Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi. ImageImage via Wikimedia


In Progress_School Library Gando / Kere Architecture

现代建筑美学是什么——我们是否畏惧它？
What is Beauty in Architecture Today - and Are We Afraid of it?

由专筑网王雪纯，李韧编译

意大利那不勒斯新成立了一所名为“建筑美学”的建筑学校，由前伯克利教授Christopher Alexander的学生管理。学校的名字刻意提及了这位现代建筑师很少使用的词汇，而Alexander却认为这个词体现了事物的自然顺序。

对于那些追随科学的人来说，美学这个词并不陌生，特别是在进化生物学家眼中，由于鸟类、蛙类和其他有机体似乎都具有利于繁衍的内在美感。但动物怎么会有“审美”呢？耶鲁鸟类学家David Prum认为，雄性火焰鸟等生物会通过一种精心编排的仪式来吸引雌性，这种仪式是通过使用色彩鲜艳的羽毛在地上摆放成环状来达到交配的目的。David将这个过程描述为“随缘”，它并不像达尔文在 《物种起源》 中解释的进化过程那样需要与自然选择的某些功能联系在一起。尽管生物学家对此持怀疑态度，但David Prum的理论开始占据主导地位，启发其他人开始研究美在自然界中的作用。《纽约时报》杂志最近刊登了一篇关于这些理论的文章。

There is a new school of architecture in Naples called “Building Beauty,” run by disciples of the former Berkeley professor Christopher Alexander. The name contains a deliberate reference to a word seldom used by establishment architects today—a word that Alexander believes embodies the natural order of things.
For those who follow science, the word beauty is also appearing frequently, particularly among evolutionary biologists, because birds, frogs, and other organisms seem to have a built-in aesthetic sense that facilitates procreation. How can animals have an “aesthetic”? Yale ornithologist David Prum believes that creatures such as the male flame bowerbird attract females with an elaborate ritual that uses its brilliantly colored feathers and a kind of mating ring on the ground that it has constructed specifically for the purpose. He describes the process as “arbitrary” rather than linked to some function that was required for natural selection, the evolutionary process that Charles Darwin explained in his book On the Origin of Species. And despite some skepticism among biologists, Prum’s theory is beginning to take hold, prompting others to investigate the role of beauty in the natural world. A recent article in the New York Times Magazine had a cover story about his work.


Santa Maria Novella / Leon Battista Alberti. ImageImage via Wikimedia

在不断扩展的认知科学领域中，人们对所谓的“神经美学”也产生了浓厚的兴趣。神经科学家开始长期关注艺术、音乐和建筑等领域，因为他们认为，人们通过感官探索大脑理解世界的能力时，会将环境作为思维过程的一部分。有些人认为，正如Prum所说的那样，环境之美与人类之美对于智人的生存和健康是必要的，就像美对那些动物很重要一样。此外，审美与我们的大脑紧密相连。正如我们一直被教导的那样，美不在“旁观者的眼中”。John Onians出版了一本有说服力的著作《欧洲艺术：神经元艺术史》，概述了从旧石器时代到现代，在各种文化和环境中，艺术的变化如何反映出人们的神经网络和认知模式发展的过程。

令人吃惊的是，Leon Battista Alberti认为装饰品这种多余的东西很有必要“添加”到建筑物中，以增强其美感。动物的有机装饰有助于增添它们对于配偶的吸引力，即使它会变得更加容易被天敌察觉。河豚甚至在其栖息地的沙底摆出精致的环状物来吸引配偶，用最精细的设计产生最佳效果。神经科学已经证明，图案、纹理和边缘清晰度提供了允许人类与环境和谐共处的信息。

Alexander在他的专题论文“有序的自然”中将他的最新发现与进化生物学联系起来，讨论了生物圈中美的必要性。进化使我们能够生存和繁荣，并能对美丽的自然事物采取特定的偏好。现在，人们已经认识到“本能”这一发展理念，即热爱生命的天性。

意大利的某期刊将这些想法融合在一起。意大利神经科学家Vittorio Gallese与著名的建筑师和教育家Juhani Pallasmaa一起组织了一次国际上志同道合的科学家和设计师之间的合作，其中许多人支持具体认知理论。如果首要原因是任何迹象，那么艺术、科学和设计的融合将改变我们对设计环境的看法。在他的新书《Object to Experience》中，Harry Francis Mallgrave倡议设计师像他们的客户一样接受建筑体验，并放弃一直以来对形式和物体品质的痴迷。

