Buildings designed with human consciousness in mind

advances in neuroscience have provided new insights

Classical architects designed buildings to be functional, beautiful, and durable, noticing a link between geometry (the Golden Mean ratio) and human experience. Contemporary science and architecture are evolving to the next level. Advances in neuroscience are providing new insights that architects are leveraging to creating buildings designed with human consciousness in mind.

As human beings, we spend almost 90 percent of our lives indoors, so the quality of the indoor environment impacts a significant portion of the human experience. Your surroundings are in constant interplay with the thoughts and feelings you have while you inhabit those surroundings. Pioneers in neuroscience (the study of the brain and nervous system) have been mapping brain activity for decades, making great strides in terms of understanding human development. Focus is now being applied to understanding the elements of human consciousness – the elusive mixture of inputs and connections that gives rise to our sense of knowing both ourselves and our environment.

DESIGN OUR SURROUNDINGS WITH FOCUSED INTENTION

Our consciousness is affected by the world around us. We spend the majority of our lives as the inhabitants of one building or another. The way that those buildings are designed and programmed makes a difference in how we perceive our surroundings. By studying brain activity in various situations, scientists and architects can work together to yield responsive buildings designed to stimulate, support, and encourage various mental states.

Imagine an elder care facility designed to stimulate brain activity and promote a sense of well-being and peace. The activities held there are structured to care for elderly residents in the best possible way, and it is possible that those activities will achieve a higher level of success based on the enhanced mental state of the building’s inhabitants by virtue of the neurospatial nature of the building’s architecture. Neo-natal wards for premature babies are being designed with the growth of the infant nervous system in mind. With special lighting and sound parameters in place, the development of the child’s ability to process light and sounds progresses as naturally as possible.

The age of neuroscientific architecture is dawning with possibilities. The more we learn about brain activity and consciousness, the more we will be able to design our surroundings with focused intention, creating structures that support the activities of their inhabitants to an extent never before realized.

IoT intelligence at every step

Scanalytics SoleSensor is an intelligent floor sensor that tracks steps through physical environments. This data is processed in the cloud and sent to end-users via data dashboards for analysis. Smart gateways powered by Intel® technology provide edge analysis that leads to real-time insights and alerts. Our neurospatial scientists are further developing ways to transfer that data back to a building for it to operate more responsively and efficiently.