neuroergonomics and sociogenesis, lectures part5

Neuroergonomics and sociogenesis

Internationa Society of BiourbanismSummer School 2014

www.biourbanism.org - info@biourbanism.org

International Society of Biourbanism - Summer School 2014

From Nowhere to Now-hereThe Power of the Weak in the

Construction of PlaceDiogo Teixeira

diogo.teixeira@usj.edu.mo

Lecture 14

To sum up, Saarinen treats the users as children; Price treats them as

objects.

Place attachment

The bonding that occurs between individuals and their meaningful environments.

Place attachmentas individual experience

‘‘it is not simply the places themselves that are significant, but rather what can be called

‘experience-in-place’ that creates meaning’’ (Manzo 2005)

sensation perception conception

Experience

EMOTION emotionthought THOUGHT

odisseia no espaço

Place attachment as affect: Topophilia

“the affective link between the person and the place or physical environment. Diffuse as a

concept, vivid and concrete as personal experience” (Tuan 1974)

“Human beings have persistently sought an ideal environment. As it stands, it varies from one culture to another, but in essence it seems to

entail two antipodal images: the garden of innocence and the cosmos. [...] Thus we move

from one to another [...]; seeking a balance that is not of this world.” (Tuan 1974)

“I have used the term topophilia to describe that form of cinematic discourse that exposes the laborof intimate geography – a love of place that works together with the residual texture of cineres. [...] This is the site of (in)visible traces, inscribed and

laid bare, yet enduring erasable on the white fabric of the screen.” (Bruno 2002)

Affect in theConstruction of Place

Thrift (2007), in his introduction to non-representational theory, proclaims a geography of what happens to relate space and affect. He starts

by the event and its essential feature - the surprisingness - to describe the world-in-motion

we live, in which decisions have to be made for the moment, every moment.

Affect is not only emotion, nor is it reducible to the affects or perceptions of an individual subject:

“Percepts are not perceptions, they are packets of sensations and relations that outlive those who

experience them. Affects are not feelings, they are becomings that go beyond those who live through

them (they become other)” (Deleuze 1995)

From the analysis of dance, Thrift extracts the key innovations of non-representational theory:1)Produce 'therapeutic' interventions rather than claim the grand theory.2)Focus on a class of experiences seldom addressed, the trivial, the interactive, the game.3)Questions the traditional tools (ethnography, focus groups, and the like) for being cognitive in origin and effect.

What is Affectin the Construction of Place?

1) A set of bodily practices that produce visible behaviours (phenomenology and hermeneutics);

2) A drive (psychoanalysis);3) The property of the active result of an

encounter (Spinoso-Deleuzian);4) A universal expression of emotion (Darwinian).

1) Corporeal because it uses the sensitive evidence we have learned since childhood as cultural signifiers of intensity;

2) Embedded in time and in space;3) Resisting the paradigm of reading-writing-text but still intelligible

to an awaken audience, as various forms of (e)motion;4) Subliminal because it operates in the gap between action and

cognition as a kind of visceral shorthand only possible in small spaces and subliminal times.

“I have tried to begin to show that the challenge of affect is, at least in part, a challenge to what we regard as the social because it involves thinking about waves of influence which depend upon

biology to an extent that is rarely recognized or theorized in the social sciences.” (Thrift 2007)

Affective Responses to Architecture

“When I think about architecture, images come into my mind. ” (Zumthor 2006)

Primary: Extension and protectionActivation: Spatial differentiation

Dominance: Scale, symmetry, and repetitionValence: Curvilinear spaces and objects

Colour

Activation: Warmth and saturationDominance: Contrast

Valence: Brillance and saturation

Material

It is common practice in architecture to associate materials with certain qualities of expression:

- Steel to a massive and technical atmosphere;- Glass to modern and clean;- Wood to domestic;- Stone to durability.

Vegetation

Plants and flowers are recognized as symbolic gestures of positive thougths and desires and

expression of affect.Many researchers consider that we are not

prepared for the urban lifestyle.In fact, our genetic composition changed only

0,005% in the last 10.000 years.

Biophilia

“innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes” (Wilson 1984)

What started to be an instinctive activity – construction – using what was available on site to give structure to

existence, became a complex process – design – through the application of meanings coming from mythology,

symbolisms and social structures.

“Human beings connect physiologically and psychologically to structures embodying organized

complexity more strongly than to environments that are either too plain, or which present disorganized

complexity.” (Salingaros 2006)In short: the presence of useful information is not

enough, it is the way this information is organized that stimulates the connection.

“First, that we should bring as much of nature as we can into our everyday environments so as to experience it firsthand; and second, that we

need to shape our built environment to incorporate those same geometrical qualities

found in nature.” (Salingaros and Masden 2006)

Pattern Language

“with its 253 patterns that can each be shaped in a myriad ways, constitutes a vision of an

environment that is extraordinarily rich in many sorts of potential experiences – the very antithesis

of so much modern and contemporary architecture and urbanism.” (Buchanan 2012)

Geo-metryGeo-graphy

The question is not only the information – “natural elements, figurative art, or ornament” (Salingaros and Masden 2006) –

nor its organization, but the way it presents itself: the experience of mystery, in architecture as in theology, "as of nudity, often muteness, fragility, doubt, silence and night; is

an experience of not knowing, not seeing, not having the power... It is a repeated no that paradoxically ends up

becoming a meeting place.” (Tolentino Mendonça 2012)

Weak Architecture

Il Pensiero Debole (Vattimo and Rovatti 1983)“Arquitectura Débil” (Solà-Morales 1987)

‘Delicate empiricism’ (Goethe)The end of the classical period, of the vision of a

closed and complete universe as if it was a finished whole.

Decorative as to what is accessory and does not requires an attentive reading because it emerges

from the periphery, the surroundings, the atmosphere.

Monumental, not as a representation of the absolute, but in the sense that Foucault gives to it

of trace or resonance.

“an architectonic proposition whose aim is to go deep [...] can't find support in a fixed image, can't follow a linear evolution. [...] Each design must catch, with the

utmost rigor, a precise moment of flittering image in all its shades, and the better you can recognize that

flittering quality of reality, the clearer your design will be. It is the more vulnerable as it is true.” (Siza 1980)

How is this related with emotion?“certain stimuli are ambiguous enough to activate more than one site, leading to a composite emotional state. A bittersweet experience is the result, a “mixed” feeling

arising from a mixed emotion. (Damásio 2010)

Ambiguity and Improvisation

“the ability to represent simultaneously, on the same canvas, not one but several truths, each one of which has equal validity with the others.” (Zeki,

1999)“The value of cities is determined on the basis of

the number of places in them that are conceded to improvisation.” (Krakauer 1964)

Embodied Metaphors

Because our conceptualization is metaphorical in nature, performed mostly unconsciously (95%), and

metaphorical categories are interconnected with our neural maps often at an early age, embodied metaphors

are those associated with our most basic and primal emotions and impulses (example: the experience of

warmth of a child on parents arms).

ContemporaryPractices

Kengo KumaOsmosis

davidcloverCamouflage

Gary ChangMetamorphosis

Pier Vittorio AurelioLess is Enough

WEAK!Urban Acupuncture

TacticalUrbanism

Urban InterventionidealidadesLisbon 1999

nowhere

now here

1. Algorithmic sustainable design: theoretical key concepts – Antonio Caperna

2. A kind introduction to complexity – Alessandro Giuliani

3. Biourbanism and sociogenesis – Stefano Serafini

4. Algorithmic sustainable design: morphogenesis – Antonio Caperna

5. Pattern language – Antonio Caperna

6. Generative processes – Besim S. Hakim

7. Algorithmic sustainable design: “the Nature of order” – Antonio Caperna

8. Neuroscience and Design – Menno Cramer

9. Biophilic architecture and biophilic design – Antonio Caperna

10. Urban sociology – Katherine Donaghy

11. Biourban city – Antonio Caperna

12. Paracity – Menno Cramer, Katherine Donaghy

13. Placemaking – Angelica Fortuzzi

14. Weak architecture – Diogo Teixeira

Neuroergonomics and sociogenesis

Internationa Society of BiourbanismSummer School 2014

www.biourbanism.org - info@biourbanism.org

neuroergonomics and sociogenesis, lectures part5

place attachment

construction of place

love of place

challenge of affect

individual experience

personal experience

various forms of emotion

saturation dominance

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