Thinking with Built Spaces

The title of this post is identical to the title of a chapter in new book by Annie Murphy Paul with some new ideas and data. The subtitle is The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain.

Ms. Paul writes, “Jonas Salk was stuck. For years the young medical researcher had been working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, in a small basement laboratory in Pittsburgh, trying to develop a vaccine for polio. In the spring of 1954, exhausted and out of ideas, Salk realized he had to take leave of the lab to refresh his mind. He found the solitude and tranquility he sought at the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, a thirteenth-century monastery in central Italy.

For several weeks Salk read and thought and walked amid the monastery’s whitewashed colonnades and arches, Its quiet courtyards, its chapel filled with light pouring in from tall windows. During this time he experienced an intellectual breakthrough—one he attributed to the buildings themselves. ‘The spirituality of the architecture there was so inspiring that I was about to do intuitive thinking far beyond any I had done in the past,’ Salk would later write. ‘Under the influence of that historic place I intuitively designed the research that I felt would result in a vaccine for polio. I returned to my laboratory in Pittsburghto validate my concepts and found that they were correct.’

But this is not the end of the story. Less than ten years after his visit to Assisi, Salk had the opportunity to build an intellectual community from the ground up—to create a space where scientists like him would do their thinking. Together with his architect, Louis Kahn, he set out to design the ideal place for reflection and discovery. They modeled the new institute on a monastery. In his discussions with Kahn, Salk specifically invoked the basilica at Assisi; the architect knew it well, having visited it and sketched it years earlier. Kahn imbued his design with references to the monastery both sable and overt.

The resulting complex of buildings—the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, completed in 1965—has been recognized as a masterpiece of modern architecture. Its structures are monumental, even austere. But they are also carefully designed to fit the needs of the people who work inside them. Natural light is everywhere, even on the floors located below ground, thanks to sunken courtyards and light wells. The laboratories feature wide swaths of unobstructed space; through an ingenious construction technique, Kahn manage to created entire floors free of interior columns. Mechanical elements like ducts and piping are located on alternating floors, so that repairs and updates can be made without disturbing the scientists at work. Set apart from the labs are the scientists studies, each of which offers a view of the Pacific Ocean. The researchers who work there, including a number of Nobel Prize winners, report that it is an optimal place to think. Salk professes himself pleased with the result: ‘I would say the building is as close to perfection as anything possible.’

For centuries, architects like Louis Kahn have thought about how to creates spaces that evoke particular states of mind. There is an even longer tradition of folk architecture embedded in the structures ordinary people have created for themselves, tweaking and tuning inherited forms. Now the emerging field of ‘neuroarchitecture’ ha begun to examine empirically how the brain responds to building and their interiors, and to theorize about how these reactions might be shaped by our evolutionary. History and by the biological facts of our bodies.

Given all this thought and care, it’s puzzling and dispiriting that many of us learn and work and live in spaces that don’t help us think effectively. One reason for this: our culture does not hold the built environment in especially high regard; many individuals and institutions seem of the view that it doesn’t much matter, that we should be able to engage in productive mental labor no matter what the setting. Second thoughtful design takes time and money, and there is always the pressure to build quickly and cut costs. A third reason it must be said is architects and designers themselves, and the tyranny of their bold ideas. Their edgy experiments and advent guards adventures have often created difficulties for the people who must live inside them every day.”