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社会组织性住房：自然性、连接性、精神性
Socially-Organized Housing: Biophilia, Connectivity, and Spirituality

由专筑网小R，王雪纯编译

该系列文章由Nikos A. Salingaros、David Brain、Andrés M. Duany、Michael W. Mehaffy、 Ernesto Philibert-Petit共同研究编写，文章主题是关于拉丁美洲的社会住房特征探讨。

在本文中，作者主要关注人们健康与福祉对于环境的依赖。之前发布的文章标题如下：

• 1、建立归属感的设计方式
• 2、拉丁美洲社会住房的反模式
• 3、控制几何

4、生物性、连接性、精神性

促进人类福祉的几何特征

“生物建筑”的概念明确，人们的健康与福祉很大程度低依赖于环境的几何特征，例如特定的结构、表面、材料、细部、光线、植物应用等等元素(Kellert等., 2008; Salingaros, 2013; 2015)。而这些元素都能够促进建筑项目的成功，其中尤其针对社会住房项目，因为有足够的证据表明人们会受到环境的影响。

提升人类健康的几何特征与曾经所描述的控制几何学并不相同。充满活力的几何学特征较为分散、复杂，并且具有高度关联性，例如使用者的自建住宅几何结构，亦或是自然界中河流、树木的几何结构。在没有各种限制的前提下，人们会根据自然的几何结构来进行设计与建造（Alexander, 2001-2005; Salingaros, 2006）。但需要注意的是，许多自建住宅并不是按照这种逻辑来应用几何形态，因为每个场地都会受到各方面的限制。这样的限制导致这门行业逐渐演变出一种难以更改的模式，在之后的文章里，我们会讨论到对于限制元素的应用。

The series of articles developed by Nikos A. Salingaros, David Brain, Andrés M. Duany, Michael W. Mehaffy and Ernesto Philibert-Petit researches the peculiarities of social housing in Latin America.
This time, the proposal focuses on how human health and well-being depend on the geometry of the environment. Check the previously published pieces and the new article, below.
•1. Design That Establishes Emotional Ownership
•2. Anti-Patterns of Social Housing in Latin America
•3. The Geometry of Control

4. Biophilia, Connectivity, and Spirituality.
Geometry that promotes human wellbeing
The notion of “biophilic architecture” establishes that human health and wellbeing strongly depend on the geometry of the environment, as expressed in particular configurations, surfaces, materials, details, light, and accessibility to plants and other forms of life (Kellert et al., 2008; Salingaros, 2013; 2015). All of these factors contribute to the success of any building, and to social housing in particular. Evidence-based design is based on knowing how a human being is affected by his/her environment.
The appropriate geometry that promotes human wellbeing is unsurprisingly the opposite of the geometry of power described in the preceding section. A living geometry is loose, complex, and highly interconnective. It is the geometry of the owner-built favela, and also the natural geometry of a river, a tree, or a lung. Without any imposed constraints, human beings will build according to this natural geometry (Alexander, 2001-2005; Salingaros, 2006). Note that many self-built projects do not entirely follow this generative geometry, because the government defines a rectangular grid of plots before giving the land over to individual builders. Thus, it already imposes an industrial grid that is impossible to change. We will discuss later how this restrictive practice can be avoided.


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几何学和表明特征或多或少都与使用者的情绪有关。所以我们应该平衡结构中形式与模式的研究。在结构的研究之中，我们对个体进行测量，但是交互模式却无法测量，它们只能通过映射模式得以表达，同时它们也需要进行较多的高品质研究。如果想要理解某种模式，我们需要先了解各个关系之中的比重。我们相信城市是一个有机体，这不仅仅是因为它有着有机的结构体系，还因为整个结构和使用者之间有着复杂的联系。以下则是我们需要解决的关键概念元素：

