Environment, Brain and Architecture
Introduction
This essay examines the nature of Architecture in relation to the environment, the human nervous system and the human brain.
Definitions
Environment = Nature. Non - human and human adapted void, space and time.
Brain = A part of the human nervous system that takes in environmental sensory input signals from the nervous system forms synaptic links and creates sensory output signals to alter the environment.
Architecture = The Art of the Master Builders
Environment
This is potential energy becoming kinetic energy and returning to potential energy.
It is energy described through human sensory input, sight, sound, touch, taste, speech, smell and then abstracted into electrochemical energy which is ordered, arranged and sequenced as synaptic connections through the human nervous system within the human brain.
It is energy described through human sensory output, speech and touch as communication.
No Brain
Humans with no sensory input or output would not survive the environment. They would die, probably within one week, due to their inability to obtain basic needs such as food, water and shelter and to get help through communication.
If communication is established other humans will try and assist the less able humans and bring them to a level of self-reliance and to re-integrate them into the group, tribe, culture, society. They then ask the less able to assist others to obtain their needs, values, qualities, appreciations of beauty, cultures and form a stronger, linked, society.
The human society and the human nervous system are therefore analogous to each other in their survival, improvement purpose and linked structure.
Nervous system
The human nervous system takes in environmental energy as sensory input. This energy exponentially activates more synaptic connections. These connections are then directed to the nexus of the nervous system in the human brain.
Brain
The human brain has formed to analyse, integrate and store, environmental sensory input and output signals. Each part of it is focussed on comparison of particular human senses. It is asymmetrical in input and output. The right side of the nervous system inputs to the left hemisphere of the Brian and the left side to the right hemisphere of the brain.
The sensory input and output is switchable from one side to the other.
The brains functions can be examined to establish its nature.
Brain Functions
Forebrain, right hemisphere, Cerebrum. - sensory input, sensory output, touch, speech, integration of sensory input and output, motor output, emotions, behaviour, unconscious and conscious memory.
Frontal Lobe - planning, reasoning, problem solving, speech, controlling movement, unconscious and conscious memory.
Parietal Lobe - Perception of touch, unconscious and conscious memory.
Temporal Lobe - Perception of sound and smell, emotion, language, unconscious and conscious memory.
Occipital Lobe - Perception of visual information, unconscious and conscious memory.
Hippocampus - unconscious and conscious memory.
Amygdala - Fear response, 'the sublime', 'epiphanies', unconscious and conscious memory.
Forebrain - Limbic System - Hypothalamus - Hunger and thirst, sexual behaviour, hormone release, regulating body temperature and fluid balance, unconscious and conscious memory.
Forebrain - Limbic System - Thalamus - Emotional response, unconscious and conscious memory.
Forebrain - Limbic System - Cortex - Emotional response, unconscious and conscious memory.
Temporal Lobe - 'Wernicke’s Area' - Understanding, language, signs, symbols, unconscious and conscious memory.
Temporal Lobe - 'Boca’s Area' - speech and writing, understanding of objects, understanding of names, unconscious and conscious memory.
Brain Stem - Medulla Oblongata - breathing, heart rate, reflex control of cardiovascular systems, sneezing, coughing, swallowing, vomiting, strength, blood pressure, unconscious and conscious memory.
Hind Brain - Cerebellum - Balance and co-ordination, unconscious and conscious rapid movement motor control, geometric accuracy of voluntary movements, unconscious and conscious memory.
Corpus Striatum and Substantia Nigra - Movement control, unconscious and conscious memory.
The reason for the human nervous system and the brain.
The methods employed by all areas of the human nervous system and the brain involve sensory input, unconscious and conscious memory mapping and sensory output.
They all utilize constant monitoring of the environment and communication in order to promote survival of the human organism.
They exist in order to make the humans immortal.
The Nature of human examination of the Environment. The ‘Death Anxiety’.
The struggle against the environment creates emotional contradictions, self-introspection, self-awareness, philosophising, and a questioning of existence within each human being.
This is the ‘death anxiety’.
Humans have developed philosophical solutions to this inner turmoil. These solutions are Needs, Religious, Romantic and Creative.
Needs Solutions
These are the obtaining of energy, water, food, shelter, temperature control, health, education, knowledge, communication, freedom, order, justice and defence.
Religious Solutions
These are the forming of God delusions, deification of family and friends, deification of self, identification and confirmation of frailty.
Romantic Solutions
These are the deification of loved ones, deification of nature, deification of self, identification of the sublime, identification of reality, confirmation of longevity.
Creative Solutions
These are the creation of tools, environmental solutions, offspring, families, life goals, anti-depletion policies, anti-death policies, anti-decay policies, legacies, and post death identifications of self.
The Arts
The philosophical solutions about existence have gradually extended beyond individual human beings needs into human values, qualities, appreciations of beauty, cultures and human societies. These extended solutions are called the ‘Arts’. They are the knowledge of survival. They are the ongoing attempt to achieve immortality to resolve the 'Death Anxiety'.
Architecture is the equivalent in the Arts of the Brain in human beings. It is the nexus of all the other philosophies, arts and sciences.
Architecture
If Architecture is only a collection of signs and symbols then it is only the re-presentation of past languages. This is classicism reduced to minimalism.
If Architecture is only about space then it is about void, surface, mass, volume, edge and boundary. These have limited information layers to import to the viewer. This is modernism. A machine for humans to inhabit. Functionalism. At best it is sublime. At worst it has become functionalism responding only to commercialism and economics. Dull Building.
If Architecture is an assembly of pre-formed products then it is forced on the population to engineer a known emotional, consumerist, response. It is Architecture as building as repeatable prestige moments within authoritarian regulations without democratic values.
If Architecture is pure idea, without built form, it is individual in interpretation of past, present and future needs and influences. It is a direct response without commercial, product, scientific, social, geological, environmental or economical controls.
It is Absolute Architecture.
It is an absolute solution to the ‘death anxiety’.
It is creation from need that embodies the spiritual and romantic sensory communications of humans trying to survive the environment.
Conclusion
The nature of Architecture in relation to the environment, the human nervous system and the human brain is as a solution to environmental depletion in an attempt to achieve immortality.
The century up to 2050 is going to be one of climate change, resource, energy and environment depletion.
It is going to be an ongoing austerity dedicated to maintaining human survival.
This will be evolutionary to human existence but it will cause the true nature of the human response to the environment to be exposed, examined and understood.
It will be a very human future.
Therefore the 'death anxiety' solutions will become very important in forming that future human society.
The Architecture of the future will be the mastery of the 'death anxiety solutions through Absolute Architecture, pure idea without built form' to produce immortality.
Ian K Whittaker
Websites:
https://sites.google.com/site/architecturearticles
Email: iankwhittaker@gmail.com
26/01/2015
14/10/2020
1257 words over 3 pages