Neuroarchitecture

CHRISTOPH METZGER
Foreword 7

Architecture 12
Madeleine Region—Neural Paths 12
Architecture as a System of Memory 17
Return and Security 18
The Central Plan versus the Longitudinal Plan 21
Anthropological Requirements of Architecture 21

Organic and Anthropological Architecture 29

The Roof as Image and Dogma 29
Urban Landscapes 32
Tree Cathedrals and City Landscapes 35
Expressionist Forms 38
Jugendstil and Organic Architecture 41
Landscape and Ecosystems 46
Rudolf Steiner in Context 50
Organic Architecture—Dogma of Reception 55
Holistic Architecture 57
Anthropology as Relaunch 60

Mobility 64
Body and Distance 64
Movement as a Necessity 76
Quality of Movement 78
Movement and Dignity 83
Enclosure and Hermits 83
Body Consciousness 86

Neuromusicology—Neuroarchitecture 89
Music as Experience of Movement 89
Imagined Compositions 93
Compositions and Abstract Structures 93
Body, Space, Experience 95
Reduction and Structure 96
Limits of Musical Understanding 97
Movement, Structure, Surface 98
Stockhausen—Feldman—Ligeti 99
Neuroscientific Overlaps 109
Home 117
House—Community—Identity 117
Ethics of Living 122
Security—Grasping 125
The Tent-Shape as Archetype 132
Sheltering Places 137
Return—Fulfilment—Departure 140
Home as Structure—Corners of the House 146
Sensory Cycles: Seasons—Aromas 148

Potentials of Neuroarchitecture 153

Basic Principles of Neuroarchitecture 153
Neuroarchitecture and Behavioral Changes 167
Stimulations in Functional Contexts 169
Neuroscientific Spatial Concepts 174
Cognition of the Body—Patterns 175
Hands—Understanding beyond Language 176
Neuroarchitecture versus Cognitive Impairment 182
Potentials of Neuroarchitecture 190
Structuring as an Anthropological Task 191
Open Questions and Outlook 204
Conclusion and Acknowledgments 208

Appendix 212
Bibliography 213
Notes 215
Picture Credits 221
6

Venice, Mouth of the Grand Canal with Santa Maria della Salute (1687)
 7

Foreword

Neuroarchitecture combines aspects of neuroscientific research

with features of buildings designed to provide people with essential sen-
sory stimulation. Good architecture addresses various different senses. It
facilitates and encourages forms of movement. If buildings are constructed
following traditional methods, the use of natural materials not only brings
to mind forgotten values of architecture and building culture, but is also
about rediscovering social values such as community, home, and security,
and placing them in the context of livable architecture. This book therefore
presents recent architectural opinions concerning people’s wellbeing in the
community. The spectrum ranges from detached houses, kindergartens,
schools, cultural buildings, and public libraries, through facilities for the el-
derly, to the housing projects and apartment buildings of the 1950s. With
regard to neuroarchitecture, it also shows that the effect of architectural
forms has considerable responsibility for people’s mental health, especially
in the case of younger and older persons who are particularly in need of
protection.
If people live in healthy spaces within an environment designed to
suit their nature, it has a positive effect on their vital functions. Evidence of
how this is reflected in their mental state can be seen at times of stress.
This is the starting point of my argument. From the influence of architecture
on wellbeing I have derived a catalog of requirements that must be spec-
ified on the basis of age group and function. Neuroarchitecture, whose
basic outlines are traced here, goes back to debates that were relevant
in the 1920s and updates controversies that were sparked off by forms
of functionalist architecture and the associated industrial manufacturing
techniques. Sometimes, and almost stereotypically, the “organic and nat-
ural” is opposed to the “mechanical.” Also, the image of the human be-
ing inevitably moves into the center, and this is reflected at various stages
of European and American history in differing standards for buildings and
their designed environment. Is planning dominated by people’s needs or do
functional considerations of drastic rationalization come into play? This is
12

Architecture

Madeleine Region—Neural Paths

When defining its themes, neuroarchitectural research rightly makes
mention of Marcel Proust’s great novel, in which the madeleine episode (also
known in English psychology as the Proust phenomenon), triggered a world
of multisensory images in the memory. Embedded in an environment whose
atmosphere is for the most part cold and menacing, a sensory experience
becomes the center of a biographical account and the main thread of a
narrative in which it is almost impossible to untangle the search for traces
and images in the memory without a list of names and places. In the context
of sensibilité, Proust’s style makes sensory experiences the basis of his de-
scriptions—neurologically motivated perspectives according to the modern
view—whose origins have something in common with Henri Bergson and his
theory of memory. Right from the opening paragraphs, things remembered
are described as inscriptions in the memory. Engravings, traces, and then
patterns testify to sensory experiences and relate to rooms and atmospheres.
In the field of architecture, this creates a combination of cognitively effective
events linking neurological research and practical applications. Extra effort is
required when reading in order to decode the syntax and references. Gilles
Deleuze sees an extensive plan in the unusual structure and complexity of
Proust’s novel, which he compares to an almost incomprehensible accumu-
lation of boxes and containers1 filled with objects, people, and names. Read-
ing the novel turns into the discovery of a series of related rooms and their ar-
chitecture, which can be revealed like an unfamiliar city through experiences
and later through internalized plans, maps, and mind maps. Recent research
developments at the interfaces between neurology, hermeneutics, memory
and biographical research, location theories, and architecture are identifi-
able in Proust’s novel as an unusual density of literary material. Moreover,
it is only in the context of contrasting spatial situations that the “madeleine
experience” can develop the power that then manifests itself as sensibilité in
individual actions. It becomes a regular point of reference for the reader and
suggests a chronology of events, although images of these form many layers
 ARCHITECTURE 13

in the memory. Thus, the quality of the text is built on sensorily exaggerated
or even hypersensitive moments, whose stylized perception may lie outside
the boundaries of what is felt to be “healthy.” Exaggeration becomes sys-
tematic; sensual events become the cornerstones of the narrative. “The au-
thor develops border areas and nuances of human perception and feelings
with admirable precision; he reveals their changeability, their bewilderment,
their insincerity and ambiguity, as well as their nobility.”2 He also places his
narrative within the framework of an architecture that is described with equal
accuracy. The quality of the detail Proust achieves places him in an area of
literature that has its own distinct typology. “With regard to the structure, it
is possible to recognize features of literature that are closely associated with
the Enlightenment’s concept of sensibilité. The homme-sensible is a figure
promoting identification, intended to make the readership aware of their own
emotionality and moral quality. The aim of ‘sensitive’ literature in France and
England is not entertainment but emotional instruction.”3
The author describes himself as vessel and as a room, whose body
relates to other bodies in the form of people, things, and even architecture.
Deleuze uses the image of the box and nest of boxes, as well as their ar-
rangement in a chronological sequence, and draws attention to the musi-
cal composition of the narrative. It is about composed periods of time and
makes use of imagery that may refer back to Arthur Schopenhauer. Proust’s
portrayal of idealized rooms in the houses of his childhood, which are de-
scribed in past times as atmospherically charged environments, is worthy of
especial study. Here physical experiences are always experiences of spaces,
embedded in a delicate, unusually nuanced, depiction of the rooms, which is
conditioned by a particular view of the architecture.
Before the architectural details of the setting, we first have the pro-
portions, which Samuel Beckett described as follows: “The narrator cannot
sleep in a strange room, is tortured by a high ceiling, being used to a low
ceiling.”4 Reading these scenes thus offers a sensually exaggerated per-
ception, as experienced by the delicate, sickly, pubescent boy. The author
presents himself as the focal point of a scenario with a timescale alternating
between experience and memory, whose changing levels are set against
the constants of mental images. In order to make it possible to work out the
course of the narrative and its chronological relationships, the scenes are set
in a sequence determined by the seasons.
The seasonal composition is reflected in various places in a small
town and in private rooms. Summer and winter rooms of town and country
houses reveal their destiny by day and by night. Rooms become dynamic
stages, experienced as atmospherically charged zones and presented by
the author as a framework for sensory details and their contexts. Things
that appear fixed and immovable by day begin to move in the dark. For
18

exhausted from the journey. But sleep is out of the question in this inferno of
unfamiliar objects. All his senses are on the alert, on the defensive, wakeful
and taut, and as painfully incapable of relaxing as the tortured body of La
Balue in the cage in which he could neither stand upright nor sit down. There
is no room for his body in this extensive and dreadful apartment, because
his attention has peopled it with gigantic furniture, with a storm of noises and
an agony of colors.”23 The rooms, which have dissolved in the frenzy of im-
pressions, deny him the reference points of pattern and structure that make
identification and security possible. Ways into a system that is made possi-
ble only by security must first be found and developed, so that we can then
slowly inscribe in our memory the traces that become identifiable, at first by
day and later also at night. The imaginary defenselessness of the delicate
child is heightened by undressing and the onset of a feeling of isolation. The
moment of abandonment takes on the character of a leitmotiv as the image
of isolation in a wide space. “Being alone in this room that is not even a room
but a cave of wild beasts, surrounded on all sides by irreconcilable strangers,
whose private sphere he has disturbed, he wishes to die. His grandmother
comes in and comforts him.”24 The strange bed refuses to offer a place of
safety. One of the constants of the narrative is the emphasis on the connec-
tion between lying in the room and the displacement of perception that sets
in in the darkness of the night.

Return and Security

The documentation of the Darmstadt Symposium of 1951 gives us
an insight into how, a few years after the end of World War Two, the image
of man from the anthropological point of view was set in the context of a
new form of building. Instead of citing Muthesius, Taut, Aalto, Scharoun, or
Wright as architectural references, they turned to the Jugendstil architecture
of Darmstadt. Fifty years had passed since the first exhibition of the artists’
colony in 1901, which had the title “Ein Dokument deutscher Kunst” (A Docu-
ment of German Art). “The artists’ colony was founded in 1899 by Ernst Lud-
wig. His motto was ‘Mein Hessenland blühe und in ihm die Kunst’ (My Hesse
should flourish, and the art in Hesse too), and he expected the combination of
art and trade to provide economic impetus for his state. The artists’ goal was
to be the development of modern, forward-looking forms of construction and
living. To this end, Ernst Ludwig brought several Jugendstil artists together in
Darmstadt: Peter Behrens , Paul Bürck, Rudolf Bosselt, Hans Christiansen,
Ludwig Habich, Patriz Huber and Joseph Maria Olbrich.”25 The year 1951
offered an opportunity to look in detail at the architectural movements of the
intervening period and recall them in the accompanying exhibition. The par-
ticipants in the conference were related to the exhibits presented there. Fifty
years of German architectural history were displayed and discussed. Com-
 ARCHITECTURE 19

Joseph Maria Olbrich, Hochzeitsturm (Wedding Tower), Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt (1908)

mon features can be found in the opinions expressed. It becomes very clear
that all the authors were critical of the way people in the expanding cities
were compelled to live, which could be observed in the planning and projects
between 1890 and 1910 and would continue to be updated as the ideology
of a mechanistic “machine for living.” In Darmstadt—and this is what makes
the reports of the conference so forward-looking—the contributions of Hans
Gerhard Evers, Otto Bartning, Otto Ernst Schweizer, Rudolf Schwarz, Martin
Heidegger, and Jóse Ortega y Gasset provided convincing arguments with
clear anthropological and philosophical requirements, successfully mounting
a logical counterargument against the functionalism that already character-
ized the residential building of those years and would continue to do so. “The
human mind somehow has the secret ability to set up abstract systems,
in which it fetters and incarcerates itself. The nineteenth century invented
such systems with immense constructivist perspicacity.”26 The participants
lamented the loss of holistic living, which from the very start had systemati-
cally suppressed vital needs through the increasing industrialization of hous-
ing areas. “I only need to remember Scheler, …, who tried to show that the
concept never delivers the truth, because in itself it has only realized the
clutching, gripping hand, and that one only becomes aware of objects when
feeling is added to the concept of the hand as something that grips. … When
another person comes along and says that the ear is also necessary for rec-
ognition of the world, …, because it can perceive the sound in the world,
this concept by no means sufficient; man must use all his senses” to free
28

Consideration of such discoveries in future would put architecture in a po-

sition to make fruitful use of the sensory experiences and flashbacks repre-
sented by the striking madeleine episode in the realization of building decent
human accommodation. Only in connection with existing research and an-
thropological achievements will it be possible to accomplish what Bernhard
Waldenfels developed as human physicality in interaction with the physicality
of architecture: integrating a comprehensive approach, an understanding of
physicality into the thought and action of architecture. A phenomenology of
human perception and its poverty48 based on sensorily rich spaces will then
find a place in theory and neuroarchitectural practice that is in keeping with
the times.

Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, Great Basin Desert, Utah (1976)

 29

Organic and Anthropological

Architecture

The Roof as Image and Dogma

The philosophy of architecture in the twentieth century is widely re-
flected in the shape and structure of roofs and how they are interpreted. In
the visual arts, when representational shapes and subjects began to disin-
tegrate around 1880, elementary forms, especially the contrasting shapes
of circles and triangles, were the first to become the focus of interest. The
rise of Impressionist techniques resulted in a marked increase in round and
pointed shapes, which extended into the late phase of Cubo-Futurism. The
canvases are characterized by splinters and triangular shapes. A distinc-
tive one-sidedness of form is countered by the atmospheric charging of
the remaining structure. The course of seasonally determined moods once
again becomes the basis of an art that tests out its themes and variations
on the primeval structure of the house and related forms. The shapes of
drying haystacks, arranged as an ensemble in the form of primitive huts,
are reminiscent of the first villages, while titanic cathedrals are likened to
sailing ships, whose outlines are left to merge beyond recognition into the
gently mirthful play of light and its fluctuations and shadows. From Monet,
Cézanne, Kandinsky, and Klee through to Feininger, it is possible to de-
fine architectural forms that, over a period of at least forty years, between
1880 and 1920, develop the roof into a major feature in the visual arts. It
would be hard to find another architectural detail with an equally charismatic
personality. The roof becomes the very epitome of the dawn of the mod-
ern era. During these years, the structure of the roof was associated with
metaphysical ideas that charge the completion of buildings with a distinct
symbolic power and also affect the architecture itself. The roof no longer
merely completes the building and holds its walls together; it becomes a
powerful medium for the expression of meaning, leaving an unusually deep
imprint on the building. The extensive use of buildings and dense urban ar-
eas in film can be regarded in the same way, when film sets have archaic or
Expressionist backdrops portraying such buildings. “Among Expressionist
architects, Herman Poelzig, Bruno Taut, [and] Paul Thiersch … built sets for
44

rww  Park Meerwijk, Bergen,

Architects of the
Amsterdam School (1915)

his signature mark. “Ich” (German for “I”) was the simple, somewhat arro-
gant, inscription on the dome of the first Goetheanum in Dornach. To begin
with, a tenable interpretation of the few buildings by Steiner that could justify
attribution to the field of organic architecture is scarcely defensible in terms
of historical concepts.
Various aspects can be cited as evidence of an architecture that
could be described as organic. The use of local and regional building materi-
als and the way the structure is integrated into the topography usually mean
that the panorama of the landscape determines the line and shape of the
 ORGANIC AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE 45

roof. The architecture copies the lines of the topography. Contrasting materi-
als and forms are avoided in what is understood as organic architecture. The
result is often the addition of an extra mythological dimension to the site of
the building and its grounds. In discussions of organic architecture, it mostly
becomes clear that it concerns a structure that is close to nature and usually
avoids rectangular shapes or at least breaks them up into component parts.
However, when a building that has already become an iconic example in the
history of architecture—such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, which is
52

vr  Rudolf
Steiner,
Goetheanum,
Heizhaus (1914)
ww Goetheanum,
Glass House (1914)
ORGANIC AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE 53
64

Mobility

Body and Distance

Long before the concept of freedom from barriers was accepted as
standard in public building regulations, there was in practice a distinction
between the terms animate and inanimate, whose derivation is to be found
in wider contexts.122 An example from Merleau-Ponty shows what the po-
sition is when a stone is thrown. “The phenomenon of the movement itself,
or the theoretical side of the movement, shows, for instance, that the stone
that is thrown is not an identity, to which the movement would be external,
but the movement itself. Objects are primarily determined by their behavior,
not through static properties. Other present-day philosophical explanations
emphasize the idea that the understanding of movement which underlies and
precedes all theories is itself a matter of a particular kind of thought and not
an institution.”123 It thus becomes clear that movement can be described
in a less abstract way but that, in connection with bodies, it always tends
to appear as a phenomenon that should be understood in its entirety. With
this posit, Merleau-Ponty succeeds in recalling that movement is something
that is original and shows different characteristics at particular stages of life.
Significant scientific sources for research into cognition are the aspects of
developmental psychology and medical research—at the stage they had
reached in the early 1950s—that Merleau-Ponty integrated into the field of
phenomenology. Questions of physicality become the basis of focused the-
oretical movements, which in turn lead to psychomotor domain. The distinc-
tion between person, room, and environment is overcome and the human
body is put first. “We must therefore avoid saying that our body is in space,
or in time. It inhabits space and time.”124 Movements leave traces and are
inscribed in memories which are actually stored in the limbs. The image of the
thinking hand, which the architectural anthropologist Juhani Pallasmaa has
developed into a history of culture,125 explains that hands and feet function
like organs. According to Pallasmaa’s interpretation, our bodies are subdivid-
ed into various zones, which actively exchange information with one another,
but without creating a hierarchy. Merleau-Ponty wrote: “My field of perception
 MOBILITY 65

is constantly filled with a play of colors, noises, and fleeting tactile sensations,
which I cannot relate precisely to the context of my clearly perceived world,
yet which I nevertheless immediately ‘place’ in the world, without ever con-
fusing them with my daydreams.”126 Separating sensory perception from the
human body, which becomes aware and assured of itself in the processes
of perception, individualizes the act. “Truth does not ‘inhabit’ only ‘the inner
man’, or more accurately there is no inner man … and only in the world does
he know himself.”127 In the field of a phenomenology extended to include
cognitive performance, he updates the practice of a theory of perception
that can only partially be generalized as physical experience. “Sensational-
ism ‘reduces’ the world by noting that after all we never experience anything
but states of ourselves. … The eidetic reduction is, on the other hand, the
determination to bring the world to light as it is before any falling back on our-
selves.”128 The individual is characterized by sensory experiences. “To seek
the essence of perception is to declare that perception is, not presumed
true, but defined as access to truth.”129 Various sources can be equally im-
portant for deciphering regularly occurring events. “True philosophy consists
in relearning to look at the world, and in this sense a historical account can
give meaning to the world quite as ‘deeply’ as a philosophical treatise.”130
We move around in our environment and are stimulated by attractions and
turn toward them. “Our perceptual field is made up of ‘things’ and ‘spaces
between things’.”131 Thus the distances between things acquire the status of
a space that can be newly evaluated in the way that has been developed as
aura or atmosphere from Benjamin to Böhme. Merleau-Ponty has described
this distance: “If we set ourselves to see as things the intervals between
them, the appearance of the world would be just as strikingly altered.”132 We
seem to be predestined from the start to have to detect vital functions in all
things. “This rich notion of sense experience is still to be found in Romantic
usage, for example in Herder. It points to an experience in which we are
given not ‘dead’ qualities, but active ones. … Vision is already inhabited by
a meaning (sens) which gives it a function in the spectacle of the world and
in our existence.”133 Personalized perception, which is crucially dependent
on a stimulating environment, has been proven to have properties that are
relevant for recognition. It even appears that “a true and exact world”134 has
its first source in perception. In the human body, in the process of sensory
comprehension a center is formed that functions only when a vital cognitive
area is available. “It was necessary to link to centripetal conditions the cen-
trifugal phenomenon of expression, reduce to third-person processes that
particular way of dealing with the world which we know as behavior, bring
experience down to the level of physical nature and convert the living body
into an interiorless thing.”135 The body of the other person is now discovered.
“It was merely a machine, and the perception of the other could not really be
74

Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut, interior view

each point on the skin and the motor muscles which guide the hand, it is
difficult to see why the same nerve circuit communicating a scarcely different
movement to the same muscles should not guarantee the gesture of Zei-
gen as it does the movement of Greifen.”146 A world that no longer provides
tactile experiences can literally no longer be grasped. Metaphor comes into
the picture. “Pathological phenomena introduce variations before our eyes in
something which is not the pure awareness of an object. Any diagnosis, like
that of intellectual psychology, which sees here a collapse of consciousness
and the freeing of automatism, or again that of an empiricist psychology of
contents, would leave the fundamental disturbance untouched.”147 Motor
functions and thinking are opposed. “It is then in some sense mental space
and practical space which are destroyed or impaired, and the words them-
selves are a sufficient indication of the visual origin of the disturbance. Visual
trouble is not the cause of the other disturbances, particularly that directly
affecting thought. But neither is it a mere consequence of them.”148
 MOBILITY 75

Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut, Ronchamp

Importantly for neuroarchitectural practice, the aforementioned find-

ings lead into the idea of daily paths and actions that are mainly carried out
in the dwelling. The relationship between the spatiality of architecture and of
the human body is experienced as a tangible object by a healthy person but
becomes less solid for the sick person and therefore no longer provides the
necessary support for safe navigation. As Merleau-Ponty put it, “My flat is,
for me, not a set of closely associated images. It remains a familiar domain
about me only as long as I still have in my hands or in my legs the main distanc-
es and directions, and as long as from my body intentional threads run out
towards it.”149 However, firm movement requires practice and confirmation
through success in order to remain stable. We are talking about a panorama
of memories, whose conditioning is changing. “Sometimes it weakens, as in
moments of weariness, and then my world of thoughts is impoverished and
reduced to one or two obsessive ideas; sometimes, on the other hand, I am
at the disposal of all my thoughts and every word spoken in front of me then
80

Gangart, Vergangenheit, Ich stehe zu mir, Verstehen—Verstand, Abgang (each

of these German words incorporate roots relating to standing, walking, and
stepping). A sign at the start of the path (field of experience) says, “Dear
barefoot walker! If you follow the colored posts, the barefoot path will lead
you through the entire park and to many places where you can stop and ex-
perience particular sensations. As long as you are in the wood, please keep
to the marked path. If you step off this path, nasty surprises await your feet
in the form of prickly sweet chestnut cases and brambles.”162 The slabs are
doors and also windows leading into the interior of the overgrown park; tac-
tile sensations, poetically expressed and enriched with anthropology appear
in quick succession. The hard rock appears as a welcome contrast to the
soft soil of the wood. Reflections couched in simple language, with words
relating to movement and standing, hint at an etymological mindset similar
to Heidegger’s, and there must be something suggestive about them, as
the language of the woodland path may call to mind Heidegger’s Holzwege
(Forest Walks), which has been translated into English under the title Off the
Beaten Track.
Comparable to the anthropological initiatives are the fundamental
principles developed by Moshé Feldenkrais for a theory of movement that
also has spiritual elements, which, like those practiced by top sportsman
 MOBILITY 81

Wim Luijpers, must be understood as a theory of consciousness, as a tech-

nique for “learning to know and understand one’s own body better. It is
a very effective learning method that, through the conscious perception of
their own movement, enables people to activate and improve their move-
ment.”163 This allows us to call on physical resources only ten percent of
which are normally used, according to Luijpers.164 This means that through-
out our lives we have very little idea of what our bodies are capable of. That
is a shame. If we seize the opportunities for daily movement and make good
use of them in order to consciously achieve physical and mental balance,

v  Video still,
swimmer in the
drinking water
system,
Arsenale,
15th Architec-
ture Biennale,
Venice (2016)
ws  Olympic village,
Elstal,
Wuster­mark,
swimming pool
(1936)
88

Paul Klee, Bewegungen in Schleusen (Movements in Locks) (1929)

 89

Neuromusicology—
Neuroarchitecture

Music as Experience of Movement

In the same way that people’s movements in space are motivated by
good architecture, movement can be recognized as the essence of music.
When it comes to describing music, there are probably just two aspects
that need special consideration here: movement and sound. Areas of musical
activity can then be read as neurobiological processes that, especially in
the field of composed music, show similarities to maps and literary texts.
Both are intentionally understood in terms of periods of time and both can
be internalized. Just as in literature plotlines are unrolled, unfolded, crossed,
and disentangled during the course of the narrative, when we look at a map
we see a section that we understand as a path. Structures and plans of
mental experiences are inscribed in our memories. The more intensively we
experience these paths, the more deeply we internalize them. Many areas of
musical movement are active simultaneously; even a single note is made up
of many factors, which appear in an extended network of physical phenom-
ena and can be only approximately analyzed if we listen with that specific
intention. Notes are bodies that move in space. Even at a very simple level
a few notes can be felt as a direct experience of music. This experience can
be described as like walking through an imaginary architectural structure.
Every brain becomes a storehouse of musical experiences and conditioning,
and experience gives it an individual profile. Yet the storehouse itself can only
be approximately described by its functional processes. Individual patterns
can be mentioned. Everyone hears music but everyone experiences it in
a different way. Ambient noises become associated with the story of the
musical experience and are reflected in experiences of particular spaces. In
musicians, the ability to consciously experience and describe architectural
and spatial resonance is particularly striking. These abilities are honed early
in life, through learning to read music, studying simple and complex scores,
and playing instruments, as well as through motor memory. Musicians are
capable of playing directly from a sheet of music without looking at their
instrument and even of sight-reading music when playing in an ensemble.
102
NEUROMUSICOLOGY—NEUROARCHITECTURE 103
106