• 1、如果在没有自然元素的环境之中，人们从心理上会变得敏感且充满敌意，因为人们从基因里就带有亲近自然的特征。城市需要和自然相互融合，而不是取而代之。
• 2、我们常常通过植物的几何结构来建立其中的联系，因此有的几何结构更能够表达与人类精神上的关联。人们会对一些结合有复杂自然几何图像的建筑环境感到舒适。
• 3、人们热爱自己的住所和邻里。这说明，环境的直接形式必须满足精神需求，而非工业特征。
• 4、工业材料和类型会对建筑环境起到反作用。对于无法给人们的精神带来正能量的表面与形式，人们会自然地从心理上产生对抗的感受，这种对抗的感受其实来源于表面与材料自身，就算不是对抗，那么也至少是一种冷漠的情绪。而材料和类型的使用通常来源于当时的建筑技术和经济背景，那么最终的结果是，人们会认为建筑环境的构成无法避免。
• 5、传统村落与城市的特征并不过时。这种特征能够连接场地与当地人民，因此需要构建整个城市地区。
  

Geometry and surface qualities either help or hinder an emotional connection with the human beings who use them. We should balance the study of structure with the study of form and pattern. In the study of structure, we measure and weigh things. Patterns of interaction cannot be measured or weighed, however: they must be mapped, and they have to do more with quality. To understand a pattern we must map a configuration of relationships. We believe in the concept of the city as an organism, not only in the sense that it tries to develop an organic structure, but also because of the complex relationship this structure establishes with the organizational patterns of its users. Here is a list of some key concepts that we need to work with:

• 1. People become psychologically sick and hostile in an environment devoid of nature. Biophilia is innate in our genes. Urban quarters need to blend with and not replace natural habitats.
• 2. We connect to plants through their geometrical structure, thus some geometries are more connective to the human spirit than others. We feel comfortable with a built environment that incorporates complex natural geometry showing an ordered hierarchy of subdivisions.
• 3. Residents should love their homes and neighborhoods. That means that the form of the immediate built environment must be spiritual and not industrial.
• 4. Industrial materials and typologies generate hatred for the built environment. We grow hostile to surfaces and forms that do not nourish us spiritually, because we feel their rejection of our humanity. If not hatred, they often generate a kind of indifference that might actually be worse for human communities. The use of these materials and typologies has commonly been presented as dictated by the nature of building technology and the economic realities of the day. The result is that people often take for granted the unavoidable alien character of a built environment that delivers quantity without meaningful qualities.
• 5. The sacred character of traditional villages and urban quarters cannot be dismissed as outmoded nonsense (as is done nowadays). This is the only quality that connects a village on the large scale to people, hence indirectly to each other. We need to build it into the urban quarter.
  

Image © Leonardo Finotti

环绕神圣空间的社会化城镇

要定义任何场所的神圣空间都不是一件容易的事情，那么久更不要说重新设计平面布局了。我们需要了解传统聚落中人们的活动模式，并且了解哪些活动事项更为重要。一般来讲，当地人们聚集在一起的地方可能是个室内空间，但是它们通常也是城市空间的组成元素（Gehl, 1996; Salingaros & Pagliardini, 2016）。人们可以适当地让城市空间连接自然环境与人，而这些场所则需要具有社会凝聚力。

“神圣”的定义其实很简单，如果人们把某样东西的内在价值放在其物质结构之上，那么这个东西就是神圣的。人们甚至会愿意保护这样东西不受到破坏。 是不是每个个体都能有这样的感受呢？如果某个地方对于整个社区十分有意义，那么整个社区的人是否能够聚集起来而保护这个场所呢？在古时候，一棵古树、一块巨石、一片高地、一条河流就可以是神圣场所，人们会愿意为它而奋斗，当时的人类社会也围绕着这些空间而建造，同时更加保留了神圣的内涵。但当代的我们似乎有些不幸，这项传统似乎逐步开始遗失。

Societies built towns around sacred spaces
It is not easy to identify the sacred structure of any settlement, let alone plan for it in a new one. We need to look at the patterns of human activity in traditional settlements, and ask which activity nodes are valued above all others. Usually, it is where local residents come together to interact. Those nodes (if they are present at all) could be interior, but very often they are elements of urban space (Gehl, 1996; Salingaros & Pagliardini, 2016). People can connect to plants and to other people at the same time in properly designed (configured) urban spaces. Those places are then responsible for the societal cohesion of the neighborhood.
Something is “sacred” if we attribute to it a value above and beyond its material structure. A good rule is to ask if we are willing to fight to protect it from damage or destruction. Do many persons, some necessarily strangers, feel the same way about this? Do we consider a place to have meaning for the community as a whole so that a group of people will actually come together to protect this particular object or site? In ancient societies, an old tree, a large rock, prominent high ground, a particular stream or spring could be considered sacred (in the deepest religious sense), and thus protected from damage. Those societies built towns around sacred spaces, and endowed parts of what they built with a sacred meaning. Today, that quality is unfortunately dismissed as anachronistic.


