Neuro-architecture – The effect of the built environment

By : J. David Chapman/September 19, 2024

On the night of May 10, 1941, with one of the last bombs of the last serious raid, the British House of Commons was destroyed by the enemy, and leadership had to consider whether to rebuild. Winston Churchill was the British Prime Minister at the time. One of my favorite attractions in London is the Churchill War Rooms and Museum where his decisions are detailed in the very place he sheltered with his leadership team.

Winston Churchill had this to say about the event and decision. “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Churchill may have well been before his time and today we are entering an era of “neuro-architecture.” As more people flock to urban living, city designers are re-thinking buildings’ influence on our mental state and mood.

In the past, urban architects have not paid much attention to the potential cognitive effects of their creations on the inhabitants of the built environment. The imperative was to design something unique and individual which tended to override considerations of how it might shape the behaviors of those who would live or work within the structure.

The last time I was in London, there was an event called the Conscious Cities Conference where cognitive scientists’ discoveries were made available to architects. The conference brought together architects, designers, engineers, neuroscientists, and psychologists, all of whom increasingly cross paths at an academic level, but still rarely in practice.

The consensus from participants at the conference was that buildings and cities can affect our mood and well-being, and that specialized cells in the hippocampus region of our brains are attuned to the geometry and arrangement of the spaces we inhabit. Consequently, the spaces we occupy do matter.

My takeaway to this is that if these insights could change how cities are built, and if science could help the design and engineering professions justify the value of good design and craftmanship, it could possibly transform the quality of the built environment.

Churchill might have been correct and maybe our buildings do shape us. Architects, neuroscientists, and psychologists all seem to agree, or at least are willing to consider, that the influence of the built environment has a positive impact on our behavior and well-being. Welcome to the new era of neuro-architecture.

J. David Chapman is a professor of finance & real estate at The University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu).