30 REFLEXION | 2021-22 | AIA Utah Total Recall: Cognitive Biophilia and the Restorative Impact of Perceived Open Space, Part 2 BY DAVID A. NAVARRETE AND BILL WITHERSPOON This paper has been divided into two parts, the second part of which appears below. The first part was printed in the last issue of this magazine. The paper describes how growing evidence and research on the multidisciplinary realm of illusions of nature is giving weight to a new field of Cognitive Biophilia and Neuroaesthetics. Can our understanding of cognitive function, as it relates to our sense of space, and the malleability of our body schema, as it relates to our surroundings, give rise to a new technology of cognitive design? Could these fundamental insights into the effects of spatial polarity on cognitive perception shed light on a new design framework? It is believed so. If we account for how our neurophysiology responds to perceived open space, then we can also, to an extent, modulate the occupant’s subjective relationship with time, which, in turn, affects his or her productivity, work satisfaction and health. However, considering the inexorable trend toward large-scale, commercial architecture with their enclosed spaces – particularly in larger cities, where higher population density makes wide-open spaces a scarce resource – architects and designers are challenged to offer occupants the restorative benefits of vast, natural spaces without the physical space to do so. Where will the architect and designer find the space needed to foster ideal cognitive function? To answer this, we must change the lens through which we frame the problem of space or lack thereof. Rather than search outward, this new design framework must be found where spatial cognition emerges: within the brain. Cognitive Biophilia and the Impact of Perceived Open Space In any environment – natural or artificial, exterior or interior – the zenith, the point in the celestial sphere directly above the observer, and the horizon line, the apparent junction of earth and sky, serve as environmental anchors that shape our experience of space. We must not underestimate the importance of these anchors as visual inputs that structure the spatial awareness essential to our well-being. Multisensory Open Sky Compositions engage spatial cognition. © 2018 Sky Factory. Architectural scholar Harry Francis Mallgrave notes that our experience of space is immediate and visceral, born of an emotional engagement that is precognitive and largely nonconscious. In his essay, “What designers can learn from the contemporary biological sciences” (included in the book, Mind in Architecture), he underscores that newer emotional models recognize that “our emotional responses are strongly integrated with our peripheral autonomic nervous system – that is, the working of our sympathetic and parasympathetic subsystems.”9 He goes on to explain that “these subsystems, in turn, are separately wired into the insular cortices in each hemisphere of the brain (a cortical region behind each ear, yet tucked towards the center of the brain). The sympathetic subsystem terminates in the right insula, which is associated with energy expenditure and arousal, while the parasympathetic subsystem terminates in the left insula and is responsive to energy nourishment, relaxation and affiliative emotions.” To read the first part, please scan the QR code: https://reflexion.thenewslinkgroup.org/total-recall-cognitivebiophilia-and-the-restorative-impact-of-perceived-openspace-part-1/
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