Why Do People Feel

More Comfortable
in One Space
than Another?
Louis Kahn,
Salk Institute for
Biological Studies,
La Jolla,
San Diego, California,
1964

In 1957, Jonas Salk, developer of the first

safe and effective polio vaccine, began
his quest to fulfil his dream of creating
a collaborative environment where
researchers could explore the basic
principles of life and contemplate the
wider implications of their discoveries
for the future of humanity. Salk
partnered with architect Louis Kahn to
design such a research centre. Their
close collaboration resulted in what
is not only one of the great structures
of the 20th century, but also one of
the most important centres for
biological research on the planet.
Salk and Kahn’s foresight in the design
of the laboratories has also allowed
the Institute to remain a functioning
facility for advanced research.

6
 Architecture is a uniquely multifaceted discipline
integrating perception, imagination and artistic
expression with the physical world of space, light and
form – construction and its materiality – to create the
buildings in which humans live and, ideally, thrive.
INTRODUCTION Until very recently little has been known about how our
brains, bodies and buildings interact. Although architects
IAN RITCHIE
for centuries have depended on intuition and experience
to create environments that influence the people who
use a space, we know we have much to learn about
human responses to environmental stimuli.
Neuroscience is beginning to provide us with an
understanding of how the brain controls our bodily
activities, affecting how we think, move, perceive, learn
and remember. There is now concrete evidence that one
of the properties of the human brain is ‘neural plasticity’
– that our brains change as we learn – and that the brain
changes partly in response to our environment.
Architecture is imagined and, when built, shapes us.
This was recognised by the Academy of Neuroscience
for Architecture (ANFA), which was established under
the auspices of the 2003 American Institute of Architects
(AIA) Convention held in San Diego, home of the
Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The newly coined
discipline united the fields of anatomy, physiology,
pharmacology, psychology, medicine and behaviour
with biology, immunology, genetics, molecular biology,
chemistry, physics, electronics and artificial intelligence.
ANFA’s stated mission is to ‘promote and advance
knowledge linking neuroscience research to a growing
understanding of human responses to the built
environment’.1 In his address to the AIA convention in
2003, Salk Institute President Fred ‘Rusty’ Gage made the
following observations, which are the core premise for
this issue of 2: ‘(1) The brain controls our behaviour; (2)
Genes control the blueprints for the brain’s design and
structure; (3) Environment can modulate gene function
and, ultimately, the brain’s structure; (4) Changes in
the environment change the brain; (5) Consequently,
changes in the environment change our behaviour; and
(6) Therefore, architectural design can change our brain
and our behaviour.’

Architecture Meets Philosophy Meets Art Meets

Neuroscience
Ian Ritchie Architects’ longstanding engagement with
neuroscience blossomed during the design process
of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits
and Behaviour at University College London (UCL),
when, during discussions at the Salk Institute about the
practice’s recent commission, Rusty Gage offered wise
insights into a research approach. As a result, the centre,
completed in 2016, was one of the world’s first buildings
‘designed with the mind in mind’, and its design process
unique because it proceeded ‘from the inside out’.
Before designing the building, the architects spent a
year visiting neuroscientists worldwide to understand
the state of their art and what they could envisage
their laboratories requiring years from now. Architects
and neuroscientists – in particular John O’Keefe (who

7
Ian Ritchie Architects,
Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for
Neural Circuits and Behaviour,
University College London (UCL),
London,
2016

right: Spatial flow concept drawing. The

scientists stressed their desire for flexible,
interconnected spaces that can be adapted over
time to create a dynamic place in which to study
science. When spaces flow into each other,
people cannot help but meet during the day,
blurring the boundaries between different areas
of scientific research. Turquoise is lab space,
yellow is write-up, red is satellite clinical space,
and purple is interaction space.

below: Two wavelengths and amplitudes create

the undulating facade and introduce a gentle
vertical rhythm to the streetscape. The wall is
composed of a unique assembly of prefabricated
modules of low-iron toughened structural cast
glass. These insulated and light-transmitting
modules carry integrated windows with their
own cast-glass louvres, which can be opened
and closed as desired to provide privacy and
to reflect the evening light. The white colour of
the translucent glass reflects light into the street
without creating glare.