There is likewise an intense interest in what is called “neuroaesthetics” in the expanding field of cognitive science. Art, music, and architecture are getting some long-due attention from neuroscientists as they probe the brain’s capacity to understand the world through the senses, using the environment as a part of the thinking process. Some believe, as Prum does, that beauty in the environment, and among humans, is necessary for the survival and health of Homo sapiens, just as it is among other members of the animal kingdom. Moreover, aesthetic appreciation of beauty is hard-wired into our brains. It is not in “the eye of the beholder,” as we have long been taught. John Onians has published a persuasive book, European Art: A Neuroarthistory, that outlines the ways in which art has reflected cognitive patterns and evolving neural webs in the brains of people from various cultures and environments, from the Paleolithic period to the modern era.
Even more startling is the fact that ornament, the superfluous thing that Leon Battista Alberti said could be “added” to a building to enhance its beauty, is just as necessary. Animals have organic ornament that contributes to their beauty and desirability as mates, even though it may increase their visibility as prey. Pufferfish even construct elaborate rings in the sandy bottom of their habitat to attract mates, and the most elaborate designs produce the best results. Neuroscience has proved that patterns, textures, and edge articulation provide needed cues that allow humans to negotiate their environment.
In his monumental four-volume treatise The Nature of Order, Alexander linked some of the recent findings in evolutionary biology to architecture in discussing the necessity for beauty in the biosphere. Evolutionary development allowed us to survive and flourish precisely by adopting certain specific preferences for beautiful natural things. This is now being recognized in the developing discipline of “biophilia,” or the love of living things and their structures.
A fascinating new Italian journal, Intertwining, brings many of these ideas together. The Italian neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese has joined with the noted architect and educator Juhani Pallasmaa to initiate collaborations between like-minded scientists and designers around the world, many of whom support the theory of embodied cognition. If the first issue is any indication, this melding of art, science, and design will change the way we look at the designed environment. In his new book, From Object to Experience, Harry Francis Mallgrave urges designers to embrace the experience of architecture as their users do and abandon the longstanding obsession with form and object qualities.


Stepwell in India. ImageCourtesy of Flickr User Aqua Mechanical

他准确地提问为什么在当代实践的设计中，社会维度基本被遗忘：“对于人类的幸福和爱的表达，没有什么比社会化更重要了。艺术表达只是社会发展踏脚石的一种表现形式。我们的仪式、手势和演出，我们对美的培养，和社区意识的偏爱，都与我们的社会风气有关。”与20世纪中叶社会科学家所认为的相反，人类在所有文化中都会对社会所滋养的美丽产生共同的美感。

生物学家和大脑研究人员的一个有趣的发现是，特定的环境特征有助于动物发展“审美”偏好。热带雨林中的生物有着色彩缤纷的特征，有些动物会使用绿色作为伪装，而沙漠生物则在皮肤或外层产生大地色调和较浅的颜色。同样，所有传统的文物和民间艺术，包括建筑，都采用了基于生产者所处的特定环境的材料和颜色。只有过去一个世纪的建筑才放弃了这些区域特征，甚至是所谓的“批判性”区域主义。 2016年在斯德哥尔摩成立的一个新研究小组Place Science，研发了一个程序，其利用了商业及高校研究人员的工具，提供人类如何体验地方感的数据。

He correctly asks why the social dimension of design has been largely forgotten in contemporary practice: “Nothing is more important to human happiness and the expression of love than our socialization. Artistic expression is but a manifestation of this stepping stone of its development. Our penchant for ritualization, gestures and play, our cultivation of beauty and our sense of community—all are connected with this shared social ethos fundamental to our beings.” Contrary to what social scientists believed in the mid-20th century, humans in all cultures have a shared sense of what is beautiful that has been nurtured by experience.
One of the fascinating discoveries shared by biologists and brain researchers is the realization that places and specific environmental features contribute to the organism’s development of “aesthetic” preferences. Rainforest species cultivate colorful features and use green as camouflage, whereas desert creatures develop earth tones and lighter colors in their skin or outer layers. Likewise, all traditional artifacts and folk arts, including architecture, are based on the materials and colors of the particular environment in which their producers live. Only architecture of the past century has renounced these regional characteristics—even so-called “critical” regionalism. A new research group founded in Stockholm in 2016, Place Science, has proposed a program that may yield data on how humans experience a sense of place, using tools available commercially as well as among university researchers.


