Biophilia: The New Spaces of Living

The concept of sustainable architecture is an important theme for new concepts of both public and private space. We asked Stefano Serafini, research director of the International Society of Biourbanism (www.biourbanism.org) active in research and debates dealing with biophilia in architecture and urban planning in Italy and abroad, to focus on key points for biophilic design.

[..] our cognitive system and how it, in its reaction to the environment, involves all the other systems of which we are composed, from the endocrine to the social one [..]

The following the interview for Archweb readers.

What does the concept of biophilia represent for you?

In fact, the biophilia, understood as an attraction towards all that is living, is a hypothesis developed by a biologist, Prof. Edward O. Wilson, who in turn was influenced by the thought of Erich Fromm (his book Psychoanalysis of Love: Necrophilia and Biophilia in Man is from 1971), the psychologist and sociologist who believed that there were two opposing forces in the psyche and in society, one that pushed towards life, and one towards death. Wilson presented his idea to the public in the early 2008s as an explanation that could account for a series of observable behaviors. Ten years later he also tried to give an evolutionary foundation to this hypothesis, and other authors have moved towards this foundation, first of all Stephen R. Kellert, whose book Biophilic Design (XNUMX) is one of the most famous references.

When I began to deal with biophilic design, a dozen years ago, the topic was still practically esoteric. I came to it by chance, meeting someone who would later become a dear friend, Professor Nikos A. Salingaros, who is a bit of a father of this way of integrating “nature-friendly” cognitive structures in architecture. Salingaros, among other things, is the person to whom we owe the writing of Christopher Alexander's absolute masterpiece, The Nature of Order, in 4 volumes.

And Salingaros' biophilic design is somehow the development, the specialization of ideas contained in Alexander's work, an attempt to explain, for example, the objectivity of spatial conditions such as "wholeness" and why they make us feel good. I had conducted research on the epistemological status of non-Darwinian theories and for example I had edited the Italian edition of Antonio Lima-de-Faria's work, Evolution without selection. Self-evolution of form and function, and the points of contact that lit up in my mind were many. There had to be a deeper foundation than evolutionism or a socio-psychological theory to explain the fact that almost all human beings prefer certain spatial structures to others, and it seemed to me that the direction to follow was precisely the isomorphy between cognitive, biological and natural systems in general.
Today I believe that this isomorphy is a fact and that, as Alexander had already understood, it has to do with “sub-codes”. These hide and compose themselves in a vast number of codes, let’s say, visible, to which our biological and neurocognitive systems “respond”, making us perceive certain places as suitable, pleasant. And it is not just a question of perception: those places are suitable, they make us feel good (S. Serafini, “Subcodes in linguistics and design: A comparison about biophilia and language”. Journal of Biourbanism, V, 2016).

Of course, the relationship is not blind. I mean that these sub-codes are connected at one extreme to the laws of nature, to the fact that our bodies, like the spaces in which we live, must obey precise physical-chemical constraints to function. But at the other extreme, the sub-codes are connected to moral, cultural codes, and here we enter an extraordinary territory, the one very well exposed by Prof. Besim Hakim who of the “biophilia” of Mediterranean architecture, for example, has shown the historical genesis in the form of urban, construction and legal codes (see for example his Mediterranean Urbanism, 2014).

What is the starting point for an initial evaluative analysis of the place in relation to the form and function of a space?

The point starting point is our body. How we feel, in that space. Not in theory, or in aesthetic-ideological terms, but actually “with the belly”, with the skin, the everyday one. If the body is well, the light that changes with the hours of the day, the way in which the space actually works, the quality of sleep, the feeling of openness towards others, the sense of protection, of quiet, of inspiration to action, how the place becomes with the changing of the seasons and functions, if that place offers a center… It is difficult to define this, even though it is a very simple principle (letting go of our ideas, suspending judgment, as Husserl taught) because it is not seen, but only its effects.

Nature as a principle conveying geometric and functional relationships introduces the concept of Neuroergonomics into spaces: can we compare it to Le Corbusier's Modulor?

I wanted to dedicate a summer school to the concept of neuroergonomics a few years ago. The term was then (and still is today) used almost exclusively by the military: an ergonomics adapted to reaction times in the efficient use of war instruments. For me, this is a discussion that is far too important to be left to bombers, because it represents the point of intersection between environmental psychology, neurology and architecture. No discipline is a panacea, but used well, neuroergonomics can achieve wonderful results. The problem is, if anything, basing it on correct principles.

The Modulor of Le Corbusier it was certainly an important study, but it was based on a concept of external physicality that, beyond anthropometric arbitrariness, did not take into account the way in which, for example, our cognitive system works and how it, in its reaction to the environment, involves all the other systems of which we are composed, from the endocrine to the social. Le Corbusier himself, moreover, knew well that the Modulor could not be used as a mold because it had precise limits.

Based on your studies, even at a historical level, on the Middle Ages, could the concept of neuroscience and perception of living in time and space be linked to a broader concept of sense of appearance to a place?

LModernity has uprooted us from the enchantment of the cosmos as an entity to which we belong; then from the place itself, which especially in large cities becomes uncomfortable, hostile to our corporeality, as well as being ephemeral; then, again, from time, which urban rhythms have first fragmented and then reduced to zero in the continuous actuality of connection, a sort of black hole that absorbs all our vital time (one of the most recurring complaints of people is that of "not having time", especially to enjoy life).

Digitalization has finally made us all inhabitants of a flow without limits or borders, whose cyclical nature has in many ways pushed us back to a pre-Christian era. It is modernity that devours itself, after having destroyed everything else. In the Middle Ages, if we want to use such a generic term, dwelling or going home was a universal condition. Today, at most, we are tourists or refugees of our own existence and this condition is not efficient, it is not interesting whatever the accelerationists or post-humanists say, because the event horizon to which it leads us is a black afterlife that has already condemned and exterminated us.

I find it bitterly funny that all the work of destruction of Western theology has led us to a black theology, to the worship of the machine. And yet I believe that an architecture and urbanism attentive to this human being present here and now can propose a new path of living. I call them bioarchitecture and biourbanism.

Considering the naturalistic dimension, the choice of materials based on the “genius loci” and the coherence between space and man & nature, which is the project you have realized that you consider the most complete in biophilic terms? What are your suggestions given your experience also in the field in contact with scholars of the sector at 360°?

It's a difficult question, because to answer it would first be necessary to establish a context of significance. Many things come to mind, even paradoxical ones, such as certain slums, or places still quietly reused today by ordinary people, in Italy for example in our internal areas, in the post-Soviet monotowns, in Taipei (in 2013 I published, edited by Angelo Abbate, a very talkative booklet on the subject, Biourbanism Acupuncture: Treasure Hills of Taipei to Artena, by the architect and artist Marco Casagrande). In short, in its most intense state, biophilia tends to be a state of grace typical of architecture without architects, of everyday urbanism.

I do not consider authentic biophilia that developed by a certain American school that would like to exploit the "functional pleasantness" of design for commercial and productivist purposes. I find it a profound aberration of evidence-based design, reduced to a horizon of profit sense that is in itself radically thanatic. The same goes for the clever people of skyscrapers covered with plants, a hypocritical greenwashing, objectively false and morally abject. On a broader level, I like heterogeneous works, ranging from the villa of the emperor Hadrian in Tivoli to Frank Lloyd Wright, from Geoffrey Bawa to Christopher Alexander, from Marco Casagrande to Atelier Masomi.

The global market presents architects with new challenges; how can a renovation project of a private home or garden be biophilic?

Reuse, in a certain sense, is already potentially more biophilic than a new construction, even more so if it involves a garden: I would say that we have already added enough weight to this poor earth that supports us. For the rest, the principles do not change: connection to the body, to the living being that inhabits the place and to the biosociosphere that supports it. Designing biophilia means deepening these terms in a process of dialogue, of feedback, of erotic love to the context.

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