of the neuroscientist including creativity, productivity, stress, and memory. What emerged from close to two days of meetings were hypotheses from each group to enable further research on a long-term basis.
One proposition considered the impact of an enriched environment on neural growth in brain regions associated with memory formation. For instance, is there a benefit to devoting space to older equipment associated with successful experiments? Another hypothesis considered that sensory-reduced environments stimulate recall and creativity. In this particular case, open labs might offer more efficient layouts and promote collegiality, yet private labs might provide the user with greater focus of attention in the absence of competition.
There were no definitive conclusions made from this workshop, as there have not typically been from others held in the past several years. As we should know from observing our clients in research, discovery is not an instantaneous process, nor is it one person’s opinion. It takes time and must receive concurrence from a large body of peers. But the database relevant to our field is growing, and we should be encouraged by the results that will eventually emerge.
Frederick Marks, AIA, is director of science and technology for AC Martin Partners, Los Angeles, and CFO of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture.
