© Andrew Sides [Flickr], under license CC BY-NC 2.0. ImageVilla Savoye, designed by Le Corbusier and completed in 1929

神经科学对现代建筑方法的启示
What Neuroscience Says About Modern Architecture Approach

由专筑网邢子，小R编译

本文原载于”Common Edge”，标题为《现代建筑的心理障碍》

现代建筑如何产生？我们如何从有复杂装饰和细节的建筑风格，迅速发展到经常是大面积空白和缺少细节的建筑风格？为什么建筑的外观和感觉在20世纪初发生了如此巨大的变化？从历史上看，现代主义是从第一次世界大战的物质、道德和精神残骸中产生的理想主义冲动，虽然也有其他因素的作用，但这种解释显然是正确的，但是并没有完全说明问题。

神经科学的最新进展指出了另一个重要因素：现代建筑看起来与过去的建筑如此不同的原因之一是20世纪的创始人从字面上没有以“典型”的方式看待世界，因为他们无法这样做。他们要么被战争的创伤改变，要么像勒柯布西耶一样，有一种遗传性的大脑障碍。虽然他们对“好设计”的定义，例如一个新世界，一个干净的板块，反映了他们的天赋、野心和动力，但他们的实施措施也反映了他们大脑的特殊障碍。

近年来，一些作家和医生将现代主义之父，瑞士法国建筑师勒柯布西耶（1887-1965）描述为自闭症患者。批评家和精神病学家Anthony Daniels和传记作家Nicholas Fox Weber等作家都得出结论，认为这位瑞士法国建筑师符合自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的诊断标准。他们记录了他的社交沟通障碍、重复性行为、异常固执（包括对混凝土的迷恋）以及对他人明显缺乏兴趣等症状。

Weber在《勒柯布西耶：一生》（Le Corbusier. A Life）（Knopf 2008）一书中写道：“尽管勒柯布西耶是个天才，但他对人类生存的某些方面完全不敏感。他对自己的观察方式的狂热信念使他对人们在日常生活中保留最珍视的东西（包括传统建筑）的愿望视而不见。”

对自闭症患者进行眼球追踪可以帮助我们理解为什么勒柯布西耶对他人的观点视而不见，他无法正常处理视觉刺激，而自闭症的诊断也可以帮助我们更好地理解为什么他的建筑会变成这样。这一点相当重要，因为事实证明，自闭症患者往往不仅与社会关系作斗争，而且还与被称为hyperarousal的视觉过载作斗争。因此，勒-柯布西耶将建于20世纪30年代初的巴黎附近的萨伏伊别墅精简到让人觉得它是一个踩着高跷的盒子，而不是它应有的样子——一对富有夫妇的乡村度假地。难怪他在20年后完成的日本东京国立西方艺术博物馆会有如此多的空白混凝土。勒柯布西耶的设计很可能是对他的非典型大脑的一种反应：他努力限制刺激以平息大脑的混乱。

This article was originally published on Common Edge as "The Mental Disorders that Gave Us Modern Architecture".
How did modern architecture happen? How did we evolve so quickly from architecture that had ornament and detail, to buildings that were often blank and devoid of detail? Why did the look and feel of buildings shift so dramatically in the early 20th century? History holds that modernism was the idealistic impulse that emerged out of the physical, moral and spiritual wreckage of the First World War. While there were other factors at work as well, this explanation, though undoubtedly true, tells an incomplete picture.
Recent advances in neuroscience point to another important factor: one reason modern architecture looked so different than past constructions was because its key 20th-century founders literally didn’t see the world in a “typical” fashion. They couldn’t. Their brains had been either physically altered by the trauma of war or, like Le Corbusier, they had a genetic brain disorder. And while their recommendations for “good design”—a new world, a clean slate—certainly reflected their talent, ambition, and drive, their remedies also reflected their brains’ specific disorders.
In recent years, several authors and physicians have described the father of modernism, Le Corbusier (1887-1965), the Swiss-French architect, as autistic. Writers, such as the critic and psychiatrist Anthony Daniels, and the biographer Nicholas Fox Weber, have come to the conclusion that the Swiss-French architect met the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). They’ve chronicled his impaired social communications, repetitive behaviors, abnormal fixations (including a fascination with concrete), and apparent absence of interest in others.
“For all his genius, Le Corbusier remained completely insensitive to certain aspects of human existence,” Weber writes in Le Corbusier: A Life (Knopf 2008). “His fervent faith in his own way of seeing blinded him to the wish of people to retain what they most cherish (including traditional buildings) in their everyday lives.
Eye tracking people with autism can help us understand why Le Corbusier remained blind to others’ views—he literally couldn’t process visual stimuli normally. And the autism diagnosis can also help us better understand why his architecture turned out the way it did. This is quite important. For it turns out people on the spectrum often struggle not only with social relations but with visual overload referred to as hyperarousal. So, no surprise, then, that Le Corbusier would streamline Villa Savoye, built near Paris in the early 1930s (above, at left), to the point it suggests a box on stilts rather than what it was: a wealthy couple’s country retreat. No wonder his National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, Japan, completed some two decades later (at right) would feature so much blank concrete. Le Corbusier’s designs are a likely response to his atypical brain; he was striving to limit stimulation, wrestling to calm a brain abuzz.


Courtesy of Ann Sussman

患有某些脑部疾病的人，包括ASD，对视觉刺激的反应方式非常独特。在上面的图片中，左边我们看到的是一个“典型”的大脑在看一只小猫；右边是一个患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的大脑。眼球追踪工具测量无意识和有意识的眼球运动，在这种情况下，在人们看得最多的地方创造一个暗影。这些图像显示了一个典型的受试者如何直接关注眼睛和脸部的中心区域，而ASD的大脑采取相反的方法，几乎完全避开眼睛和脸部中心区域，这些倾向会影响看待建筑物的方式。

People with certain brain disorders, including ASD, respond to visual stimuli in a very distinct fashion. In the pictures above, at left we see a “typical” brain looking at a kitten; at right, one with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Eye tracking tools measure unconscious and conscious eye movements, and in this instance, create a dark shadow where people look most. These images show how a typical viewer focuses directly on the eyes and central area of the face, while a brain on the spectrum taking an opposing approach, avoids the eyes and central face almost entirely. These tendencies spill over to how different brains take in buildings:


Courtesy of Ann Sussman

自闭症患者（右图）是如何避开窗户等细节的（这可能暗示着眼睛），而典型的大脑会本能地直奔窗户而去且没有意识到这一点。在上面的图像中，眼球追踪数据创建了“热点图”在受试者看的最多的地方更加发红）。

21世纪现在被称为“生物学时代”的时候，我们有了新的解释，为什么有ASD的人喜欢简化一个场景，他们有太多的大脑连接（或者说增生）。这种超负荷让他们在一天中难以调节情绪或保持自己的稳定。勒柯布西耶写到讨厌巴黎人行道上拥挤的喧嚣，这是有原因的。“我们必须杀死街道。”他在《走向新建筑》（1931）中说道。他对未来城市的憧憬，以孤立的塔楼、高速公路和完全看不到人为特色。从自闭症患者的角度来看，这种清理过的、不那么细致的场景更容易被接受，这些也符合大脑障碍症的特点。

同样重要的是，已退休的医学博士Anthony Daniels认为，柯布是在世界历史上一个极富破坏性的时期，即一战后的几年里崭露头角的，这使他有了独特的入世视角。

“我认为他的事业成功只有在第一次世界大战之后才有可能，可怕的混乱和对文明信心的丧失似乎是这些建筑的特点。”

第一次世界大战的影响对其他创始的现代建筑师也有相当重要的影响，且出于不同的个人原因。格罗皮乌斯（Walter Gropius，1883-1969年）在20世纪30年代为哈佛大学设计研究生院，并带来了现代课程，而密斯凡德罗（Ludwig Mies van der Rohe，1886-1969年）也为伊利诺伊理工大学做了同样的工作，他们很可能患有创伤后应激障碍（PTSD），或者说是在德军中的生活对大脑有所创伤，因为德军在四年的战争中失去了200多万人。

今天的创伤专家知道“身体会记录一切”，正如马萨诸塞州布鲁克莱恩创伤中心的创始人、世界著名的创伤后应激障碍专家Bessel van der Kolk博士说的那样，他在2014年出版了一本《纽约时报》同名畅销书。fMRI研究显示，长期和反复暴露在濒死体验中会改变大脑，实际上是缩小了大脑，幸存者失去了以正常或“神经典型”方式解释环境刺激的能力，与自闭症类似，这种障碍会严重影响他们理解和同情他人的能力。PTSD患者倾向于避免目光接触，而这是心理健康者常年寻求的情绪调节方式。

