Sie sind auf Seite 1von 5

Oz

Volume 30 Article 9

1-1-2008

Thoughts on Haptic Architecture By a Perceptual


Psychologist
Howard C. Hughes

Follow this and additional works at: http://newprairiepress.org/oz

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works


4.0 License.

Recommended Citation
Hughes, Howard C. (2008) "Thoughts on Haptic Architecture By a Perceptual Psychologist," Oz: Vol. 30. https://doi.org/10.4148/
2378-5853.1458

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oz by an authorized administrator of
New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact cads@k-state.edu.
Thoughts on Haptic Architecture
By a Perceptual Psychologist

Howard C. Hughes

Like most people, I do not know much objects and their spatial arrangement; materials, the uniformity of illumina-
about architecture, but I spend a great the sensing of imperfections and dirt tion” and other salient aspects of many of vision is not an accident or a wrong
deal of time in buildings. I was there- on the surfaces of objects; the examina- modern architectural works leads to turn taken during the development
fore both intrigued and a little intimi- tion of internal organs of the body by of modern human culture. It is not a
dated when I was asked by the editors palpation…, and the moment of iner- of experience.” However, I do not be- choice that we can choose to make
of Oz to write an article on “haptic ar- tia of hefted objects…For humans…it lieve that any architecturally-induced
chitecture.” In expressing my thoughts contributes much to social and sexual stupor is properly attributed to the hegemony of vision is the result of over
and reactions, I will tread lightly and communication, to individual develop- “hegemony of vision.” It is, I think, 200,000 years of human evolution. As
with some trepidation, because I am ment, and to the aesthetic appreciation more appropriately attributable to such, it is much better to understand
not accustomed to addressing topics of both art and daily life. (Loomis and a failure of architectural designs to the power of human visual perception
on which, unlike my audience, I have Lederman, 1986). provide the richness of color, texture, than to view it as a regrettable mistake
no particular expertise. form and depth that resonate with the that should somehow be corrected. I
If this is what is meant, haptic archi- mechanisms of human vision. No one suggest that the solution to any per-
Let us begin by considering the use of tecture has indeed set a lofty goal for who studies human perception would ceived ills in modern architecture is
the word “haptic” in haptic architec- itself. According to Pallasmaa (2000), consider, much less lament, the “he- not to resist the dominance of vision
ture. Reference to any dictionary tells
us that haptic refers to the sense of “hegemony of vision,” which he appears
touch. For perceptual psychologists, it to attribute to a failing of modern so-
usually refers to active touch—a form ciety, and perhaps a failing of modern
of exploratory touching in which the architects to resist succumbing to so-
hands palpate an object in order to
get the richest possible representa-
tion using touch alone. Used in this I believe likewise that many aspects of
sense, the haptic system is really a the pathology of today’s architecture
multimodal system that combines can also be understood through a cri-
information from cutaneous recep- tique of the ocular bias of our culture.
tors (a variety of sensory receptors in As a consequence of the power of the
our skin) with information from our eye over the other sensory realms,
kinesthetic system, which provides architecture has turned into an art
information about our posture, move- form of instant visual image. Instead
of creating existential microcosms,
gravity and the masses of objects we embodied representations of the
manipulate. However, it seems that the world, architecture projects retinal
proponents of haptic architecture have images for the purpose of immediate
something more in mind. Something persuasion. Flatness of surfaces and
akin to a characterization of haptic materials, uniformity of illumination,
perception includes: as well as the elimination of micro- viewing of a series of visual scenes. Yellow areas indicate regions of greatest activity, red areas indicate

