Architecture and the Science of the Senses | Stefan Behling | TEDxGoodenoughCollege

you as an architect you have an amazing opportunity to change people's lives that is one of the great side effects of this job we can truly make a difference the flip side of that is a pretty big responsibility because whatever we do is around for quite a long time and then the next complication in this is that we actually can't really make any decisions we can only be the advocates and try to get you the clients to do something we don't decide anything at the end of the day it is the client so today I'm going to try to possibly convince you that there is a problem that you should be aware of I think it's fascinating to realize that we share 96% of our DNA with him and if you then look at the things that he enjoy I go well I can die I like that too a hot tub called whether hot tub is perfect for me he seems to like it I like it so that makes sense if you then think of him entering a lot of our buildings you start to think well maybe he would find some of our buildings really uncomfortable and not such a pleasure if you then look at food when I was a kid this was heaven I would have loved to have this kind of food all day long and quietly I probably did a bit too much of it nowadays there's good food there's bad food there's junk food and there's healthy food Jamie Oliver and a lot of other heroes have taught us to understand that there's good and there's bad at the moment though we human beings seem to have pretty bad understandings of what is actually a good environment what's a good internal environment for us and what's a bad environment for us if you ask children show them lots of images of landscapes children from all over the world under the age of 10 pick the savanna again you say well that's kind of the continuation of the monkey story but it proves there are some things that human beings like and that are good for them I would argue that for weave stimulates their senses in an adequate way and then there are other things which are not as good this year I carried out studies to study central deprivation they took a beautiful white room they air-conditioned it perfectly that the perfect light levels in it they put people in it was gloves and they realized that students after 24 hours was starting to show first signs of hallucination and after 48 hours they basically broke down and collapsed sensory deprivation is as bad for your brain as the lack of stimulation is to your muscles you all know the phenomenon having a plaster cast and then your muscles have you know suffer from atrophy and basically disappear the same in very simplistic terms happens to your brain if you do not stimulate it it will actually change plasticity and shrink in order to fight that your brain creates hallucination if you would be still living in the countryside if you be working the farm like this gentleman over here this whole talk would be irrelevant but as you all know it's more than 50% of the world now lives in cities and the most terrible thing about that is that they spend like the US citizen 87% of their time indoors even that wouldn't be the worst problem of all problems but the problem is actually artificial environments in the last century starting in the 30s had a big peak around the Second World War the black box factory was invented you create a big box you don't need any windows I'll give you artificial light and then you pump in air conditioning to keep everyone alive and let them produce aeroplanes machines you can do whatever you like in these buildings they're super cheap and they're extremely flexible you can even stack them on top of each other and create an office building you can have multiple levels of these factory floors as long as you keep them nice and sealed don't let anything in or out and you just pump in your air conditioning the truth is that these buildings create the bland this environments possible they basically are just this equivalent of the white room I showed you just a few minutes before you can actually argue that these buildings are no other things than submarines completely sealed artificial environments and the military studied submarines because where had they had a problem was crews suffering from hallucination because they obviously had century deprivation crew members car when they come to shore had high levels of accident because her eyesight was disappeared because they had you were not using the long distance vision coming back to the submarine and office buildings a lot of towers you look at are actually built like submarines they're completely sealed and even though a guy or a woman would be just this close to the glass and on the other side of the glass is lovely fresh air of a day like this they can't get it the air comes in from the top of the building or somewhere at the bottom of the building is sucked into a plant room the fresh air then is mixed was used air that everyone has been using all day and then it's pumped all the way through through long ducts until it finally gets to you a these ducts are clean or not clean but be this whole system is extremely energy intensive buildings use up about forty percent of the world's energy so these machines are actually a huge part of global warming and damaging to the environment so you just imagine you don't need the machine you switch off the machine every minute you switch it off you're actually saving energy so my argument is you're creating something that is pretty bad in the first place and it is higher energy so why are we doing it the next topic is that this energy these environments are set by one man or one woman who's the facility manager and everyone gets the same stuff and looking at all of you now I mean it's interesting yes I've flown in we've all have different lives before we enter this conference today you're all different your physiology your cycled is all different so assuming that anyone can decide what you want to have all day as bizarre you would never accept that how one decides what you're gonna eat all day or all week or all year and particularly having the same all year round will be the right answer you'd say that can't be I think the Garden of Eden is not a bad starting point it looks like good company it looks like a diverse diverse group of friends I can almost feel the Sun I can feel the battled light the breeze the smell on a more serious note this is called Alice tisha scientists have found out that what you want is the stimulation of your senses and you want that stimulation to vary and to oscillate throughout the day if you have even if you have the perfect simulation you want to vary from it the same thing all day long is bad for you then there's a very interesting man called Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten he wrote an important book called Aesthetica he actually invented the word Aesthetica aesthetics and he wanted aesthetics to be one of the serious sciences it was the science of the senses the science of sensory cognition and his point was that sight sound hearing