No. 2 from 1983, which, in the form of a graphic score of abstract fields
of events, hints at the model of a carpet pattern. Carpets embody original
handicraft and are the result of many stages of work. In addition, they can
be described in patterns. Feldman wrote: “For the rugs, listen, the degen-
eration of rugs happened when people wouldn’t sit for three months like
an idiot 10 hours a day, you see, they started to use synthetic dyes – well,
they started to value their time, that’s when the rug world disappeared.”214
Against this background, for Feldman color acquires the value of a basic
material, which he used as the program for his composition Why Patterns?
for flute, glockenspiel, and piano. In it, individually notated instruments meet
for the first time towards the end of the composition where, “a series of
different patterns are linked together on the chain and then juxtaposed by
simple means.”215 As in a row of bricks, individual patterns occur and are
strung together. Single events and sequences form into a freely developing
program. Feldman tells us: “For me, patterns are groups of sounds com-
pletely enclosed in themselves that give me the chance to break off without
preparation and immediately enter a new musical state.”216 For hearing that
has been trained in principles of order, the patterns may be recognizable as
a type, which is given its most distinctive structure and unmistakable Präg-
nanz in the gestural expression of theme and melody. The acts of cognition
that then become effective may be similar to traditional reception processes,
and this appears to be what Feldman has in mind. He speaks several times
of modular constructions,217 which he understands as the basis of an organic
development that has retained a spiritual core. Feldman criticizes in no un-
certain terms the dominance of serial techniques filled with mathematics that
have been predominant in contemporary music events in Darmstadt, Witten,
and Donaueschingen in the years since 1947. “It may seem strange to call
Boulez and Stockhausen popularizers, but that’s what they are. They glam-
orized Schoenberg and Webern, now they’re glamorizing something else.”218
Nevertheless, this cannot be described as a mass phenomenon reaching
out beyond the narrow circles of contemporary music or even a popularity,
as Helga de la Motte-Haber notes, with a glance at a 1979 survey by the
Swiss Radio and Television Company.219
Irritation leads to innovations. In the 1960s the new music scene
was considerably disturbed by György Ligeti and became aware of a new
direction. Since the sensation caused by Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in
Paris in March 1913, criticism in the press has been seen as a seal of quality
among artists. “Ligeti called the entirely negative notices for his Atmosphères
the best review I have had in my life. ‘Everything is at a complete standstill;
during the nine minutes the piece lasts, which stretches to an eternity, abso-
lutely nothing happens.”220 Ligeti’s pleasure in the negative criticism is only
seemingly paradoxical; in the critics’ bafflement, the composer recognized
 NEUROMUSICOLOGY—NEUROARCHITECTURE 107

György Ligeti, Continuum for harpsichord (1968) © 1970 SCHOTT MUSIC, Mainz
116

Hiwa K, When We Were Exhaling Images, documenta 14, detail

 117

Home

House—Community—Identity
Home: this can be an explosive topic and was the theme of the Ger-
man Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Biennale in Venice: Making
Heimat. Germany, Arrival Country.239 It not only deals with current waves of
migration but also covers problems and experiences of hospitality, integra-
tion, and cooperation for those settling into new urban situations. However,
I will not go as far as that yet. First it is necessary to explain the concept of
Heimat (home) in the context of architecture. Where in the house does the
experience of home occur? What images remain in the memory until very old
age? Do requirements for dwelling change at different stages of life? What
can blueprints for the future glean from the past? What factors play a part in
determining what is home, apart from the atmosphere of rooms?
The following section will discuss not only the memory of rooms
and the associated stages of life but also describe models of communities
and their architectural frameworks. Currently, the significance of communi-
ties and their local characteristics in the field of architecture are being redis-
covered. The French Pavilion at the International Architecture Biennale in
Venice in summer 2016 also focused on this topic under the title Nouvelles
Richesses,240 displaying models of historical settlements and neighborhood
meetings in modern projects, introducing the idea of village communities as
having worthwhile potential in urban contexts. Home and community are
becoming the focus of interest. Home as a concept? Probably work in prog-
ress? What actually makes up the art of current architectural planning in re-
lation to requirements for housing in the changed lifeworlds at the turn of the
nineteenth and twentieth century? These are simple questions, encouraging
us to look back into the history of the topic when it is a matter of finding the
ideal forms for creating a typology. The theme of modern living can be under-
stood from the extremes, whose fundamental principles reach into the past
and into the future. A broad spectrum opens up, stretching from the ideal
of a return to the countryside and stylized rural simplicity to narrow, strictly
functional dwellings in densely populated urban areas. Aspects that came
122

to the position and importance of their occupants. The house creates the
space within which a communal life formed according to a system of rules
emerges. The interaction of living and the social structure and self-image of
communal life are dependent on this—a pattern that can be transferred to
any cultural community.
The image of the person is always reflected in organized forms of
living and dwelling and particularly so in all constructive stages of planning
through to the erection of the building. Quality and livability always have a
long prehistory. Clients and architects determine the framework. The way
our lives are organized in spaces reflects the way we live. Since the afore-
mentioned positions of Muthesius, Le Corbusier, and Steiner concern com-
peting types that are influenced by changing fashions and values in respect
of preferred materials and forms, it is important to consider these types and
their origins and reception in more detail.

Ethics of Living
The Deutscher Werkbund [German Association of Craftsmen] and
the early criticism of functionalism combine experiences and theories that
began with the Arts and Crafts Movement in England and the United States—
represented by William Richard Lethaby (1857–1931), Sir Thomas Graham
Jackson (1835–1924), Charles Francis Annesley Voysey (1857–1941),
Charles Robert Ashbee (1863–1942), and Geoffrey Scott (1884–1929)—and
became the basis of the ideas of Hermann Muthesius (1863–1927). Muthe-
sius spent seven years in England studying architecture and the history of
architecture before producing the three-volume collection of his experiences
entitled The English House (1904). During the years between the founding of
the Deutscher Werkbund (1907) and his death in 1927—he was struck by
a tram while visiting a building site in Berlin-Steglitz—Muthesius, a Prussian
building officer, architect, and author of many publications, became deeply
critical of the contemporary rationalization of living. After his death his ideas
and his buildings were soon forgotten. However, the background of his ar-
chitectural opinions, the English country house, whose layout and interrela-
tionship with the image of the feudal community he adopted and made the
basis for the plan of the house, would continue to exist as a concept, at least
in its approach. His main concern was to introduce the value of community
living into contemporary architecture as the basis of planning.
According to Muthesius, the true value lies in the house itself and
the way the parts of the building are arranged so they always function as an
ensemble. He was musically inclined and trained in the theory and practice
of music; he knew about the material composition and resonances of rooms
and saw the house as the basis of all kinds of aesthetic education. “It is obvi-
ous that here the house alone can provide the basis for our artistic education
 HOME 123

Arsenale, Venice
132

The Tent-Shape as Archetype

It is almost impossible to give a generally valid, completely intercul-
tural definition of home. The following paragraphs will first develop a typol-
ogy, dealing with home in the context of protective spaces and sheltered
areas. If there is such a thing as the archetypal house, it is the tent, with
its combination of mobility and shelter and its many layers that are remi-
niscent of some kinds of clothing. The tent is an archetype that adapts to
the landscape and to those who live in it. Usually, the immediate environ-
ment is reflected in its material and in shape, structure, and colors. It can be
mentioned when discussing neuroarchitecture because of the combination

View of the Rehwiese,

Berlin-Nikolassee
 HOME 133

Hermann Muthesius,
detached house,
Berlin-Schlachtensee

of mobility and protection. However, unlike dwellings in caves and under

rocky ledges, the tent is delicate; it can barely withstand seasonal weath-
er, especially wind. Within a narrow space it unites a community of people
who provide one another with mutual warmth, often together with animals
that function as a reliable natural heating system of the kind that is also to
be found in large farmhouses in the Black Forest, where the cowsheds are
located underneath the bedrooms.
Protective spaces are spaces that provide a defense against exter-
nal influences and prove resistant in the event of threats and danger to life
and limb. Sheltered areas indicate some kind of covering that can provide
shelter only if it is able to divert external forces. In the central and north-
ern European climate zones, constructions with roofs whose shape causes
rainwater to run off and can bear the weight of snow and ice have proved
especially resistant. In my search for suitably clear images I remembered
something from my reading.
Early in his 1959 novel The Tin Drum—itself a symbol of internal,
physically awakened resonances—Günter Grass evokes primitive huts and
152

Sou Fujimoto, Children’s Center

for Psychiatric Rehabilitation,
Hokkaido, Japan (2006)
 153

Potentials of Neuroarchitecture

Basic Principles of Neuroarchitecture

Cognitive abilities enable us to recognize structure and pattern as a
whole and understand lifeworlds as memorable spaces. When neuroscien-
tific research began a few years ago, Eric Jensen, John P. Eberhard, Juhani
Pallasmaa, and Harry Francis Mallgrave were first able to pick up the thread
of an updated theory of perception and Gestalt psychology in order to dis-
cuss laws of neural structure formation in the context of architecture. Work
is progressing in a current field of neuroarchitecture that refers explicitly to
what can be achieved by organic architecture and a rich sensory environ-
ment. At the center is the rediscovery of the human body in space and its
multisensory needs. Movement in space is also acquiring great significance.
Functionalist attitudes to architecture are subjected to fierce criticism, while
at the same time the intention is to think up a catalogue of requirements
devoted to neuroscientific discoveries and bearing sensory events in mind.
One of the primary special interests is private family houses, because here
it is obviously possible to install extensive individual multisensory elements,
which can then also be discussed in relation to the building of housing proj-
ects and multistory apartments.
Questions concerning neuroarchitecture often show that their au-
thors have a particular interest in places that will be important as areas
where people can linger and gather, in order to make identification at all
possible. Current discussion also points to clear connections with ideas
of organic living from the 1930s, which surprisingly refer to only a few ar-
chitects. In the light of the source material, the canon of possible archi-
tects and their buildings is restricted to a very small field. I will be making
the case for opening up the field, broadening the subject area and giving
closer consideration to the use and further specification of spaces in the
contexts of different stages of life. As sensory and cognitive skills alter,
whether this is due to age or an innate weakness, the requirements for
buildings with regard to layout, materials, and equipment change. Through
Gestalt theory—whether at the level of questions of perception psychology
162

rsw Alvar Aalto,

Villa Mairea (1939)
ww  Alvar Aalto, house,
Klopstockstrasse 30–32,
Berlin, staircase, detail (1957)
POTENTIALS OF NEUROARCHITECTURE 163
170

that large windows would divert the concentration of schoolchildren and stu-
dents, but it later turned out that large windows have a positive effects on
learning behavior because they provide stimuli. The structure and layout of
easily identifiable hallways and stairs was (again?) taken over from the field of
Alzheimer’s research.327 Spatial orientation and adaptation to new situations
are described by Kayan as individually determined neural activities that rely
on recallable memory stores, with which children can find their way intuitively
in new spaces. She also makes use of a description that can function as a
pattern and memory of those adaptations that lead to success328—in this
case, to success in rediscovering rooms in strange buildings, a cognitive
process that can no longer be assumed to be functioning in small children
and people with age-related impairment. There is an important suggestion
that the activity of our senses can adapt to different surroundings in such
a way that this appears to be inherent in the individual disposition of our
neurons.329 According to Kayan, while the other senses, such as sight, hear-
ing, and smell, work independently of one another, all the senses seem to
combine in the sense of touch. The sense of touch is therefore accorded
a special position in the neuroscientific planning of architectural spaces.330
This has an impact on the composition of all the interior surfaces; the tactile
experience, the visibility, and absorption properties of walls, ceilings, and
floors point to the fact that orientation in a building is due to a multisensory
combination of light, shadow, sound, and resonance, the sensual composi-
tion of the material, and the spatial divisions.331 Bernhard Waldenfels has in-
troduced the concept of Findigkeit (ingenuity or resourcefulness) to describe
the individual’s movement in a room and his capacity for multiple forms of
orientation. It is a concept that “is supported by experience that is anchored
in phenomenology.”332 The procedures described by Waldenfels, looking
back to the philosophy of antiquity, which he can trace through as far as
Merleau-Ponty, are evidence of the fact that basic features of a knowledge
of the importance of orientation in space have been known for at least 2,000
years. However, there is a standard experiment that provides evidence of the
effects of differing spaces on mammals, discussed below.
The effect of stimulating surroundings on the development of cog-
nitive performance was investigated in an experiment with thirty-six rats that
were placed for a period of thirty days in three different cages. They had the
same food, free access to drinking water, and the same lighting; the differ-
ences to be tested in the experiment were that the cages were of different
sizes and had different furnishings. After thirty days, the brain activity of all
the animals was traced. It was shown that the animals living in a larger cage
with richer furnishings and diverse materials had developed distinctly greater
brain activity and action skills than those that had to live in smaller and very
small cages. Visible evidence of this was also shown through imaging proce-
 POTENTIALS OF NEUROARCHITECTURE 171

r  Christoph Mäckler,
Opera Tower,
Frankfurt am Main (2010)
w  Christoph Mäckler,
Goethestrasse 34,
Frankfurt am Main
(renovation 2016)

ssv Christoph Mäckler,

Opera Tower,
Frankfurt am Main (2010)
ssw Emil Fahrenkamp,
Shell Building,
Reichpietschufer 60–62,
Berlin (1932)
182

remember in language. Language becomes the guiding thread essential for

thought, word and writing, leading us to the pillars of memory.
As Rilke phrased it in one of his lectures, Rodin’s sculptures either
depended on finding their place on an elevated spot in the landscape or they
needed special buildings that were already in existence. What Merleau-Pon-
ty described as the space-creating power of the human body in space, ap-
plies with particular inevitability to Rodin: “In eighteenth-century houses and
their stately parks his nostalgic gaze saw the dying face of the inner world of
time. And with patience he recognized in this face the features of the con-
nection with nature that has since been lost.”352 With varying contrasts Rodin
created in stone and marble softly flowing movements that allowed the hard
materials to be forgotten. These are carved memories of life, showing that
“the entire body consists of scenes of life.”353 Rodin chisels these traces into
the material, which itself becomes a bearer of memories. “When Rodin con-
centrates the surfaces of his works into culminating points, when he uplifts
to greater height the exalted or gives more depth to a cavity, he creates an
effect like that which atmosphere produces on monuments that have been
exposed to it for centuries.”354

Neuroarchitecture versus Cognitive Impairment

Just as the first passages of the summary of neuroscientific research
in this book referred to Marcel Proust’s depictions and mega-systems of in-
scription that were influential in the context of Bergson’s reception in France
in leaving their mark over many years on the field of perception psychology
and associated neuro-theoretical questions, the potentials of architectural
planning can be seen in a literature that considers it owes a duty to ques-
tions of movement and memory. Distinguishing features will no longer be
linguistically defined clusters but will rather focus on descriptions devoted to
extensive, space-defining expansions of the human body. Once again, they
will show that it is the consciousness of our body that becomes effective as
an image of individual and identificatory measurements. In the posthumously
published notebooks of an author who is rarely quoted in these contexts,
mention can finally be made of the influence of the reception of Bergson,
which became widespread around 1920, whose significance for phenome-
nological anthropology can be made clear. In the field of neuroarchitectural
literature, Paul Valéry, a prominent man of letters and later a professor of
poetics, fills the gap between Bergson’s reception of Marcel Proust, Rainer
Maria Rilke’s surface experiences from the time he spent with Auguste Ro-
din in Paris in the early years of the twentieth century, and the knowledge
that grew out of perception psychology, which Maurice Merleau-Ponty de-
veloped in the 1930s and pursued to the end of his life. All of this is set out
in Valéry’s notebooks. Merleau-Ponty follows on from many of the themes
 POTENTIALS OF NEUROARCHITECTURE 183

of Valéry, whose aims and leitmotifs of a theory of phenomenological knowl-

edge of the human body as an animate body appear in various combinations
and refer to images that can be found in Valéry’s diaries as well as in writings
relevant to architecture. Here there are spaces, bodies, buildings arranged
in the form of organized relationships (columns, doors, windows) as well as
volumes and surfaces, and described as means of bodily experience and
anchors for the memory.
The memory is recognized as human identity. “Memory makes man
a unity. Without memory there would be only isolated transformations.”355 It
develops over the course of a lifetime and distinguishes the child from the
adult and from the aging. In the form and richness of memories, a person ap-
pears not merely through his language but especially through his actions and
in the activity of his moving body. Even at rest a person has an attitude that
makes it possible to draw conclusions. Somehow the positions of the body
and changes in them reveal an unmistakable individuality. Ego and body are
henceforth inseparable as body consciousness and are even understood
as mobile sensory space within space, with every division in the fields of the
theory considered only as a hypothetical construction. The starting point
is also a body consciousness whose rules have no need of language. It is
more a matter of intuitively experienced processes that are learned, stored,
and unconsciously remembered and repeated over many years. This action,
described as body consciousness, takes place at the edges of linguistic
possibilities and their description. “And our mature memory would be the
result of a very complex collaboration or association. Note in passing that
I cannot unlearn how to walk, at least not deliberately and for moments.
Walking means remembering oneself.”356 However, this remembering takes
place in the body itself; it forms our identity that, amazingly, in this case ex-
ceptionally has no need of language. As a compaction of experiences laid
down as memories in the body-like sediments, the body approaches the
nature of a material. Sensory impulses that generate our cognitive features
are inscribed in this material. Density becomes a theme for Valéry. “Child
and adult are psychologically distinguished in particular by the density of
memory, and this density does not lie primarily in the quantity, but is based
in connection and in the formation of groups.”357 Here the density of traces,
inscriptions, and networks already describes neural characteristics. Valéry’s
notebooks contain various sketches of buildings, sailing boats, and even
switching circuits. Electrical parts such as magnets, coils, and resistors are
connected in a circuit. Valéry uses this to show an analogy between elec-
tromagnetic currents and their effects and the inscriptions and engravings
in the brain that are written into the memory by positive experiences. “The
memory is just as important and obscure as gravity or forgetting.”358 Like
electrical induction, a current generated by magnetic activity, thinking and
196

r  View of the shipyard, Venice

s  Worlds of Work as Memories,
installation, 15th Architecture
Biennale, Venice (2016)
 POTENTIALS OF NEUROARCHITECTURE 197

Gestalt from an original story of creation, starting from the body of the indi-
vidual and the image of the mother and then describing further circles. “The
first kingdom of Gestalt has no space for the mother, because it requires
none. Its works come directly from God. Her Gestalt has reached perfec-
tion at the moment when she is conceived. At the same moment she is
also born. … However, the works of the second kingdom of Gestalt need a
mother room as the workspace in which the organs of the creation are
prepared, until he is complete enough to move alone outside the mother
space.”383 The workshop thus becomes the place of creation; the hand of
God and the hand of the artisan are guided by similar spiritual powers in
order to create a home in space for mankind. “The elements already bear
male and female qualities within them.”384 However, the forms that Häring
developed into his main idea are realized only through interaction; for him,
architecture is the frame for the task of educating man in the community:
“The highest aim of the teaching plan of the educational work is the object.
The instructions in the educational work apply to the essence of the object
and to learning the techniques by which it can be realized in the mortal
world.”385 Nothing less than a metaphysics of craft that may be reminiscent
of his father’s carpentry workshop is evoked here, in order to give people a
grasp of the specific material. Almost imbued with Anthroposophical qual-
ities, material that has been worked by hand seems to conceal spiritual
powers. This is even more important because, with handmade objects, the
trace of the human hand is immortalized in the material and revealed as a
gesture of friendship whenever and however the object is used. “In every-
thing that is taught, meaning that, in everything that should be improved for
working towards the light, it is about the mystery of the object and the
technical path that leads to its realization.”386 According to Häring, generat-
ing structure and form fulfills the task of divine creation. “Working on an
object is not an ingredient of life but the highest meaning of life, its true
purpose.”387 This brief utterance can hardly be valued too highly, as it draws
attention to the idea that the human body is only defined in space as a
physical environment that he has created. This is made clear by the refer-
ence to the vital significance of forming objects, which is placed at the
center of human activity as “the highest meaning of life.” These creative
powers bear within them the laws of Gestalt that, in the form of Theosoph-
ical powers in the effect of handcrafted objects, reveal a fullness of life in
the landscape. Their energy flows into the piece of work. “It must also be
the task of the mysterious powers of nature to develop powers in man that
render him capable of creative activity.”388 Release from the dictates of tra-
ditional basic forms can be seen when he turns to three-dimensional fig-
ures. “The doctrine of Gestalt in the new workrooms is no longer based on
geometrical figures but on a principle of design: the principle of organic
204

past years obliges us to act. Neuroarchitecture will support the protection of

society through opportunities for movement and tarrying awhile in private
and public places.

Open Questions and Outlook

Opportunities are emerging for research into learning from the ex-
periences of blind people. Their incredibly sophisticated motor skills, which
can be described as sensitivity of touch, can help us to draw up neuro-
architectural questions, and this should lead to greater appreciation of a
group that has hitherto been regarded as underprivileged. Their ability to
feel and describe surfaces, divergences, and structures picks them out as
top talents, and not only in medical mammography. Blind people are excel-
lent conversationalists: they listen carefully and pick up interpersonal atmo-
spheres just as quickly as they are able to move around safely in new spac-
es with the help of surfaces and resonances. The quality of rooms always
becomes apparent to them through recognition of structure and pattern; an
ability that is, of course, promoted by distinctive materials and the interac-
tion of natural materials. Integrating multisensory and organic stimuli in ar-
chitecture therefore appears as a task for future planning and construction.
Basic principles of Gestalt theory and the psychology of perception can be
transferred to the logic and organization of sensorily effective forms. This
fulfills the requirement for an intuitively perceptible organization that not only
serves visual cognition according to the aspects of appropriate perception
(copy, similarity, and pattern) but also takes into account the hearing, smell-
ing, and tasting of rooms. As it has been shown that a rich environment
promotes both motor skills and cognitive performance, which can even be
made visible in imaging procedures as a first step, the question arises of
what must constitute an ideal type of architecture when spatial perception
of places and movement are to be specified. Basically, it is important to
investigate further the reception of the interaction of consciousness and en-
vironment. The inevitable result of this is a renewed interest in the theme of
environmental richness. Only a rich environment can be proved to generate
a high level of cognitive ability. So it is important to design haptic textures
as intuitive experiences of order according to the principle of similarity so
as to promote available cognitive skills and not to overtax the targeted age
groups. However, if there are no challenges, there is no feeling of success.
The hurdles posed by surprises should not be set too high. At the same
time, we must always bear in mind that we have relatively little knowledge
about the construction of individual consciousness. Appropriate topics for
investigation in the field of neuroarchitecture can probably be developed
only from the combined effects of Gestalt theory and our knowledge of how
movements are learned, especially in the field of music. However, at pres-
 POTENTIALS OF NEUROARCHITECTURE 205

ent, apart from the literature considered here, we still know too little about
the fundamental importance of the spaces around us.
Neuroarchitecture now derives our understanding and the building
requirements from knowledge of the body and its needs, and thus has the
potential for greater social relevance. This affects all the forms of our archi-
tectural environment that must be revised to take account of the special
needs of various age groups. In Juhani Pallasmaa’s opinion, the concep-
tion and realization of architecture is an art that is more of the body than
of the eye. Thus, he takes on the role of critic of the prevailing dominance
of the eye. He repeatedly speaks in favor of penetrating the subconscious-
ly experienced layers of architecture in connection with the spiritual life of
man. All writers on neuroscientific themes systematically link them with the
achievements of Gestalt and perception psychology, and associate these
with specific phenomena relating to the experiencing of sensory moments.
The main background of these descriptions is the assumptions of Gestalt
theory, systematic scientific investigation of which began around 1860. Here,
neuroscientific questions link to and accentuate sensory learning processes
and their relationship to cognition. However, little consideration is given to
individual conditioning and its requirements. There is a risk of standardized
investigations that produce predictable results only expressed in systematic
form in scientific terminology or in data sets.
At the same time, a further field opens up, which it will be important
to consider in the future in the area of project development, particularly for
children and young people, but also for older people. If experience of tradi-
tional craftsmanship is recalled and updated in relation to specific building
projects, the satisfaction of the users of buildings will be seen mainly in
the range of opportunities for communication and the greatest number of
meeting places. Movement and social contacts will thus become the stan-
dard for a successful construction project that must endeavor to establish
its self-image in contrast to the dictates of functionalist architecture. The
early stages of research that has been carried out in the area of building for
dementia in order to provide intuitive orientation in the building at an appro-
priate level for its users can be drawn on for further scientific and practical
implementation.
However, neuroarchitectural questions concerning the interaction
of people and rooms can only be successful if these complex questions are
drawn up on the basis of concrete examples. Whether a new scientific field
can be successfully established depends on whether it succeeds in defining
more specifically the approaches that are currently formulated in rather gen-
eral terms. However, when it becomes possible in the future development
of sensory requirements for architectural spaces to be experienced as the
memorable entirety of a lifeworld, it will also be possible to draw ­conclusions
206
 POTENTIALS OF NEUROARCHITECTURE 207

Droneport,
Norman Foster Foundation