the sensing of fabrics by the hand; the


sensing of food textures by the mouth; of experience.” (Pallasmaa, 2000).
the sensing of vibrations in machin- neural activations were obtained using functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques at the
ery that signify normal or abnormal I could not agree more with the asser- Brain Imaging Center in the Department of Psychological and Brain Science at Dartmouth College.
56 Photo courtesy of Prof. William Kelley and Dr. Kathryn Demos.
over other modalities, but to accept creature (dolphins are our only rival buildings that resonate with our very structure of fractals recapitulates itself
that dominance and simply make our elaborate visual mechanisms. at multiple spatial scales. For instance,
buildings more pleasing and more at- intimately involved in vision, hearing, when you look at a snow flake, the
tuned to the fundamental properties touch, memory, language, thought and My sense is that many of the trends in articulated pattern of branching ice
of the incredibly intricate system of consciousness. As such, the cerebral modern architecture fail to provide the crystals is very salient. If you were to
neuronal circuits that mediates our cortex is essential to all the mental features the human visual system is look at a small portion of the snow
sense of visual perception. Perhaps if designed to process. As a result, a great
architects had a better understanding is why the functions of the cerebral deal of modern architecture provides
of human vision, they would celebrate cortex hold so much fascination for the perceptual system with a highly
the hegemony of vision, rather than all psychologists. impoverished environment. I accept pattern would again reappear at a still
resist what is really irresistible. that Mr. Pallasmaa (2000) is largely
As the proud owner of the most in- correct in stating that prevalence of of self-similarity. Fractals are ubiqui-
With those initial thoughts in mind, tricate cerebral cortex in the known
let us briefly turn our attention to universe, you may be interested to the use of uniform materials that result other well-known natural examples are
one of the most astonishing, complex, know that neuroscientists estimate in uniform textures and unvarying mountains, coastlines, trees, and the
and exquisite devices in the known - lightning are by and large accurate. I shapes of neurons. Uniform textures
universe—the human visual system. do not know why the architecture of of smooth concrete and glass will not
When you look at a picture of a human is well-illustrated in Figure 1, which the later part of the twentieth century have these properties. I think some of
shows the pattern of cortical activ- the awe and timeless beauty of Frank
attention is that the outer surface is ity evoked while human observers visual system is “tuned” to respond to Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece Fallingwa-
passively viewed a sequence of still contrast and change, and to purposely ter may derive from his inspired use of
brain is composed of what is called the images ( familiar objects, buildings, avoid changes in color, shading, and natural textures (perhaps in judicious
cerebral cortex, and those wrinkles in landscapes, and other people). Note texture in our architectural designs juxtaposition with some carefully cho-
the cerebral cortex are called convolu- that this widespread activity is gener- is to deny our perceptual systems the sen man-made materials). Our sense
ated by passive viewin—it does not in- essential elements of the visual world of vision is tuned to and “resonates”
cortex is approximately 2.64 square clude additional brain activations that they are designed to convey. with those natural textures.
- would be recruited if you were actively
luted because that is the only way to searching for a particular item in the The visual system appears to have “Hapticity” implies integration from
scenes, remembering them for later evolved in such a manner as to be es- different sensory modalities, so let
into a skull that is a little more than 7 recall, or attempting to interact with pecially sensitive to certain statistical us now turn to a brief consideration
inches wide (despite its large surface - properties that occur in natural scenes of multi-sensory interactions and in-
area, the cortex is only about 0.1 inches matic example illustrates how much of (Hughes, Nozawa and Kitterle, 1996). tegration, a topic that has received
thick). Not all mammals have such a the human brain is devoted to vision. Natural materials such as stone, bark, a great deal of attention in sensory
heavily convoluted cortex, however. No other sensory modality could evoke wood grain, and water share a deep physiology and perceptual science.
so much brain activity with so little similarity in their image structure, and The problem from a scientific per -
smooth, and that of cats and dogs is our perceptual system contains mech- spective can be concisely described
very sparsely convoluted. During the 1 makes it clear that ascendancy of as follows: if each sensory modality
course of human evolution, the cere- vision over all other sensory modalities “resonate” with those natural textures. (vision, audition, touch) is conveyed
bral cortex has undergone a dramatic is not something that architects can to the central nervous system over
expansion relative to other regions ignore. Rather, it is an essential part embodied in the geometry of fractals separate, modality-specific neural
of the central nervous system, and of our nature. I assume that everyone (Mandelbrot, 1982). Fractals have a pathways, how can we explain the
that is why our cortex is more heavily agrees that architecture is one of the type of irregularity called “self-similar-
convoluted than virtually any other visual arts, so the challenge is to design ity,” which means that the geometric perceptual experience? Our experience 57
Figure 2. A photo of Gerry Hall (circa 1967), for- makes you pause and think to yourself,
mer home of the Department of Psychology at and make a straight edge look straight. “what were they thinking when they
If there is a lesson that perceptual sci- built that monstrosity!” On the campus