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举例来说，最为古老的社会节点是水体、礼拜场所、聚会场所、儿童游乐场等等。以教堂为例，这就是个真正意义上的神圣空间，因此一般建造于社区的中央位置，并且起到了很好的社区凝聚力的作用。在宗教聚会中，信徒们聚集于此，这是一种具有社会凝聚力的行为，同时也是一种宗教行为。而诸如咖啡厅等与宗教无关的聚会场所，一般会建造在传统村落的教堂之前，因为对于那些无宗教信仰的人士而言，咖啡厅也可以成为聚会场所。

神圣建筑的另一个节点是中央广场，晚上的时候，人们会在这里举办各项活动，因此广场也会社区带来了凝聚力价值。我们现在说到的“神圣”其实是指这些功能空间所具有的聚集能力，我们认为这是一种自然的特性，其不同的表现形式只是因为连接程度的区别。中央广场就是个具有社会凝聚力的场所，而教堂则在精神层面将人们连接起来。

在某些情况下，无宗教社会成功地取代了“神圣空间”，让它们的社会彼此相连。举例来说，“人民之家”或者是“工人俱乐部”在社区中同样具有凝聚力，而对于高收入的郊区社区，道理也是一样，只是这些地区对于汽车的使用十分依赖。如果没有神圣空间，那么也没有公共聚会场所。与开发商的目的相反，高收入郊区社区中所附带的俱乐部和游泳池等公共空间其实并没有这一功能。城市几何并没有在居民之间建立共同社会价值，从而导致了社会化的不足。

For example, the oldest social nodes are a water source (community tap or well), place of worship (Church or Temple), gathering place (cafe/bar for men), children’s playground, etc. In the case of a Church, we do have a genuinely sacred structure, and it is most often built in the original geographic center of a settlement. It serves the cohesive function of community: “ecclesia” is the gathering together of common worshippers, which is just as much a cohesive social act as it is a purely religious act. It is no coincidence that the non-religious gathering place, the coffeehouse, is often situated in front of the Church in a traditional village. The coffeehouse substitutes as an alternative gathering place for those who do not subscribe to the sacred meaning of the local religion.
Another node of the sacred structure is the central plaza or open square, which, in temperate climates, accommodates social life in the evenings. The Latin tradition of the evening walk around the central square establishes a value for the plaza in the social cohesion of the community. What we refer to as “sacred structure” in this paper refers to ALL of these cohesive functions. We see cohesion as a natural device, and interpret its various manifestations as simply differing degrees of connectivity on overlapping channels. A central square is a place for social cohesion, whereas a church connects its worshippers to the highest level, which is their creator.
Non-religious societies in some cases successfully substituted secular “sacred spaces” to hold their societies together. For example, communist countries built the “House of the People” or “Workers Club”, which took the role of a gathering place for at least part of the community. In upper-income suburbs (for example, in gated communities) the same forces apply, but are unresolved because of total automobile dependence. There is no sacred space, no common meeting point and place of social interaction. Contrary to the intent of developers who build them, a clubhouse and community swimming pool in high-income suburban clusters do not serve this function. The urban geometry never establishes a common social value among the residents, hence leads to a serious lack of socialization.