8

Scale-free networks are characterised by the presence of large hubs or nodes that are
highly connected to other nodes in the network. The interior spaces of the Sainsbury
Wellcome Centre are composed of a multitude of different spaces that flow into and link
with each other, creating an interlinked composition of spatially and organisationally
different scales. Here, double-height laboratories and write-up areas are illuminated by
the translucent cast-glass facade.
The centre’s theoretical computational unit’s spaces link to the experimentalists’ working
areas, and include this zenithally lit double-height space. There is a connecting gallery
alongside at the upper level with windows that open to allow discussions taking place
below to be shared, simultaneously acknowledging our human preference for long vistas
and catering to our innate curiosity.
was interim director of the centre, discovered place
cells in the hippocampus, and shared the Nobel Prize
in Physiology or Medicine in 2014 with May-Britt
Moser and Edvard Moser) and Peter Dayan (Director
of the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at
UCL from 1998 to 2018 and now Director at the Max
Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen,
Germany) – embraced the idea of collaborating closely
throughout the building’s entire three-year design
period to ensure that their spatial and research needs
were planned with function and atmosphere well into
the future.
Most scientific innovations or discoveries occur
when creative people from diverse fields of study work
together and exchange ideas and perspectives. The
Sainsbury Wellcome Centre was designed specifically
to assist this process by subtly enabling scientists to
meet easily, every day, encouraging conversations and
collaborations while still allowing individuals to be
private and in control of their own environments. This
was done by incorporating the results of neuroscientific
research to inform the spatial structure of the interior
architecture: about how people interact with the
space around them, the importance of adaptability,
the nature of light and its wavelengths in the working
environment, and how the spaces in which we live
and work affect our mood and behaviour. The nature
and organisation of the resulting interior spaces with
long, short and vertical views and varying volumes was
described by one of the scientists as akin to the scale-
free nature of the brain itself.
This issue of 2 aims to encourage a broader
understanding of how these research and design
disciplines can guide the design process for the
better, to clarify what we know at present about what
neuroarchitecture can bring to the quality of design
thinking and application, and what design can bring to
neuroscientific research. It draws together some of the
latest research in these fields, offering an accessible
overview of the discipline of neuroarchitecture.
The neuroscientists who were going to be working in the building explained that
chance conversations often sparked ideas, and that this can happen anywhere,
and how important it was that the building should support such serendipity. As
a result, the scientists are free to write on any glass surface within the building,
including the inside of the cast glass cladding.
9
10
Ian Ritchie Architects,
Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for
Neural Circuits and Behaviour,
University College London (UCL),
London,
2016
Access to the natural world is a critically
important psychological amenity for human
physical and mental well-being. The Sainsbury
Wellcome Centre’s extensive roof garden is
accessible to everyone working there, as well as
being a biodiverse habitat.
Loops and Connections
The contributions to the issue stand alone while looping
back and connecting with others, as do the disciplines
within neuroarchitecture. Readers are invited to sample,
explore and perhaps discover, at the end, architect and
neuroscientist Fiona Zisch’s presentation of ‘wickedness’
as a natural consequence of deep and broad pan-
disciplinary thinking.
To inform and underpin the theme of ‘designing
with the mind in mind’, the theoretical background to
the subject is introduced in a brief conversation with

Understanding the
architectural historian Alberto Pérez-Gómez from Mexico,
now a Canadian citizen at McGill University, about the
historical evolution of our understanding of the mind

dynamic, multi- and life, the brain and body, and the body and space.
James Corner is an English landscape architect

dimensional, extended practising mostly in America and Asia. He brings an

international perspective, exploring how landscape
engages the alternating simultaneity of prospect and
and interdependent refuge, foreground and background, intimacy and
immensity, and fear and security – ancient needs and

body that neuroscience fears that form part of our DNA.

The same DNA provides us with both inherited

describes means
concepts and acquired concepts2 from the collective
experience of our shared biosphere. Behaviour drove
the evolution of our brain and the brain then affected

understanding it in our behaviour – a neuro-behavioural loop. Architecture

is imagined and created, and when built shapes us – a

terms of multisensory neuro-design loop. Harry Mallgrave, from the Illinois

Institute of Technology, explains how the biological

awareness
field of niche construction relates to the future of
design practice and how, as we alter our designed
environments, these transform our genetic, cognitive
and social patterns. The designed environment becomes
attuned with the embodied and multisensory
human organism.
Understanding the dynamic, multidimensional,
extended and interdependent body that neuroscience
describes means understanding it in terms of
multisensory awareness. Architect Sarah Robinson
writes about how vision’s predominance reinforces and
perpetuates an impoverished geometric idealisation
of the body, and how understanding our responses to
sound and touch expands not only our conventional
sense of the body, but also our traditional sense of space.
Charles Spence, Professor of Experimental Psychology
at the University of Oxford, illustrates how our senses
affect each other simultaneously, highlighting some
ways in which the rules of multisensory integration and
crossmodal influence are being revealed by neuroscience
and the potential relevance of a multisensory approach
to architectural practice.

Ian Ritchie,
Touch and the Human Body,
1995

The human body is here depicted as

a sensory homunculus showing the
proportional representation of the
concentration of touch cells in the
human skin.

11
 Current developments in social and natural sciences Ian Ritchie Architects,
Trident Park,
emphasise our connectedness and affinity with systems Malta,
of cooperation and communication often occluded by 2020

pre-existing paradigms. Andrew Todd, an English architect Designing for the interplay of light
practising mostly in France, explains how neuroscience and shadow as a device to introduce
softness and interest to the facade of
and phenomenology are valuable tools for architects these office buildings prevents them
wishing to address our social nature and interdependence from being monolithic for passersby.
It also responds to shading
with the ‘natural’ world to reduce alienation in a requirements as part of the low-
world increasingly designed on screens for mediated energy, naturally ventilated spaces
with windows that open. These
consumption on other screens. allow people working inside to feel
The challenges posed by using 2D screen-based and smell natural air perfumed by
the courtyard garden landscape
artificial and disembodied worlds as design tools are between every building.
discussed in a conversation with psychobiologist Vittorio
Gallese, in the context of understanding how our 3D/4D
minds and biological bodies relate to the environments
we design with them.
Sergei Gepshtein, who directs research into adaptive
sensory technology at the Salk Institute, reviews mental
concepts of space in the arts and sciences which are
related yet distinct because they are viewed through
radically different lenses. He argues that it is important to
appreciate differences between these concepts of space,
learn about them in their contexts and then understand
how they mix in practice.
An example of the way actors and audience conceive
of space, how space can embody both meaning and
memory, and how both thought and feeling are linked with
spatial directionality is described by Michael Boyd, former
artistic director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Danbee Kim and Adam R Kampff are experimental
research neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome
Centre, studying how the brain builds a mental model
of its environment. They present basic knowledge about
biological evolution and areas within the brain responsible
for certain effects, written and illustrated with wit. They
imagine ‘built environments’ derived from these mental
models and have the welcome temerity to suggest how
neuroscientists would design these spaces.
The embodied mind in the context of museum
space is addressed by Barry C Smith, who has directed
UCL’s Institute of Philosophy at the School of Advanced
Study since 2008 and is a brilliantly creative pioneer
of collaborative research between philosophers,
psychologists and neuroscientists. We once shared a
public event presenting and discussing how we design
and how our senses, when experienced together – at
this event it was taste (wine), smell (wine) and hearing
(live music) – affect each other. He describes how
understanding the multisensory factors that modulate
people’s experiences of artworks in their settings offers
museum curators and architects opportunities to enhance
an audience’s sensory engagement with the collection.
Níall McLaughlin, an Irish architect practising mostly
in the UK, reflects on the role of architecture in providing
coherent environments for people with dementia,
describing the insights gained from his experience of
researching and designing a respite centre for people with
Alzheimer’s disease. His essay dovetails with the solid
evidential work on space and object visual perception
from Thomas D Albright, Sergei Gepshtein and Eduardo

12
Macagno. Albright, Director of the Vision Center
Laboratory at the Salk Institute, and Macagno, Founding
Dean, Division of Biological Sciences, University of
California, San Diego, were founding members of
ANFA’s Advisory Board in 2003. They review several
complementary experimental approaches that have been
developed in different branches of visual neuroscience,
and consider how these can be used in support of
evidence-based architectural and urban design.
The work of Russell G Foster, Professor of Circadian
Neuroscience at Oxford University, on light and its
wavelengths and their effect on our biorhythms, is
known among lighting designers and some architects.
He summarises what we know about the biology of
photoreception and the effect of lighting on circadian
entrainment, and explains that developing evidence-
based artificial lighting to create human-centric lighting
design is far from straightforward.

Measuring the Ineffable

Intuitive design, a phenomenal performance in itself, is
probably the main area where neuroscientific research
has the potential to help architects create environments
that support thriving human lives, by providing us with
a previously unimaginable level of physiological insight
into how we navigate and respond to our surroundings.
Yet neuroscientists are only beginning to learn and
understand about the huge complexity of the brain in
relation to its environment.
There is a tendency, particularly in the press, to
suggest that quantitative rigour and evidence-based
design can justify architectural quality. That is: design
based on measuring stimuli, sensory inputs and
perception rather than on empathic resonance. It is
hoped that this issue’s exploration of a tiny part of the
extraordinarily complex spectrum of human physical and
mental attributes as they relate to the built environment
has made clear that such reductionism is a blind alley.
At the time of writing, the Covid-19 pandemic is
in the process of changing how we appreciate our
biosphere. We are discovering the strength of our social
connections, and the extent of our deleterious effect
on the natural world as skies clear and we realise how
different our cities could be. It is difficult to imagine that
architecture will not be changed as a result. Architects
have a major stake in the discussion of how the city
is going to evolve. The knowledge emerging from
neuroscience is a new, potentially powerful tool. We
have the concomitant responsibility to use it wisely. 1

Notes
1. www.anfarch.org/.
2. Semir Zeki, Splendors and Miseries of the Brain:
Love, Creativity and the Quest for Human Happiness,
Wiley-Blackwell (London and New York), 2009.

Text © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 6-7, 8(t), 9(br), 10 © Ian Ritchie
Architects; pp 8(b), 9(t&bl) © Grant Smith; p 11 © Ian Ritchie; pp 12-13 © Karl Borg

13