of Dartmouth College, the buildings
of brown ceramic tile. It was not a good environ- to a multimodal haptic architecture, it that no one liked were the home of the
ment for working or teaching. It is reputed that probably is to work toward designs in Departments of Psychology and Math-
the architect was a former Dartmouth student.
Although Dartmouth is famed for its loyal and which the senses of touch and hear-
generous alumni, the speculation was that this ing are consistent with and reinforce of Dartmouth College (I always won-
particular student was not quite as happy as dered whether this individual got poor
most. Photograph courtesy of Patricia B Cope, the visual experience of architectural grades in Psychology or Mathematics,
Photographic Records Specialist, Special Collec-
tions, Dartmouth College. and was therefore disaffected with
are soothing, but if those sounds are
made artificial by hearing them in complex consisted of twin buildings
a large atrium in which all the glass (yes, astonishingly they built two of
and metal surfaces produce multiple
echoes, much of the aesthetic potential was in Gerry Hall, and Mathematics
may be lost, as the sound then seems was in Gerry’s twin, Bradley Hall. Each
had a wall that was tiled in shades of
is seen (we are actually quite good at blue. During the 1970s (before my time
processing echoes, and they don’t need here), a popular student prank was to
to be of the obvious sort you hear when climb to the roof and hang a gigantic
is not one of separate visual, auditory, - you shout in a canyon). If materials fake shower head over the top of the
and tactile sensations. We can tell how sion and the vestibular system (the rich in texture are used because they tiled wall. Gerry Hall thus became
a surface will feel simply by looking at system which provides us with our are pleasing to the eye, designs might -
it. We can tell what an unseen object sense of balance) causes motion sick- be attempted in which the visitor is tire interior of both buildings were
will look like through active touch ness. In many cases, vision is used somehow invited to contact those lined with a medium to dark shade
(but not nearly so much through pas- to “calibrate” the other senses. For materials directly (perhaps by clever of brown ceramic tile. Perhaps you
sive touch). We hear running water, example, active palpation of an objec- uses in hand rails used in stairs and can imagine the adjectives that were
and immediately know how swiftly it tively straight edge will “feel” straight, corridors). used to describe the exact shade of
even if the eyes are closed. Similarly,
palpation of a curved edge will feel I have spent the last 40 years of my -
called multimodal integration, and curved. However, if the information life working on college and university ever, was that it was all single-pane
there is good evidence that integration conveyed by vision and active touch campuses. I have visited many more. glass. Large single-pane windows in
of the senses is mediated by highly College campuses are almost always New Hampshire are not a good idea.
specific patterns of convergence of very pleasant environments that are During the bitter cold winter months,
prolonged period of wearing special the cold air used to fall from those
create polymodal centers in the brain. goggles that optically distort the seen and attractive buildings that are com- glass windows like the Niagara River
world such that straight edges appear plemented by beautiful landscapes.
that congruent information arising curved, the visual distortion results in Even so, I have rarely been to a campus which was strategically placed on the
changes in haptic touch, and straight that doesn’t have at least one truly ugly
mutually reinforcing, but incongru- contours come to feel curved! Note building - one that stands out as an cold air would actually rustle all the
that the reverse adaptation does not papers attached to the bulletin board
58 perceptual instability. For example, occur—feeling the straight edge does of aesthetics. At least one building that above my desk. In point of fact, there
wasn’t a single redeeming feature of References
Gerry Hall, and we were all happy to Hughes, H.C., Nozawa, G. & Kitterle, F. “Global
precedence, spatial frequency channels, and the
see it demolished in 2007.
statistics of natural images,” Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience, Vol. 8, pp. 197–230, 1996.
I think the time I served in Gerry Hall
(“hard time” is what I’d like to call it) Loomis, J.M. & Lederman, S.J. “Tactual percep-
entitles me to the following closing
(Eds.). Handbook of perception and human per-
formance. Volume II: Cognitive processes and
constructive advice (and hope). First, performance. New York: John Wiley, 1986.
despite whatever intellectual analy-
Mandelbrot, Benoît.
ses one might make, architecture is a
Nature, W. H. Freeman & Co., 1982.

a building is a visual experience, so Pallasmaa, J. “Hapticity and Time - discussion of


we should strive to make that experi- haptic, sensuous architecture.
Review, May, 2000.
ence as pleasing as possible. Secondly,
although architecture is a visual art,
-
sual arts. A painter or sculptor has no
real obligation to society in general, Figure 3. Gerry-Bradley Hall in January, 2007. Photograph courtesy of Joseph Mehling, Dartmouth
because people are not compelled College Photographer
to visit or view their work. Buildings

have no choice—they must pass the


building, and may even have to work
in it. It seems to me that this simple
fact means that architects have a re-
sponsibility to society that painters or
sculptors usually do not. Mr. Pallasmaa
(2000) is correct: don’t just think about
immediate visual impression a build-
ing might provide. Always bear in mind
that many people, people who you will
never know and do not approach build-
ing design as an intellectual exercise,

of time in the spaces you designed.


Finally, perhaps architects should re-
ceive at least a little training in the
mechanisms of visual perception. If
the designer of Gerry Hall had taken
Perception as a Dartmouth student,
perhaps the building would still be
standing. 59

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen