The Ecoempathy Pattern Book: Sneak Preview by Misha Semenov

the ecoempathy pattern book reconnecting with nature through design

contents how to use this book

the case for mediated nature

water

air

energy

climate

earth

fauna

flora

spatial patterns

empathy as a translation strategy

100 107

how to use this book Part manifesto, part pattern language, part philosophy and aesthetic theory, the book in your hands attempts to articulate a new approach to the integration of architecture and urban design with the natural world. It is meant at once as an indictment of contemporary green building and an inspirational catalog of ideas for architects and urban planners to implement into their work. The book begins with an introductory essay that lays out the case for an ecoempathic architecture, citing the inadequacy of contemporary “green” architecture to address our society’s disconnect from nature. This brief introduction is followed by a catalog of relevant interventions, which is presented in eight chapters, each addressing a vital component of urban nature. The chapters are color-coded for easy navigation; each one begins with a summary of relevant information, data, and graphics largely drawn from the field of Urban Ecology. Within the chapters, each project page features a diagram that shows how certain aspects of ecology are “translated” through the architecture. This is often done through the use of arrows, lines, and symbols, which have been color-coded as consistently as possible. Detailed project information, a list of strategies used, and broader applications are listed on the right side of the spread. While many projects could reasonably fall into several categories at once, they are presented within their most relevant chapter. The catalog can be read in any order, and can be grouped as it is currently by the natural process represented, or, just as easily, by the kinds of human senses engaged or design strategies employed. The closing essay, more theoretical in nature, details some of the strategies for generating attention and emotional connections that can be tools for creating an architecture of empathy. I welcome any feedback you might have and invite you to visit the ecoempathy webpage at www.ecoempathyproject.wordpress.com - Misha Semenov, May 2019 5

the case for mediated nature “Whatever exists in nature, exists in us in the form of our awareness of its existence” - Naum Gabo 1 “Ecological design is the art that reconnects us as sensuous creatures evolved over millions of years to a beautiful world. That world does not need to be remade but rather revealed.” –David Orr 2

Framing the Issue: Why ‘Green Architecture’ is not enough We live today in cities that are fundamentally disconnected from the ecological systems within which they developed. Rivers are hidden in pipes underground, wetlands are paved over, and most urban residents are hard pressed to name a local bird or plant species. Meanwhile, the cost of natural disasters and risks associated with careless development continues to rise. The ecological crisis our species faces demands that we act quickly to rebuild our cities in a more symbiotic relationship with nature. Over the last few decades, city planners and architects have tried to restore balance in this relationship by “greening” cities and buildings. Green building has become a multi-billion dollar industry, while green infrastructure in cities has increasingly come to be embraced as an effective strategy for mitigating urban heat island effects, filtering and delaying stormwater runoff, reducing building energy use, providing habitat for key species, and improving air quality.3 Strategies such as onsite energy generation, water collection and recycling, ultra-efficient building envelopes, green roofs and walls, bioswales, constructed water filtration wetlands, birdsafe facades, impermeable surface conversions, and urban tree planting projects are increasingly prevalent in both practice and legislation. Despite this potential, as our buildings are automated and standardized for environmental performance and cities invest in ecological infrastructure based on parameters and metrics, there is an important 7

Figure 1 - examples of recently completed LEED rated buildings from around the world (top to bottom: Germany, Chicago, North Carolina, Japan). These buildings could easily be anywhere. Despite their mechanistic green credentials, the have zero legibility as ecologically-minded buildings and inspire no connection between inside and out.