smelling all our senses is just as important and you should take care of them and actually use them to judge the world around you you go for a walk in the forest and I think every one of you knows what you feel like after you've been through a walk in the forest you feel how the light changes the air changes I mean that is the environment I'm talking about and if you know if you spend a few hours in the blue box you might have a headache I mean for example air conditioning is one of the biggest contribute to people's headaches in the office environment yeah I think if you just listen to your own experience in your own senses I think you all know what I'm talking about you look at daylight there is not one hour where the light has the same color as the next it's blue at lunchtime and it's yellow golden in the evening so if you think and in the evening for example that type of light make your body produce melatonin melatonin helps you sleep at the end of the day though if you spend your time in an office will you keep blue light you come home and you can't sleep but that is because you've been spending all day in a blue lit office building coming with a different type of blue I want to now talk about three projects so starting with a healthcare project this is a very humble project for maggie's in Manchester Maggie's build center centers for cancer care we were trying to do a very gentle building you just saw the green house at the end and we actually went back to basics and thought well what do you think someone would like to do and as we believe in should be inside and outside and of course it's naturally ventilated it should feel very natural and earthy but we like the idea of of sitting on a sitting on a veranda even in Manchester you see we rendered it was rain that's beautiful to enjoy the rain hear the rain smell the trees smell the different seasons the grass that is actually what we think life is about on a completely different scale we're working with the European Space Agency thinking of habitats on the moon we realise the whole natural story doesn't quite work natural ventilation on the moon doesn't quite work so here there's a fascination and I want to show you we work with a lot of scientists and a lot of science has actually come into our work over the last few years probably over Dec over the last few decades by now we worked with the people who were in the in the international space station they told us which was fascinating that the things they missed the most after family and friends was a smell of fresh air the space station had a window designed for it the window was supposed to be a large window and it was designed in the 80s that window was designed it was built as a prototype and then they did power that budget cuts they didn't take it they decided to move on take other pieces and finally in 2010 the window came and it was amazing copula which allowed the people's view down the reason I'm telling you this is there are things which me in control engineer say this is not critical for this mission there is no scientific need for a window but I actually think it's a question of humanity and I think it is actually important to fight for things which you realize they're actually for us they're for human beings so I'm just bringing this one as a monument to people's and Durin's and fighting for something that is right we're doing another mission for Mars 3d printing habitats on Mars we send swarms of little robots up ahead of the astronauts where we believe people will not want to live in 2001 Space Odyssey environments they will not want to be surrounded by white plastic they will probably like texture and real materials which has actually comes out of research working with the Halley team the South Pole Station back to understanding human beings and is actually a huge part of our research we've evolved from an architectural practice into something very unusual we have we have a lot of scientists we have psychologists we have artists with people who do special renderings and special simulations of air flow this is the scientist Carlos who developed his contraption and it is used for emotional mapping and you can basically wear it walk around and track with a film and also the intensity of your experience how he felt you can see who started in our office where he was probably a bit bored then his excitement level went up as he went along the Thames and he must have met some more exciting at the corner of the Kings Road but he is not telling us who it was we're also uh but we're taking it very serious we're building software that we're having special building physics specialists scientists who try to find how can I simulate what people will feel like can I simulate it with software do I actually build physical models this is a chamber which then is filled with smoke and the smoke rises around the heat of your own body all of this became the basis for the campus project in Cupertino which is very close collaboration was Steve Jobs who's no longer with us and Johnny I've and we basically tried to go right back to basics in fire what do human beings really want what is the perfect environment that would encourage creativity and nurture innovation and we broke down the barriers completely we treated the longest sheets of glass in the world but still kept natural ventilation which you can see is air moving over the top you can see the air going through this gap into the spaces so people can smell the outside and break down the barriers of inside and outside people work in the park they run in the park the building and the park become one and now just one tiny little thing which I thought would be fun for you and that is the Big Apple flagship on Union Square and this is totally about breaking down barrier you imagine we were just outside looking at the patio it would be as if this entire wall opens up it is 12 by 12 meters high and it would be we could just let the evening breeze come into this space and have this lecture semi inside and outside and that is basically what I'm talking about and lambing back to my best friend on a serious note I think I have for you that I wish you would go home you would go back to your offices to the places you work on Monday and just pause for a moment and go what does this actually feel like does this place actually stimulate my senses or do you go well it doesn't it's monotonous bland I have no control and I actually think you deserve better and I think you all deserve spaces that actually fulfill Baumgarten z-- definition you know you should have aesthetically pleasing spaces that give delight to all your senses so break down the barriers because you have the right and you should have better spaces thank you very much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 116,700

Rating: 4.9652057 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United Kingdom, Design, Architecture, Development, Environment, Health, Impact, Mental health, Technology

Id: FbfPWalO_ss

Length: 15min 52sec (952 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 30 2016