Horton Plaza, San Diego. © Joanne DiBona

参加神经科学建筑学院（ANFA）两年一次会议的研究人员和设计师队伍不断扩大，他们将美学问题纳入了大脑运作的讨论中。许多医疗保健专业人员也参加了，因为很明显，治疗环境中的美学会影响病患的治疗。约翰霍普金斯大学于2016年成立了第一所神经美学医学研究所，并在当年的ANFA会议上展示了第一批成果。奇怪的是，很少有建筑项目的领导者参加这次会议，留意关心此研究的建筑专业人员就更少了。明尼苏达大学建筑学院前院长Tom Fisher表示，几年前，当他提出向学生教授神经科学时，院长们嘲笑了他想法。

尽管如此，令人惊讶的是，在20世纪70年代和80年代对现代主义的“后现代”批评后，东北建筑学院的院长们对年轻人产生了偏执，因为这场批评表明这些理论家的想法在学校中是竟然有些根深蒂固。你不会听到任何人为那些继续提出美丽如何影响我们健康幸福的科学家们欢呼。他们甚至没有去赞美学生杰出的工作，因为赞美很久以前就已经从话语中消失了。同样的例子是，20世纪20年代以后，现代主义者从经典建筑中汲取了真实和美丽的传统审美观念，于是“装饰品”在此后就很少被提起。作者在20世纪70年代作为一名学生参与其中，由于这些想法肯定存在争议，便很少再提及。

所谓的后现代言论，如《向拉斯维加斯学习》，揭示了这些攻击背后的错误逻辑，这些攻击针对维特鲁威在公元前一世纪首次讨论的永恒人文基础上的视觉设计。根据Robert Venturi、Denise Scott Brown和Steven Izenour的说法，现代主义并没有在“firmitas”、“utilitas”和“venustas”之间取得平衡，但却给出了“实用性+坚定性=快乐”的答案。我们今天继续接受那种荒谬的说法。科学家不再被它所愚弄了，那么建筑师为什么还要继续强调美学标准中的“功能性”和“构造性”呢？正如作者在前几篇文章中所论述的那样，对于20世纪历史的无知，对于后现代美学中里根主义或MAGA的副产品，或者对支持批评学术观点的作者的批判而言，都是毫无根据的。

The expanding cohort of researchers and designers who attend the biennial conferences of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) are involved in bringing aesthetic issues into the discussion of how the brain works. Many are connected to the healthcare professions because it’s clear that beauty in the therapeutic environment plays a role in healing. Johns Hopkins established the first medical institute for the study neuroaesthetics in 2016, presenting its first results at that year’s ANFA meeting. Strangely, few leaders of architectural programs attended the meeting, and even fewer seem to be aware of the research presented there. Tom Fisher, former dean at the University of Minnesota’s School of Architecture, indicated that his fellow deans scoffed at the idea of teaching neuroscience to architects when he broached the subject a few years ago.
Still, it is startling to learn that the deans of Northeast architecture schools are paranoid about young people following “postmodern” critiques of Modernism during the 1970s and 1980s, as it shows how entrenched these head-in-the-sand theoreticians are in our schools of architecture. You won’t hear any them cheering for the scientists who continue to show how beauty affects our health, happiness, and well-being. They don’t even use the word to praise the work of their best students, because it was banished long ago from establishment discourse. Like ornament, traditional aesthetic concepts of the true and the beautiful were stricken from the canon by Modernists after the 1920s and have seldom been discussed since. I emphasize seldom, because there was certainly debate about these ideas during the 1970s, and I participated in it as a student.
So-called postmodern texts such as Learning From Las Vegas unveiled the faulty logic behind these attacks on the timeless, humanistic basis of visual design, first discussed by Vitruvius in the first century B.C.E. Instead of a balance between firmitas, utilitas, and venustas, Modernism gave us “utility + firmness = delight,” according to Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. We continue to embrace that preposterous formula today. Scientists aren’t fooled by it anymore, so why should architects continue to emphasize the “functional” and the “tectonic” in aesthetic criteria? As I have argued in previous essays on Common Edge, ignorance of 20th-century history is no excuse for flaccid pronouncements about Postmodern aesthetics being a byproduct of Reaganism or MAGA, or attacks on authors who espouse views that criticize the academic establishment.


Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Installation by Olafur Eliasson

美不是政治或意识形态。它与我们作为一个物种的发展息息相关，对于那些希望我们的社会公正、平等和关注真理的人来说，这将永远是至关重要的关注，因为这是美好的。John Keats和Friedrich Schiller认为对人性至关重要的两件事之间的必要关系没有错，其中一件就以“美”开头。

Beauty isn’t political or ideological. It is connected to our development as a species and will always be a vital concern to those who want our society to be just, equal, and concerned with the truth—which is, yes, beautiful to behold. John Keats and Friedrich Schiller were not wrong about the necessary relationship between two things we believe are fundamental to our humanity, and one of them begins with “B.”


Vancouver, Canada. Image © Safdie Architects