After decades of research on minds and brains and a decade of conversations with architects, Michael Arbib presents When Brains Meet Buildings as an invitation to the science behind architecture, richly illustrated with buildings both famous and domestic. As he converses with the reader, he presents action-oriented perception, memory, and imagination as well as atmosphere, aesthetics, and emotion as keys to analyzing the experience and design of architecture. He also explores what it might mean for buildings to have "brains" and illuminates all this with an appreciation of the biological and cultural evolution that supports the diverse modes of human living that we know today.These conversations will not only raise the level of interaction between architecture and neuroscience but, by explaining the world of each group to the other, will also engage all readers who share a fascination with both the brains within them and the buildings around them.Michael Arbib is a pioneer in the interdisciplinary study of computers and brains and has long studied brain mechanisms underlying the visual control of action. His expertise makes him a unique authority on the intersection of architecture and neuroscience.

PrefaceAcknowledgmentsChapter 1. Brains in Bodies in the - Social, Built and Natural - Environment1.1. Linking Physical and Mental and Construction1.2. Framing the AN Conversation1.3. How Brains Meet Buildings1.4 The Many Levels of the Brain1.5. A Key Debate: Is Neuroscience Relevant to Architecture?Chapter 2. An Action-Oriented Perspective on Space and Affordances2.1. In an Art Gallery: From Wayfinding to Contemplation2.2. Affordances and Effectivities2.3. The Thinking Hand2.4. The Thinking Hand and Its Schemas2.5. Schemas: Up to Society; Down to Neurons2.6. The Thinking Hand and Its Brain2.7. Design in Architecture and in Brain ModelingChapter 3. A Look at Vision, and a Touch More3.1. Engineering and Architectural Aesthetics3.2. Neural Circuits for Vision3.3. Learning and Memory3.4. VISIONS: Scene Perception as a Form of Construction3.5. Aesthetic Judgement of Visual Form3.6. Schemas Within and Beyond VisionChapter 4. Atmosphere, Affordances, and Emotion4.1. Atmosphere Exemplified4.2. Motivation, Emotion, and Brains4.3. Atmosphere as a Non-Gibsonian Affordance4.4. The Evocation of Atmosphere in Paintings4.5. Seeking Neural Correlates of Environments Inducing Contemplative States4.6. Experiences of UltimacyChapter 5. From Empathy to Mirror Neurons and Back to Aesthetics5.1. Empathy and Einfühlung in Life, Architecture and Art5.2. Mirror Neurons and Their Larger Setting5.3. How Neural Nets Enable Us to Learn and Remember5.4. Modeling How Mirror Neurons Learn and Function5.5. Empathy and the Brain5.6. Einfühlung and the Motor Component of Contemplation5.7. Neuroaesthetics Revisited, and MoreChapter 6. From Libraries to Wayfinding, Waylosing, and Symbolism6.1. Libraries6.2. A Cognitive Account of Wayfinding6.3. It Takes More Than a Hippocampus to Build a Cognitive Map6.4. Symbolism and SymbolsChapter 7. When Buildings Have "Brains"7.1. Machines for Living In, Revisited7.2. Can Architecture Be Smart, Can Intelligence Be Artificial?7.3. The Interactive Space Ada7.4. Neuromorphic Architecture: Neural and Physical Spaces for Buildings7.5. Community & Biophilia7.6. Where Might Neuromorphic Architecture Lead Us?Chapter 8. Evolving the Architecture-Ready Brain8.1. Introducing the X-Ready Brain8.2. From Mirror Systems to Complex Imitation, Pantomime and Pedagogy8.3. From Pantomime to Protolanguages and On to Languages8.4. The Language-Ready Brain is Also Construction-Ready and Drawing-Ready8.5. The Neuropsychology of Drawing8.6. Is Architecture a Language for the Architecture-Ready Brain?Chapter 9. Experience and Design: Case Studies9.1. Imagination and Design: Our Initial Framework9.2. Jørn Utzon's Experience and Design: The Sydney Opera House9.3. Sketching and Model-Making: Frank Gehry's Bilbao GuggenheimChapter 10. Experience and Design: Bringing in the Brain10.1. Towards IBSEN: Modeling Imagination in Brain Systems for Episodes and Navigation10.2. Multi-Modal Perception Within the Action-Perception Cycle10.3. Linking Memory and Imagination: The Hippocampus and More10.4. From Scripts to Cognitive Maps to Buildings10.5. And So We Come to the End Which is a BeginningAbout the Author