What to expect this week:

Although the topic of architecture is only tangentially related to health in general, and our mental health specifically, I’ve had so much fun researching and making this video.

As I said in my last Newsletter, architecture is one of my earliest passions, and I’m excited to experiment with ways to integrate it into the Evolve.2 YouTube Channel. Definitely expect more on the topic in the future!

Anyways, here’s Part II!

Housekeeping:

Expect a break from architecture in next week’s video. Instead, we discuss the opposite - nature, and what attracts us to it.

Links to my e-Courses

• The Bare Minimum - FREE

• The Adaptive Scholar - $5

What does our architecture say about us? (Part II)

Architecture is an emergent property of our human psychology. It is distinct from the more chaotic ways of nature. It imposes human order upon nature. The emotions you feel, your fears of the unknown, how you treat others, and even the fictions you believe in are all represented materially in the structures that house us. 

Here, in Part II of this mini-series, I will guide you through my final thoughts on explaining the modern forms of architecture dominating our world, which seem to be less appreciated than the more artistic forms that predate them. I will dive deeper into the ideological mechanisms underpinning this dampened decoration and artistry with regard to how we design many of our contemporary buildings.  

But first, let's quickly recap on the framework I laid out in the first video. If you’d like to watch the whole thing, you can find the link in the description below.

Three Functions of Architecture

Citing archaeologist Lewis Binford, I explained how humans manipulate the material world to serve three functions.

First, is the technomic function. This refers to when humans create something intended for purposes tied closely to survival. I provided the architectural example of igloos constructed by people living in the Arctic, and how this helps them survive the brutal temperatures of their environment. 

Architectural historian James Fitch puts it bluntly when he says:

Architecture’s most fundamental purpose is to protect us from the dangers of our natural environments.

Second, is the socio-technic function. This is how architecture relates to the social environment instead of the natural one. The example I used here is that of American colonial architecture and how it was manipulated to serve the growing social stratification between indentured servants, slaves, and their masters. 

Third, is the ideo-technic function, which I have largely saved for this video. This refers to when humans construct material objects and structures for ideological purposes. Let’s explore some examples.

Ideo-technic Examples of Architecture

You don’t need a wild imagination to conjure up imagery of architecture inspired by ideology, philosophy, religion, and the like. Take the Gothic cathedrals, which still blanket the European continent today, as an example. These impressive feats of both engineering and artistry were mostly built between the 12th and 16th centuries, and they were literally designed from the ground up to mimic the Christian belief system.

Starting from the very bottom, just take a look at their floor plans. They were designed in the shape of a cross. This cross-inspired form then rises from the ground and reaches for the heavens. The use of flying buttresses (which double as structural support), pointed arches, spires, and towers all intend to emphasize verticality. The architects built these structures in such a way as to instill the Christian ethic in all who witness them, with their vertical beauty - guiding our eyes upward, toward God and his heaven that awaits us.

Georgian Architecture

For more examples, let us return to the domestic architecture of early America. The first colonists likely built their homes with survival mostly in mind. Initially, they lacked the resources to spend on motifs and style. The houses they built were crude, often asymmetrical, made from locally available materials like stone and wood, and were inspired by the houses of Europe’s Middle Ages. 

As time went by, the colonists established more of a permanent presence and acquired the time and resources to explore new styles. By the mid-18th century, new architectural patterns became prominent. They were patterns of symmetry and proportion. It’s what architectural historian Fiske Kimball calls the “academic style” [2].

At this point in American history, many Renaissance-inspired ideas made their way to the colonists from Europe. This includes the reintegration of Greek and Roman values into the American belief system, which is reflected in the Georgian style of architecture found throughout 18th-century America. 

Georgian homes have some key characteristics. First, if you were to bisect one right down the middle, you would see two nearly identical halves. The door is properly centered, and an equal number of windows are placed symmetrically on either side of that door. Second, the roofs are not extravagantly steep nor flat and mellow, they are balanced proportionately to the height of the home. Third, they include architectural motifs reminiscent of the Greeks and Romans, such as columns and pilasters. 

Reason, order, and control were the values shaping the American belief system of the time and were derived from the revival of Greek and Roman philosophies. Contrasting the Georgian architecture to the styles that preceded it, historian Alan Gowans says:

“This design is informed by very different convictions: that the world has a basic immutable order; that men by powers of reason can discover what that order is; and that discovering it, they can control environment as they will” [3].

Modern Architecture

Around this time and shortly thereafter, large-scale global changes in how people thought about and interacted with the world were occurring. Two major revolutions came about: the scientific revolution was in full effect and the industrial revolution was just starting to take off. 

Largely inspired by those Renaissance values, the scientific revolution was a time when people began thinking of the universe not as something too complex to understand, but something that is comprehensible. By creating hypotheses and testing them through experimentation, we can better interpret the world around us. The Industrial Revolution was the application of that philosophy to material culture. 

By applying our newfound knowledge of chemistry, physics, and mathematics, we developed the steam engine, telegraph, and cotton gin. The production of iron, steel, glass, and reinforced concrete was refined, making these materials more accessible than ever. To house the production and maintenance of these technologies, new buildings were created; like rail stations and large factories. Sometimes these structures included decoration, but there was more emphasis placed on function and efficiency than anything else. 

