The Architecture of Well-Being: Creating Places that Feed the
Soul
This program is approved for 1 AIA/CES Health, Safety, and Welfare
(HSW) Learning Unit.
Today’s consumers demand homes that offer refuge from an increasingly
complex world. By addressing buyers’ needs for comfort, health and relaxation,
you tap into an increasingly lucrative market. Explore enlightening case
studies that help you translate site-sensitive concepts to refined environments
through a collaboration with nature. Then take an audio-video tour of home
designs that further illustrate the importance of creating special places to
live.
Speakers
Miles Reid, Acupuncturist, Tilo Medical & Acupuncture,
Beverly Hills, CA
Jeff Berkus, President, BBG Architects, Santa Ana
Heights, CA
Jeff Berkus is wanting to present to you some principles of well-being from the perspective of architecture and he has invited me to give you some parallels from the perspective of science, from cutting edge information that research is uncovering on this subject.
I am speaking to you from background in western biomedicine as a physician, and also speaking from my experience with two traditions: One of these traditions is Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine and the other is a tradition that comes from Mexico in ancient times. Both of these view man’s natural state as one where he is keenly aware of his connection with his environment. Their interest then, is looking at how things “connect.”
In medicine, for example, one of the hottest topics nowadays in our country is the emergence of the new model of Integrative Medicine. Integrative medicine means enhancing the western medical model with complementary forms of care. The basic premise of integrative medicine is that the body is a whole and all its parts are connected. Integrative medicine is interested in healing, and healing comes from within, its source in our very nature as living organisms. The word healing means “making whole”—that is, restoring integrity and balance.
In the west, a major focus of scientific medicine has been the identification of external agents of disease and the development of weapons against them. If you look at the name of the most popular categories of drugs in use today, you will find that most of them begin with the prefix “anti.” We use antispasmodics, antidepressants, antipyretics, anti-inflammatories.
In the same way as a new view of architecture means working with the site rather than conquering the site, the new view of medicine emerging in U.S. is that health results from living in harmony with natural law.
For example, the development of antibiotics to fight bacteria…now the bacteria are increasingly developing resistance to them and this is becoming a major issue in hospital care. In the east, especially in China, medicine has explored ways of increasing internal resistance to disease through the use of tonic herbs so that, no matter what harmful influences you are exposed to, you can remain healthy. Resistance is not developing against tonics because they are not acting against germs but rather are acting with the body’s defenses.
This staircase (photo) is made to resemble the natural way in which an element flows down, be it water flowing down or be it a human being walking down. Why does it feel right? For as long as man has been alive, he has been directly exposed to the natural elements. Only a fraction of a second ago in the context of our history, since the advent of the industrialized age, have we lost sight of this: being aware of the cycles of day and night, the moon, the conditions of the wind, the availability of water. Our development as individuals has depended on those conditions.
We could
say that, from a biological perspective, we are “hard wired” to be integrated
to our surroundings, to relate to nature. So looking at a structure or walking
down stairs built incorporating these principles is neurologically registered
as familiar and natural. It “feels” good.
One effective way to approach the first walk on the site can be to do something physically that will shift the attention away, for a moment, from all the plans and ideas that we bring in, and allow one to be more receptive to the particularities of the site itself. For example, physiologically, most of the information that we consciously intake from the environment is dominated by the eyes. The act of focusing the eyes on something in front makes us hold the breath; then the tone of the body in general constricts, shutting down other perceptual input. You can do this simple movement to “recharge” the eyes and the body:
(Guide the audience to rub the hands and place them on the closed eyes for a minute; then open slowly and look around.)
After something simple like this we might notice things that would have escaped our attention before. Do you notice yourselves anything new or different from this room? Did you notice a shift in the breath while your hands were covering your eyes? The key is the shift of the breath that happens when we disengage the eyes for a moment. The more air you can breath in and out, the more nourishment you can give to the central nervous system.
Not lifting the pen is a technique used in psychology to bypass the rational process, so that what comes out on the paper is information from other areas of our intelligence, a more “bodily intelligence” so to speak.
All of you have heard of the term “gut feeling,” perhaps many of you have experienced this “knowing” something bodily, not through a mental process per se. Science is now telling us that there is a physiological basis for this; that, as renowned neurobiologist Dr. Michael Gershon of Columbia University puts it, there is a “second brain” in the gut, capable of processing and generating information, through the same neurotransmitters that act in the brain itself.
Then, as with the concept of integrative medicine we spoke of, the total outcome of the design process can be enhanced by integrating the two brains: the one “above”, informed by knowledge, experience and information AND the second brain, informed by intuition.
This awareness of all the parts connected entails moving from an idea of “product oriented” to one of “process oriented”
The theme for the site analysis is of adding the intuition, the feel of the place to the necessary knowledge of measurements and design, of information on the sun’s rotation, temperature, winds or other elements, that might enhance the design. It is not looking to replace the standard procedures with intuition, but to add to it, to broaden the scope.
