11/3/15, 7:10 PMUnified Architectural Theory, Chapter 12 | ArchDaily

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Unified Architectural Theory, Chapter 12

We will be publishing Nikos Salingaros’ book, Unified Architectural Theory, in a series ofinstallments, making it digitally, freely available for students and architects around the world.In Chapter 12, Salingaros concludes his discussion of the physiological and psychologicaleffects of architecture, demonstrating how ornament can lead to an enriching humanenvironment. If you missed them, make sure to read the previous installments here.

Ornament and Human Intelligence

Ornament and function go together. There is no structure in nature that can be classified aspure ornament without function. In traditional architecture, which was more tied to nature,such a separation never existed. The breakdown of the human adaptation of architecturecan be traced to the forced conceptual separation of ornament from function, a relativelyrecent occurrence in human history. It is only in 20th-century architectural discourse thatpeople began to think of ornament as separate from function: see “How Modernism GotSquare” (Mehaffy & Salingaros, 2013).

A key aim of this book is to judge form and structure according to a whole systemcomprising the physical setting together with the observer. Any influence the object or placehas on the user is part of its function. But any ornament will certainly also impact the user,so the actual experience cannot separate any particular aspect as pure function. Ourmechanistic split of what we somehow decide to be function isolated from ornament is true

Bath Abbey. "The eye scans a scene by following regions with high detail... the image isformed by moving along connected lines, called “scan paths”. Image © Flickr CC user

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11/3/15, 7:10 PMUnified Architectural Theory, Chapter 12 | ArchDaily

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for simple machines, but is invalid for situations in which humans are involved.

In the process of design, the end product will acquire qualities of life when we go through aninteractive sequence of steps. This approach is very far from the usual satisfaction of aminimal list of uses and abstract requirements. How do we know that what we are designingon paper or on a computer screen actually satisfies those uses when built? We don’t.Actually, it is only through the re-use of solutions that have been found empirically to besuccessful that we can approach some measure of success in our designs.

Yet the fundamental lesson is that we cannot presume to know how to satisfy a purelyfunctional need. A “simple” function without complexity does not give a good solution.Failure to take this evolved complexity into account has led to so many presumed functionalsolutions that immediately proved to be disastrous — unusable because they are inhuman.The search for geometric coherence, through the rules we have discussed at great length inprevious chapters of this book, is what helps us here. Paradoxically to a person raised in the20th-century mechanistic worldview, the search for coherence and wholeness leads us to afunctional solution that is accurate and not illusory.

In this picture of how successful objects and places are built by paying attention to systemiccoherence, ornament and function are inseparable. It doesn’t make any sense to talk aboutone and not the other — just as in natural forms. Therefore, we need to learn how to designthings that have the quality of life, that possess wholeness. And in doing so, function andornament develop together, without our having to pay any particular attention to eithercategory separately.Examining some outstanding design solutions from the past might reveal some realsurprises. What we thought to be a strictly functional solution could just as easily havearisen (and probably did) from considering the wholeness of the geometrical configuration.This holds true on every scale, from artifacts, to rooms, to buildings, to urban spaces. Theywork and give pleasure at the same time.

The coupling of environmental information with our own participation ties us to ourenvironment: see “Intelligence and the Information Environment” (Mehaffy & Salingaros,2012). It is therefore no surprise that the informational qualities of the environment haveserious consequences on our biological structure. Although still under investigation, itseems fairly certain that our cognitive abilities are shaped and affected by the type ofinformation embedded in our environment.

A variety of laboratory experiments on animals show beyond any doubt that the youngraised in more informationally-rich environments develop measurably higher brain capacityand intelligence. Animals raised in minimalist, information-devoid settings are lowest on theintelligence scale. These are structural physiological changes that affect intelligence in apermanent manner.

This effect was finally recognized in 1994, when the Carnegie Task Force issued a reportwarning that minimalist environments (among those lacking sensory experiences of allkinds) could permanently compromise children’s intellectual development. And the type ofinformation that triggers the tuning of our intelligence is precisely the ordered, coherentpatterns we have described in this book: see “The Sensory Value of Ornament” (Salingaros,2003) (available in Spanish here). For human beings, the best evidence comes fromclassical music, not art or architecture. Children who study classical music tend to do muchbetter at school in all subjects.

Our neuro-physiological system developed to handle the specific information presented byour ancestral natural environment. When humans began making things, our evolvedframework for cognition automatically produced a specific class of objects that reflected aparticular geometric coherence. This was the same natural coherence that formed ourcognition mechanisms in the first place. Our mind therefore extends out informationally intothe physical environment through what we make.

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An interesting clue comes from our paleo-history. There is, at present, a serious debate onwhether or not Neanderthal Man created art and ornament, with many researchers claimingnot. This topic is of crucial importance because our own species, Homo Sapiens, didproduce art and ornament as an essential component of our evolving intelligence anddevelopment. The Neanderthals, by contrast, show no progress in their technology orculture during their era of about 200,000 years. In the end, we probably killed them off. It iseasy to conjecture that our increased intelligence — which gave us our unprecedentedevolutionary advantage — is somehow tied intrinsically to our ornamental production.

During the last 50 years, scientists have discovered how we interact with the informationfield presented in our environment. For example, the eye scans a scene by followingregions with high detail, differentiations, contrast, and curvature: see “The Sensory Value ofOrnament” (Salingaros, 2003). Furthermore, the image is formed by moving alongconnected lines, called “scan paths”. The eye-brain mechanism therefore recognizes anduses the regions of an image with high detail, contrast, and curvature to obtain information.This finding validates Alexander’s “Fifteen Fundamental Properties” (See Chapter 10 ofUnified Architectural Theory online) and three structural laws of architecture that I proposed(Salingaros, 1995) (available in Spanish here).

Further research links the way we perceive our surroundings with the way this information isstored in our brain, and is then used to govern our actions and decisions. Our lives are inlarge part governed by these innate mechanisms of capture, integration, and response toexternal information. Our instinctive response to forms is hard-wired into our organism.We come up against a contradiction between the design of buildings and our physiology,however, starting with the modernist period. It seems that their architects go out of their wayto deny the visual and morphological features required by human cognition and physiology.Could this be an accident? I don’t believe so. Contradiction and elimination of perceptualcoherence is systematic, so it has to be the result of deliberate action.

I wish to develop the thesis that ornament is a primary manifestation of humanintelligence. A false but widely-accepted assumption in architectural discourse for over acentury states that ornament is simply imitative of nature, but that’s not true. Ornamentarises as a spontaneous creative act of the human brain. Someone could also createornament that imitates nature only visually, but that is a separate matter.

The proof of the above thesis comes from individual neurons that have the specific functionto recognize ornamental components: see “The Sensory Value of Ornament” (Salingaros,2003). Everyone knows of the retinal cone cells that react to different color hues. What isless known is that those same receptor cells are responsible for our ability to see fine detail.Furthermore, the phenomenon of “color constancy” links color perception to the brain’sadvanced computational capacity. We automatically adjust actual color hues under differentlight conditions to perceive the “natural” color — only a brain with high intelligence can seecolors.

Even less known outside scientific circles is the existence of a large number of corticalneurons inside the brain that are triggered only by ornamental elements. These includespecific responses to crosses, stars, concentric circles, crosses with an outline, and otherconcentrically-organized symmetrical figures with some complexity. These patterns aretherefore built into our cognitive neural structure. Since those neurons are there for areason, we should be stimulating them.

Individual neurons that fire in response to higher patterns of complexity are situated in

Rolex Learning Center / SANAA. "The Carnegie Task Force issued a report warning thatminimalist environments could permanently compromise children’s intellectual

development". Image © Iwan Baan

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increasingly advanced (from the evolutionary viewpoint) regions of the brain. The relativenumber of pattern-sensitive neurons also increases as we progress from the more primitiveto the more recently-evolved layers of the human brain. This finding correlates theperception of ordered visual complexity and ornament anatomically with the evolution ofintelligence.

Now we need to describe what happens when this wonderful apparatus for perceivinggeometric coherence in our environment, and generating it in artifacts and structures, isfrustrated. Our body reacts with physiological and psychological distress. Minimalist andotherwise information-deprived environments lead to depression.

Colorless and featureless environments do not necessarily produce a numbing response,but can trigger distress with an active feeling of threat. The reason for this active effect isthat minimalist environments trigger signals of our own pathology. There is a group ofdiseases that make us experience a normal, informationally-rich environment as if it were aminimalist environment, which creates alarm: see “The Sensory Value of Ornament”(Salingaros, 2003).

For example, macular degeneration and retinal detachment create anxiety because we loseour image of the environment. Or a cataract makes the eye’s lens opaque. These are alldiseases of the eye. Other pathologies occurring within the brain itself give similar signals ofalarm. Cerebral lesions from a stroke or carbon monoxide poisoning can cause “visualagnosia”, where a person with perfectly-functioning eyes cannot “see” because their brain isno longer capable of recognizing forms and colors. Such “agnosic” patients cannotrecognize structural coherence.

Another condition of brain damage that mimics a minimalist environment is “cerebralachromatopsia”, when patients see only in shades of gray. This condition is far more severethan regular color blindness, where the number of perceived color hues is reduced by one.With cerebral achromatopsia, however, everything becomes gray. Organic objects such aspeople’s faces and food become repellent because they express death. Those unfortunatepatients live out their lives in a state of despair in a depressing world.

This material is taking architecture into a whole new direction, and people may not be readyfor it; certainly those in the present educational system aren’t. It is important neverthelessbecause it reveals that designed environments have significant effects (either positive ornegative) on users. Obviously, this needs to be part of the curriculum so architecturestudents are forced to learn it. Perhaps an effective way to teach these lessons is to applythis method to build buildings that have positive effects on their users, then architects willlearn from those built examples. Furthermore, within the context of form languages, it’spossible to combine this method with the way we are constructing today so as to generatesomething interesting that will draw attention.

Order the International edition of Unified Architectural Theory here, and the USedition here.

Readings:

Christopher Alexander (2001) “The Awakening of Space”, Chapter 11 of ThePhenomenon of Life: Book 1 of The Nature of Order, Center for Environmental Structure,Berkeley, California.

Michael Mehaffy & Nikos Salingaros (2012) “Intelligence and the InformationEnvironment”, Metropolis, 25 February. Reprinted as Chapter 7 of Design for a LivingPlanet, Sustasis Press, Portland, Oregon (2015).

Michael Mehaffy & Nikos Salingaros (2013) “How Modernism Got Square”, Metropolis, 19April. Reprinted as Chapter 3 of Design for a Living Planet, Sustasis Press, Portland,Oregon (2015).

Nikos Salingaros (1995) “The Laws of Architecture from a Physicist’s Perspective”,Physics Essays, Volume 8, pages 638-643. Revised version is Chapter 1 of A Theory ofArchitecture, Umbau-Verlag, Solingen, Germany, 2006; reprinted 2014, Sustasis Press,Portland, Oregon and Vajra Books, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Nikos Salingaros (2003) “The Sensory Value of Ornament”, Communication & Cognition,Volume 36, No. 3-4, pages 331-351. Revised version is Chapter 4 of A Theory ofArchitecture, Umbau-Verlag, Solingen, Germany, 2006; reprinted 2014, Sustasis Press,Portland, Oregon and Vajra Books, Kathmandu, Nepal.