This new way of thinking, that the world is mechanistic and that we ought to treat it that way, had downstream effects on what would become modern architecture. Speaking specifically to developments in the architectural history of New Jersey (my home state) Susanne Hand says:

In the modern era, decoration and artistic flare are often sacrificed for this machine-like minimalism. This might be the answer to the question that initiated this mini-series. Why is modern architecture so frequently perceived as drab, uninspiring, or even ugly to the everyday person? 

Our contemporary cultural psychology is rooted in a mechanistic worldview, where we see reality as something for us to acquire and control. This ideology underpins much of the architecture we see around us, but there may be evolutionary forces underpinning that very ideology.

The Matter with Things

Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist by trade but is also quite the polymath. He is a synthesizer of information from disparate fields of research. The insights he has gained from making these connections can help us understand the root of this mechanistic ideology. 

After decades of research, McGilchrist has published multiple books on how he conceptualizes the human brain, including The Master and his Emissary, and his magnum opus The Matter with Things [5;6]. Let me begin by saying The Matter with Things might be the densest book I’ve ever read, and I will by no means do its insights justice. However, I will attempt to summarize his conclusions and relate them to our topic of architecture. 

The human brain is two-sided. It has a right and left hemisphere, which are connected through a bundle of nerves called the corpus callosum. They use this connection to communicate information to one another. McGhilchrist argues that the conventional right-brain/left-brain differences we’ve been told are incorrect. It's not that the left brain “does math and logic” while the right brain “does language and art”. Rather, he argues that both hemispheres of the brain are involved in all tasks, but they attend to the world in different ways.

Grounded in an abundance of neurological data, he shows how the left hemisphere is more analytical and detail-focused, while the right hemisphere is more holistic and integrative. 

The left hemisphere takes a more reductionist approach, the perspective that dominates modern science. It reduces the information it perceives and processes into discrete, decontextualized parts, focusing on specifics and details rather than the whole, often losing sight of the broader context and interconnectedness of things.

The right hemisphere synthesizes the information it perceives and processes into a cohesive whole, focusing on the context and relationships between parts, appreciating the broader picture and the interconnectedness of things.

His thesis is that these hemispheric differences influence culture and society, and we have become over-reliant on the left hemisphere in the modern era. This leads to a fragmented and reductionist worldview. It undermines our ability to see the bigger picture, appreciate complexity, and understand interconnectedness. As a result, it can contribute to societal issues such as environmental degradation, loss of meaning, mental health problems, and social fragmentation. I believe that modern architecture is also a reflection of the left hemispheric reliance.

This is evident in the prevalence of utilitarian, linear, and functional designs that prioritize efficiency and practicality over aesthetic and contextual considerations. Buildings are frequently constructed with standardized materials and methods, resulting in structures that can feel impersonal and disconnected from their surroundings.

Think about the ideas that influenced these modern designs, like the scientific and industrial revolutions discussed earlier. We began thinking of the world in terms of individualized parts that we can comprehend, apprehend, and manipulate. We divide our modern houses into separate, individualized rooms with hyper-specific functions. In the past, especially in prehistoric times, buildings were more open and communal. 

Conclusion

Art and beauty are holistic. A beautiful building is not one fixated solely on function. It is one that entails both function and decoration. Its motifs and artistry are integrated with its structure and purpose. They are not put on the back burner. A beautiful building is designed holistically, taking all things into consideration.

To answer the question, of why so many modern buildings lack beauty, we must consider our contemporary state of thinking. I believe it is largely because our cultural psychology is biased toward this left-brain approach to the world.

Finally, to get down to the most fundamental variable of this whole idea, let’s consider what Iain McGichrist attributes this hemispheric difference to. 

He claims that while we have become over-reliant on the left hemisphere, both ways of attending to the world are essential:

To be properly adapted to one's environment, one must be detail-oriented and narrowly focused to acquire the food necessary for survival. This concern is what the left hemisphere is better adapted to. On the other hand, one must be holistically aware enough of their surroundings to not get eaten themselves. This is what the right hemisphere is better adapted to.

We have evolved two separate ways of attending the world for very legitimate reasons. Yet, in our modern world, these two approaches are not as integrated as they should be. Architecture is just one of many examples of this. Can you think of some others?

References:

[1] Fitch, J. 1999. American Building: The Environmental Forces That Shape It. Oxford University Press.

[2] Kimball, F.  1966. Domestic Architecture Of The American Colonies And Of The Early Republic. New York: NY. Dover Publications.

[3] Gowans, A. 1964. Images of American Living: Four Centuries of Architecture and Furniture as Cultural Expression. Philadelphia: PA. J. B. Lippincott.

[4] Hand, S. 1995. New Jersey Architecture. New Jersey Historical Commission, Department of State. 

[5] McGilchrist, I. 2019. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press.

[6] McGilchrist, I. 2021. The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. London. Perspectiva Press.

Fit Fuel Song Suggestion

The Fit Fuel song suggestions are hand-picked by yours truly to elicit the motivation (and possibly aggression) needed to initiate or persist through a grueling workout. They consist of heavy, brutal guitar riffs and gruesomely guttural vocals. Additionally, I timestamp what I believe to be the best riff of the song - one that will kick your nervous system into overdrive when approaching a personal record (PR).