格罗皮乌斯的战争经历相当糟糕，他曾在西线受了重伤，并在一次飞行中幸存下来，而飞行员则被击毙。因此，当他在二十年后，在波士顿郊区建造自己的住宅时，在距离他看到军事行动的地方三千英里之外，他把建筑放在远离街道的一个偏远的山顶上。它的正面立面和整体形式是一个混凝土药箱，配有平顶、隐蔽的门和缝隙的窗户，因为这样便于射击。他家办公室的前窗，窗台离地面有四尺多高，因此从外面不可能看到他在里面，只有站起来才能看到外面（和一战时的战壕不一样）。一个战争老兵的大脑很可能会把过去和现实混在一起，从此挣扎着寻找安全感，他的大脑皮层下的恐惧的部分指挥着设计的一举一动。

同样，考虑到这种障碍，他对学生在设计过程中实行“从零开始”的指令，或者将建筑史视为完全无关紧要的东西，实际上是反射性的，因为对过去的回避是一种创伤后应激障碍的反应。“他晚上睡不着觉”，在一次参观他位于马萨诸塞州林肯市的家时，一位导览员说，他的家现在归当地一家非营利组织所有。失眠，也是可以一种可以推断的PTSD行为。

虽然密斯凡德罗并没有在前线，但他是年轻一代受到了毁灭性打击的德国男人中的一员。1880-1899年出生的德国男性中有13%的人在48个月内死亡，数百万人受伤。根据《精神障碍诊断统计手册》第5版，目睹朋友和同伴的死亡也会导致PTSD，而创伤后应激障碍远比最初想象的要容易患上。这种病症直到1980年才进入《精神障碍诊断与统计手册》，即DSM，（在创始人摩登教父去世十年后），但包括范德科克在内的专家们，现在把它称为“一种无声的流行病”。

为什么20世纪给我们带来现代建筑的人都有脑外伤和疾病呢？首先，这些信息重构了我们对现代建筑是如何产生的理解。我们现在可以更好地理解，至少部分地理解为什么现代建筑与老建筑或传统建筑看起来如此不同：因为这些建筑来自情绪受损与非典型的“固执”情绪的人，他们生活在一个受伤的世界，想要埋葬过去，同时在想要从中获利的经济结构愿意的怂恿下，因此提出了新的建筑方法。

认知科学家喜欢说“定势驱动探索”，无论我们的大脑是引导我们的眼睛看广告还是看建筑，这句话都是正确的。我们的大脑无意识地让我们看什么，我们就会有意识地关注什么。通过生物统计学，我们可以历史上第一次“看到”患有自闭症和创伤后应激障碍等脑部疾病的人是如何不定势或不规范地接受现实的。因此，我们也可以得出结论，不能要求有这些或许有障碍的建筑师提供人们需要看到的、感觉到的、处于最佳状态的建筑形式。

此外，考虑人们在现代建筑和城市环境周围经常感受到的疏离感，这些对密切反映出患有创伤后应激障碍和ASD的人经常对他人的疏远也很有启示意义。一旦联系起来，这一切都很有意义，情绪受损的人无法设计出促进关系的建筑。

然而，这里所有的基础神经科学都暗示了另外一些新的、令人兴奋的和积极的东西——21世纪建筑的前进之路。我们的大脑是36亿年进化的产物，就像接受无意识的大脑活动指导我们的意识行为这一事实一样，这个新方向有了框架。承认人类的感知是关系性的，符合社会物种的特点，这就为促进人类健康和社会福利的架构充实了新的内容。

正如乔布斯曾经说过的那样，“一个人对人类体验的理解越广泛，设计就会越好”。事实上，如果这一指导原则能够引领苹果公司取得成功，那么，它作为构建人类居住的基础，能起到什么作用？