In the same way that Jeff is presenting an integrative thinking in architecture, an integrative house, where all the elements function inter-related, neurologically, for the body to function as a whole, the different components have to be interacting in coordination. You could look at your own body as a house. The digestive system could be the kitchen, the arteries and veins the plumbing, the lungs the ventilation system, the relationship between the body and the environment where one walks and breathes is like the relationship between the design and the characteristics of the building site. How do all the parts connect? Well-being is the result of learning to get along and work with all the elements.
Here you have something structurally that makes you feel flowing in movement (house) where things are interconnected in motion.
Well-being is triggered when there is this sense of motion. One concept that depicts this that is shared between architecture and science is Tensegrity, a model coined, as you know, by Buckminster Fuller, where all the parts of a structure affect one another, and when one shifts, the rest do the same to keep balance and integrity. This model is a hot topic for research in science at the moment; science has found out that most living structures function through this principle.
In Chinese Medicine, the main
tenant is that when the energy flows, there is well-being; when the energy is
stuck, there is disease and pain.
The emergence of integrative medicine as a model is becoming more and more popular, and will most likely become the dominant form of care over the next twenty years, for two reasons: because it provides a bigger range of alternatives to create solutions and because the public in general is demanding such a model. They demand it because it more fully addresses their needs as complex human beings. This need, and this public demand can be extended to other fields of activities, such as architecture and building.
Scientifically, the choice of the words we use has a definite impact. Recent studies on brain functioning show that language is processed by most of the areas of the brain. Different words have different physiological responses. Words have images, sounds and past life experiences attached to our memory of them. Neurologically, you want to choose words that elicit a broad range of perceptual possibilities that broaden the imagination. “Preparing food,” for example, has been one of the fundamental activities of man since ancient times.
Bathroom is “self-care”
Here, the same principle as before applies. For example, if we look at the activity of “peeing”: men love to pee in nature! (humor moment) It is natural, we have done it this way most of our evolution as a species. So one simple practical idea to bring this interplay into account could be to put a tree or a big plant next to the toilet, or have a big skylight above it where one can see the sky and the stars at night. This feeling of connection triggers the release of neurotransmitters that positively affect the rest of the body; what in neurobiology we call the “chemistry of well-being.”
A house has a “quiet & communication
room” linked to living room and looking out to nature
Homes increasingly will need a space like this. From a well-being standpoint, the pace of the informational age is such that nervous systems are in state of overload with so much input that we receive daily. In my practice, to give an example, I see this all the time. We have a small room like this, and almost without failure people (patients) express how good it feels to have a place where they can “let go” for a moment of all the concerns of the day when they walk in.
In science, Tensegrity is a hot topic in research at the moment, and it is now being considered the basic aspect of assembly and structure in all living systems.
An astoundingly wide variety of natural systems, including water molecules, proteins, viruses, cells, tissues, and even humans and other living organisms are constructed using the Tensegrity form of architecture.
The principles of Tensegrity apply at essentially every detectable size in the human body. From the molecules to the bones and muscles and tendons of our body, Tensegrity seems to be nature’s preferred building system.
For example, the 206 bones that constitute our skeleton are pulled up against the force of gravity and stabilized in the vertical form by the pull of tensile muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Thus, in the complex Tensegrity structure inside every one of us, bones are the compression struts, and muscles, tendons, and ligaments are the tension-bearing members.
From another perspective, in the shamanic tradition that existed in ancient times in what nowadays is Mexico, certain movements and breaths, like the one we did earlier, were used to train the body and the mind to become aware of the intrinsic connection that exists within ourselves and between ourselves and the environment and to promote well being. Dr. Castaneda gave the name Tensegrity to the modern version of this system of movements, because it accurately represents the integrity between the different parts of the body in movement. Translated into the field of architecture and home building, this principle supports the view of taking nature and the human elements into account during the design and construction phases.
Two last thoughts to end with:
One of the biggest revolutions
in the history of management was the “Total quality management revolution” It
stated that the leverage in output was not catching the defected products
before they went out and fixing them but to go upstream into the process and
find the sources of the errors as they were being made to correct them.
Quality was not to intervene at
the end of the process but in the midst of it.
This entails a shift from
“product thinking” to “process thinking.”
Technical improvements are not
enough by themselves. There is another element present in the equation: people.
It is not enough for the machines to work in coordination. To produce the
product, you absolutely also need the people to work in coordination. At the
side of the technical dimension there is also the human dimension. Both are
part of the same process.
And lastly, years ago, while visiting a National Park in Patagonia, I encountered a group of mountaineers on their way to an expedition. In attempts like this, there is always a bigger group that “works the route” and only a few of them actually make it to the summit. Back then I had always thought that the main goal was the conquest, the final outcome of things. I was intrigued how the climbers that never made it to the top felt about it. I asked one of them. He was sitting by the camp; he looked at ease, like he was part of the environment.
“Where do you find the joy if you never make it to the top?” I said.
He smiled back, his eyes shinning.
“When I am sitting on my harness, midway up the wall, working the route with my climbing partners, and I look around and I see the sky, the rocks, the snow; I feel the breeze of the wind on my skin, and all my body is alive. I know then that I am a part of all this, and that, my friend, is my ultimate joy.