Image © Lara Becerra

我们所描述的神圣场所并不在现代城市建设的范畴之中（Duany等., 2000），我们现在看到的只是类似复制品而已，并没有其他的文化含义，因此，整个社区意识的下降也导致了社会异化的增长，当然，人们也都从来没有意识到社会住房结构也需要满足精神需求。但是，神圣感是所有传统住宅中的固有元素，并且独立于历史发展。比如人们不愿意居住在工业宿舍之中，因为这会让人们从内心中产生抗拒。

当人无法融入进建筑，而建筑的形象也不属于某一个人时，人们对它就不会有归属感，甚至会产生敌意。此类建造于上世纪60年代的建筑有着很明确的目的，它们不会带来大规模的情感共鸣，在多层住宅区建造“商业街”和幼儿园是一种很荒谬的做法。硬地广场没有情感的特征，这只会让人们产生敌对的感受。


聚集场所的重要作用

Christopher Alexander及其合作伙伴在墨西哥建造了社会住房（Alexander等., 1985）。这是在施工院落旁边建造的原型住宅，它也满足了周边社区的需求。这可以成为一个神圣的空间，建筑自身是成功的项目，但是施工院落则并非如此。政府没有对其进行适当的后期维护，同时也没有改变其用地性质。因此这个院落便被遗弃了，包含其中一些独立的住宅。政府没有成功地让其成为聚集场所，因此也不存在神圣的价值意义。

The sacred place that we are describing is absent from contemporary urban construction (Duany et al., 2000). We see superficial copies created without any understanding of their deep cultural meaning. Consequently, a dramatic decline in the sense of community leads to a dramatic increase in social alienation. Certainly both the Right and the Left have never recognized the need for spirituality in the fabric of social housing. Nevertheless, a sense of the sacred is inherent in all traditional housing (in some places more, in some places less) independently of their origin. By contrast, military/industrial dormitories are not only rejected by their inhabitants, but are hated because no one can connect with their form and image.
A human being cannot truly belong to those buildings, nor can the image of such a building belong emotionally to a human being, and thus people turn to hating them and eventually destroying them. Buildings of this type, built in the 1960s with the very best of intentions, abound around the world. They do not catalyze an emotional attachment to the large scale. Schemes to have “shopping streets” and kindergartens (as a substitute for sacred space) on the fifth floor of high-rise block housing proved ridiculous. Hard concrete plazas tend to be disconnecting and hostile, generating a feeling of anger instead of connectivity.

Gathering places are important
Christopher Alexander and his collaborators built social housing in Mexicali, Mexico (Alexander et al., 1985). A prototype house cluster was built around a builder’s yard that served the construction needs of the neighborhood. That could have served as the sacred space. Whereas the houses themselves were a tremendous success (and survive with their original owners years afterwards), the builder’s yard was not. The government failed to maintain it, yet did not give it over to another community or private use. It was abandoned, and its connections to the individual houses sealed off by the owners. The government never helped it to become a gathering place. No effort was made to endow a sacred value to the builder’s yard.


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“神圣”的定义较为广泛，能够涵盖到公共空间的秩序规范，其中也包括从私人到公共的各种社会关系。传统村落提升到了社区的水平，但并不是城市文化的水平。聚集场所十分重要，不仅仅是因为它们具有社区凝聚力，而是在不同的聚集场所能够容纳不同类型的社会关系，公共关系与定义社会距离及其凝聚力的关系一样都很重要。一般来说，与城市相关的凝聚力通过场所精神而得以展现。而场所感是所谓的“社会资本”的展现。它们是一种社会关系，而不仅仅是容纳社会关系的空间。

The category of “the sacred” is being defined broadly enough to encompass the normative order of civic spaces, and it is important to include the full spectrum of social relations from the private, to the communal (parochial), to the public (civic). Traditional villages rise to the level of the communal, but NOT to the level of civic culture. Gathering places are important, not simply because they encourage communal cohesion (which tends to be based on homogeneity), but because the range of different types of gathering places allows for a range of different kinds of social relations. Relations in public have as much to do with defining social distance as with cohesion. Often, the cohesion associated with urbanism is mediated only by the sharing of a common sense of place. Places are, in a sense, an embodiment of what we call “social capital”. They ARE social relationships, not just containers or facilitators of social relationships.


© Eleazar Cuadros

在这个讨论中去强调神圣也许有些矛盾，在第三世界，社会住房的选区常常成为另一种民主化的运动，这种现象甚至比美国还要多一些。尤其是在全球化程度较高的城市之中，我们并不希望让其听起来好像是在推动传统村落模式的发展。许多场所确实需要物化的“神圣”，但这并不是这个词语的通常作用。聚集场所十分重要，但是相较于它们的功能空间，它们的结构以及与社会的关系要复杂许多。我们需要研究传统城市、传统村落、居住场所之间的交互关系，但是这些都根据阶级而划分。其交互模式各不相同，不仅仅只是简单地关乎社会凝聚力。

There may be a problem with emphasizing the sacred in this discussion. In the third world even more than in places like the USA, the constituencies for social housing are often caught up in some form or another of democratization movement. Particularly in the global cities of the world, we don’t wish to make it sound as if we are promoting a return to the condition of a kind of tribalism (which is the way traditional villages can seem). Places do require materialization of the “sacred”, but not in the common usage of the word. Gathering places are important, but their structure (and their relationship to the social structure) is more complex than just acting as the containers or opportunities for people to bond. We need to look at the patterns of interaction in traditional cities as well as tribal villages and settlements that are homogeneous by class. Those patterns of interaction are structurally varied and are not simply about communal cohesion.


Image © Juan Pablo Pardo

总结来说，一个场所必须通过某种方式来建立起神圣的场所，从而和使用者产生情感共鸣，而这种神圣的场所也能够促进更加高层次的空间秩序，这些秩序包含有三个主要特征，（a）它具有形成共同体的凝聚力；（b）它建立在一个群体的共同概念之上，而非个人的单独意识；（c）它对于整个社区，亦或是大部分的居民都有神圣且共通的物理结构，它们彼此相连着。这些原则构成了一种社区意识，这种社区意识能够让人们在即便困难的时候也能够保存有凝聚力。

本文最初来源于N.A.S.，是2006年巴西以及伊比利亚-美国社会住房大会（Brazilian and Ibero-American Congress on Social Housing）的主要内容。

In conclusion, a settlement must, above all else, establish a sacred structure by some means, so as to connect emotionally with its residents. Sacred structure also helps people to connect to a higher order. This higher order encompasses three functional features: (a) it is used as a cohesive means to form community; (b) it is constructed upon the cooperation of the discourses of a group of people and is not the unilateral decision of an individual; and (c) it is loaded with a powerful meaning for the community. If most or all residents connect with the physical sacred structure, then they connect indirectly with each other. This simple principle establishes a sense of community, which survives the difficult conditions of life. It keeps forces oriented towards maintaining the physical structure of the community, instead of turning them against the physical structure in those cases when it is not valued.
Originally presented by N.A.S. as a keynote address to the Brazilian and Ibero-American Congress on Social Housing, Florianópolis, Brazil, 2006.


Bibliography

• Christopher Alexander (2001-2005) The Nature of Order: Books One to Four (Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, California).
• Christopher Alexander, Howard Davis, Julio Martinez & Donald Corner (1985) The Production of Houses (Oxford University Press, New York).
• Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk & Jeff Speck (2000, 2010) Suburban Nation (North Point Press, New York).
• Jan Gehl (1996) Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space (Arkitektens Forlag, Copenhagen, Denmark).
• Stephen R. Kellert, Judith Heerwagen & Martin Mador, Editors (2008) Biophilic Design: the Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life (John Wiley, New York).
• Nikos A. Salingaros (2006, 2014) A Theory of Architecture (Sustasis Press, Portland, Oregon and Vajra Books, Kathmandu, Nepal).
• Nikos A. Salingaros (2013) Unified Architectural Theory: Form, Language, Complexity (Sustasis Press, Portland, Oregon and Vajra Books, Kathmandu, Nepal).  Chapter 10 published in ArchDaily, 26 April, 2015. https://www.archdaily.com/623966/unified-architectural-theory-chapter-10/
• Nikos A. Salingaros (2015) Biophilia and Healing Environments, (OfftheCommonBooks, Amherst, Massachusetts), available free online from Terrapin Bright Green LLC, New York. https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/report/biophilia-healing-environments/
• Nikos A. Salingaros & Pietro Pagliardini (2016) “Geometry and life of urban space”, Chapter in: Back to the Sense of the City, 11th Virtual City & Territory International Monograph Book, Centre of Land Policy and Valuations (Centre de Política de Sòl i Valoracions), Barcelona, Spain, 2016, pages 13-31. https://upcommons.upc.edu/bitstream/handle/2117/90890/CH00_CONTENTS%20INTRO_geometry.pdf