Teaching Design at the Limits of Architecture

Pre-industrial architects inherently knew the effectual dimension of design through its materiality, detail, and form. Until now, the intellectual dichotomy of human thinking held that mind and body were separate entities, drawing a distinction between reasoned thought and feeling. The early Greek philosophers distinguished between these two realms. Theories on beauty, the human aesthetic impulse, and design were divided along the objective and subjective lines for centuries. In more current architectural terms, the objective dimension of industry gave structure and perceived virtue to the modernist paradigm, while at the same time clearing the way (tabula rasa) for the rampant subjectivity we now see in the idiosyncratic expressions of so many contemporary architects. By revealing the relationship between our physical and mental processes, neuroscience re-situates the debate on physical reality well outside the intellectual enterprise of aesthetically driven design. Clear measures can now be evidenced, documented, and applied to establish a new, more effective, and humanly engaging way to build. This new architecture draws upon those mechanisms of neuro-connectivity that help us to feel safe and secure.