Notice how a person on the autism spectrum, at right, avoids details like windows (which might suggest eyes) while a typical brain instinctively goes straight for them, without conscious awareness. (In the images above, the eye-tracking data creates “heat maps” which glow reddest where viewers look most.)
In the Age of Biology, as the 21st century is now dubbed, we have new explanations of why people with ASD like to simplify a scene; they literally have too many brain connections (or hyperplasticity). This overload leaves them struggling to emotionally regulate or simply keep themselves stable during the day. There’s a good reason why Le Corbusier wrote about hating the hubbub of crowded Parisian sidewalks. “We must kill the street,“ he extorts in Towards a New Architecture (1931). His vision of the city of the future features isolated towers, highways and no people in view at all; from an autistic perspective, this cleaned-up, less detailed vision is simply easier to take in. Given the characteristics of the disorder, it becomes almost predictable.
Perhaps as significantly, Corbu came to prominence at an extremely disruptive time in world history, the years after WWI, which gave him a unique entry, Anthony Daniels, the retired MD, argues:
“I think his career would only have been possible in the wake of the First World War, with its terrible dislocation and loss of confidence in the civilization of which it seemed to be the culminating event.”
The impact of World War I turns out to be quite significant for other founding modern architects, too—for different personal reasons. Both Walter Gropius (1883-1969), who brought the modern curriculum to Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in the 1930s, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) who did the same for the Illinois Institute of Technology, likely suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or brain damage from surviving years of military conscription in the German Army which lost more than two million men in the four-year conflict.
Today’s trauma specialists know “the body keeps the score,” as Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, the founder of the Trauma Center of Brookline MA and world-renown PTSD expert, is fond of saying. (He published a New York Times best-selling book of the same title in 2014.) Prolonged and repeated exposure to near-death experiences change the brain, actually shrinking it, fMRI research shows. Survivors lose the ability to interpret environmental stimuli in a normal or “neurotypical” way and, similarly to autism, the disorder can significantly compromise their ability to understand and empathize with others. PTSD sufferers tend to avoid eye contact, something the mentally healthy perennially seek for emotional regulation.
Gropius’s war experiences were particularly horrific; seriously wounded on the Western Front, he also survived a plane flight where the pilot had been shot dead. So, when he built his own home in a Boston suburb, (in Lincoln, MA, 1938) two decades later, and three thousand miles away from where he saw military action, he put the building on a remote hilltop far from the street. Its front façade and overall form suggest a concrete pill box or duck blind, complete with flat roof, hidden door and slit windows, the better to shoot from. His home office has a front window with a sill more than four feet off the floor—no one could possibly see him inside from outside and he could only see out when standing up (not unlike a WWI trench). The brain of a war veteran may forever mix past with present, struggling to find safety ever after; the terrorized subcortical parts of his brain, stuck at the Front, directing every move of the design.
Again, given the disorder, his directive to students to “start from zero” in their design process, or his dismissal of architectural history as entirely irrelevant, becomes effectively reflexive, since avoidance of the past is a PTSD response. “He couldn’t sleep at night,” a docent says on a recent tour of his Lincoln, Massachusetts home, now owned by a local non-profit; sleeplessness, too, is predictable PTSD behavior.
While the conscript who became Mies van der Rohe did not see action at the Front, he was a member of the young generation of German men devastated by it. Thirteen percent of German males born between 1880-1899 would die within 48 months; millions would be wounded. Witnessing the death of friends and peers also causes PTSD, according to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, v 5. PTSD is far easier to suffer from than initially thought. The malady didn’t enter the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM, until 1980, (a decade after the founding moderns fathers’ passing) but experts including Van der Kolk, refer to it now as “a silent epidemic.”
Why should it matter that the people who gave us modern architecture in the 20th century had traumatic brain damage and disorders? For one, the information reframes our understanding of how modern architecture came to be. We can now better understand, at least in part, why modern buildings look so different than older or traditional ones: relationally-compromised people with atypical “fixations” and emotional regulation came up with the architectural approach, abetted by a wounded world rushing to bury the past and an economic power structure all-too-willing to profit from it.
Cognitive scientists are fond of saying “fixations drive exploration” and this statement is true whether our brains are directing our eyes to look at ads or architecture; what our brains get us to look at (or fixate on) unconsciously is what we’ll focus on consciously; with biometrics we can “see” for the first time in history how people with brain disorders like autism and PTSD don’t fixate or take in reality in a normative way. We can also conclude, therefore, that architects with these disorders couldn’t be called upon to provide the template for the buildings people need to see, to feel and be at their best.
It is also revealing to consider how the detachment people often feel around modern buildings and urban settings closely mirrors the disconnect people with PTSD and ASD often have towards others. It all makes a great deal of sense once you think about it: people who are relationally compromised can’t come up with an architecture that promotes relationships.
And yet all of the underlying neuroscience here suggests something else new, exciting and positive—the path forward for architecture in the 21st century. Understanding that our brain is an artifact of 3.6 billion years of evolution frames this new direction, as is accepting the truth that unconscious brain activity directs our conscious behavior. Acknowledging that human perception is relational, befitting a social species, fills out this new framework for an architecture that promotes human health and social welfare.
As Steve Jobs once said, “The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” Indeed, if that guiding principle could lead Apple to stratospheric success, imagine what it could do as the foundation for building human habitats?