element largely missing from the discourse: the human beings and our relationship to the nature we are “saving” through these interventions! A look at some recent LEED projects (see Figures 1 & 2) reveals how unengaging ostensibly environmentally performative buildings can be, their green technologies hidden from view behind sleek glass facades uninviting to the passing pedestrian and completely unrelated to the natural settings they are set within. Shockingly, there are no “points” given in the LEED green rating systems for cities and neighborhoods for engaging occupants in green systems’ ecological performance or connecting with local ecosystems besides a set of credits for natural lighting.4 Yet the issue of reconnecting urban dwellers with nature is just as important as reconnecting urban infrastructure with living systems. Our disconnect from nature has resulted in what Richard Louv has famously called Nature Deficit Disorder.5 In the United States, studies show that children are spending significantly less time outside than their parents,6 with less than 30 minutes of unstructured outdoor play and over 6 hours of screen time every day.7 Even when they are in an outdoor environment, many children remain glued to electronic devices. The statistics for adults are no more encouraging. At the same time, numerous studies have found health and psychological benefits, as well as increases in pro-environmental behavior and altruism, stemming from direct interactions with natural settings.8A rapidly growing body of research shows the importance of even small pockets of urban nature to city dwellers’ psychological well-being.9 If attuned to the human sensory apparatus and rendered visible and legible, elements of green architecture and urbanism can help activate what E.O Wilson and Stephen Kellert call our innate biophilic tendencies and present an ideal engagement and environmental education opportunity.10 Green buildings and urban systems, if informed by neuroscience, have the potential to catalyze psychological and social transformations as significant as their environmental achievements. Training a generation of leaders to solve imminent global environmental crises requires instilling a love and appreciation for nature, as well as a direct awareness of human impacts on it. While many efforts have focused on getting urban children into national parks and wilderness areas, biophilia expert Stephen Kellert explains that these experiences have the most positive effects only when they complement direct en8

counters with nature in familiar urban environments.11 Now is the time for designers of the built environment to begin building intimate connections to nature into the human habitat.

Beyond ‘Biophilic Design’ The thinking championed by Kellert and E. O. Wilson, who defined the term “biophilia,” has grown into a Biophilic Design movement, which has championed the integration of nature and natural elements into architecture. While the contributors to the 2008 volume that helped to launch this movement, Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science, and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life,12 as well as Terrapin Bright Green, authors of the “14 Patterns of Biophilic Design,”13 make more nuanced arguments about human relationships to nature, Biophilia as it has been brought into the mainstream of commercial architecture is in danger of becoming reduced to a set of guidelines for using natural forms and features as a way to improve such concrete metrics as health outcomes, worker productivity, and student performance. None of these are bad ambitions; indeed, few could disagree with the goal set out by two of those authors, Judith Heerwagen and Bert Gregory, of using nature to create “a sense of pleasure, well-being, and engagement with place.”14 The severity of the Nature Deficit crisis demands that architecture do more than trigger our feel-good instincts with green walls and organic shapes, however. We need the physical design of green interventions and their integration into urban spaces to function as a cultural and emotional communication system. David Orr explores this idea of design being a cultural signaling system in his article “Architecture, Ecological Design, and Human Ecology,” in which he insists that architecture and design are “a kind of crystallized pedagogy that … never fails to inform,” making us “more or less mindful and more or less ecologically competent.” For Orr, “the ultimate object of design is not artifacts, buildings, or landscapes, but human minds,”15 especially their capacity for “wonder and appreciation.”16 As neuroscience tells us, our feeling brains far overpower our thinking brains. Thus, it is critical that green architecture become a tool for urban residents to empathize with the creatures and plants they coinhabit cities with; to feel respect, love, and care for green infrastructure and living systems; and to have a visceral connection to the daily, seasonal, and annual rhythms of their homes. It was, after all, that great master of American architecture and 9

Figure 2 - examples of “green” performative features in new buildings. From top to bottom, sun shading louvers; wind turbines; solar panels; and a living machine for water processing. All these interventions are tacked onto conventional building typologies without regard for their expressive potential.

Figure 3 - an instance of purely topical “biophilia” in s Pittsburgh office building

Figure 4 - Kroon Hall, by Michael Hopkins and Centerbrook Architects, involves users in its daily operation by instructing them to open windows then the lights turn green. This gives users a sense of agency.

ornament, Louis Sullivan, who wrote that “sympathy… understood as a power, is the beginning of understanding; for knowledge, alone, is not understanding.”17 Moreover, the kinds of topical biophilic design interventions in vogue today too often run the risk of portraying nature as a mechanistic aesthetic backdrop independent of humans, like a generic “green wall” that is self-maintaining and ever-green. According to environmental psychologists, actors who feel that they have agency—a locus of control—are far more likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior.18 A small encounter with agency and feedback—a potted plant that needs to be watered and grows tall, or a louver that needs to be operated by hand instead of being automated and improves occupant health—is an important gateway to feeling a sense of power to effect change on larger issues like air pollution or climate change. Creating a sense of interdependency between humans and natural systems is critical to our survival. For the past two years, the Ecoempathy Project, an online platform and think tank, has explored how architecture and urban design can be used to highlight and translate ecological processes and natural features into a sensually legible architectural form, encouraging a deeper emotional and physiological connection to nature. In our view, design has the unique power to inject Sullivan’s “understanding”—scientific knowledge about the physical world—into the structure of our everyday environment in a way that will render it culturally relevant, pedagogical, and emotionally moving.

The Need for Sense and Scale translation Mediating between the vast range of ecological processes and human communication systems necessarily involves translations across scale, time, and medium. Over half a century ago, Gyorgy Kepes set out his theory on the relationship between art and the emerging scientific fields in his classic, The New Frontier of Art and Science. In Kepes’ view, the natural world that we had for centuries assimilated into our cultural systems through symbols and stories became “alien once again” to us as we were forced to comprehend “an exploded scale of things” coming out of advances in scientific knowledge o the 20th century, from viruses to cosmic rays (today, we might add the large-scale problem of climate chance to this list as well). Kepes proposed that: “To convert this new environment into a human landscape, we need more than a rational 10

grasp of nature. We need to map the world’s new configurations with our senses, dispose our own activities and movements in conformity with its rhythms … the sensed, the emotional, are of vital importance in transforming its chaos into order… if we relate experience to experience, image to image, we can bring our environment into focus and become aware of the new order on the sensed and emotional levels rather than on the rational levels alone. Reoriented, we shall then be in a position to cope with the new world of forms.”19 What does this reconfiguration entail? While ecological processes scale up and down completely unconstrained by human limits of perception and in a dynamic fashion, design for environmental communication is inherently linked to the scale of the sensory apparatus of Homo sapiens. In consistently highlighting phenomena that are much smaller or much larger than people (ie, climate change, species change, elemental cycles), environmentalists fall into the trap of detaching these abstract issues from everyday life, inadvertently evoking a sense of powerlessness and paralysis. Ursula Heise, in her book Sense of Place, Sense of Planet, writes that one of the crises of environmentalism is that it is simultaneously global, encouraging responsible global citizenship and cooperation (“Eco-Cosmopolitanism”) and hyperlocal, encouraging a rootedness in place (“bioregionalism,” “localism,” etc).20 As Ariana Louise Harrison writes in Architectural Theories of the Environment, “Heise suggests that design is well-positioned to further the eco-cosmopolitan project by constructing frameworks that help bridge the concrete individual experience and the abstract idea of the biosphere.”21 In other words, design can help make the scale jump that connects local, empathic observations with larger, abstract global phenomena. Besides the constraint of scale, we are also incapable of physically sensing many of the most important phenomena in the natural world. As the creators of the Haptic Footprint Project at the MIT Media Lab write, “We only perceive a tiny sliver of the world around us. We are constrained by what our senses can process … Our technological development has outstripped the pace at which our physical senses evolve. We do not have access to things such as the electromagnetic spectrum at 2.5 GHz, even though it is relevant to the day to day life of most of us. We are poor at perceiving things such as changes in the chemical compo11

Figure 5 - Stacy Levy, an environmental artist, often creates captivating installations that connect global problems to local consequences, as in this project depicting future sea level rise in St. Petersburg.

Figure 6 - Artist Natalie Jeremijenko is famous for her various interventions to “translate” between humans and the other organisms inhabiting our cities. This “phenological clock” at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London shows the yearly cycle of major plants, insects, birds, and trees in the city as

Figure 7 - artist David Buckley Borden uses the language of advertising and public signage to draw the attention of urban dwellers to important ecological features. as with this cheeky “River Here” sign

Figure 8 - personalized name tags for new trees in New York City help make street trees more relatable and relevant to residents.

sition of the air we breathe, even though it is critical for our long term survival as a species.”22 For Kepes, as for the current generation of MIT designers, the solution to our blindness and deafness is to “find extremely powerful aids to the senses from outside our own bodies.”23 Certainly to a contemporary reader this suggests the possibility of wearable technologies and even bionic implants, but that is not our concern here. We are most interested in ways that architecture and urban design can act as a medium for the translation that Kepes suggests (see Figures XX and XX). Throughout history, our built environment has contained tools that connect us to elements of the natural world, from weathervanes to sundials to dovecotes. We have the technology now to easily interpret and visualize environmental data—and many of the projects featured in this catalog do just that. But what no technology on its own can do is to tackle the biggest blind spot of all: contemporary humans’ lack of awareness of and empathy for the natural world. Like the “eyes that do not see” decried by Le Corbusier in Towards an Architecture, our eyes simply gloss over vital environmental data. Most urban dwellers may notice advertisements or symbols in the city environment, but they do not notice the tree species on their street, the spatial distribution of birds, or even the current phase of the moon and tide cycle, all things that would have been vital for our survival some centuries ago. Even setting aside the vibrations and processes that we cannot sense with our bodies, with so many other features of the urban environment competing for an attention span that grows ever-shorter thanks to smart phones and other distractions, our eyes are simply unable to appreciate those aspects of urban ecology that we are perfectly capable of sensing and comprehending with the bodies we have. Designers’ realm of influence, the architectural communication field (Figure 10) can be attuned to the ecological elements shown in Figure 9. This, then, is the potential power of design; by redirecting attention onto those aspects of ecology that we have become disconnected from as urban dwellers, architects and planners can begin to reconnect with what we lost in our rushed transition to an urban lifestyle. We can help our minds, eyes, and ears regain a level of eco-literacy through the manner in which we design nature and eco-awareness into our cities. This is what the projects presented in this book attempt to do, each in its own way.

Figure 9 - diagram of “visibles”(in parentheses) and “invisibles” (in bold) in the urban environment, from Richard Forman’s Urban Ecology: Science of Cities

Figure 10 - diagram of the “architectural communication field,” from Ashgar Talaye Minai’s Architecture as Environmental Communication

1 Naum Gabo, “Art and Science,” in Gyorgy Kepes, The New Landscape in Art and Science (Chicago: P. Theobald, 1956), 383. 2 David W. Orr, The Nature of Design: Ecology, Culture, and Human Intention (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 32. 3 See for example Jill Grant, Patricia Manuel and Darrell Joudrey, “A Framework for Planning Sustainable Residential Landscapes,”. Journal of the American Planning Association 62, no. 3 (1996), 331.; Hale W. Thurston, “Opportunity Costs of Residential Best Management Practices for Stormwater Runoff Control,” Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 132, no. 2 (2006), 89.; Francisco J. Escobedo and David J. Nowak, “Spatial Heterogeneity and Air Pollution Removal by an Urban Forest,” Landscape and Urban Planning 90, no. 3–4 (2009), 102-110.; Chester L. Arnold Jr and C. James Gibbons, “Impervious Surface Coverage: The Emergence of a Key Environmental Indicator,”.Journal of the American Planning Association 62, no. 2 (1996), 243. 4 https://www.usgbc.org/credits 5 Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005). 6 Sandra L. Hofferth and John F. Sandberg, “Changes in American Children’s Time, 1981–1997,” Advances in Life Course Research 6 (2001), 193-229. 7 Lincoln R. Larson, Gary T. Green and H. K. Cordell, “Childrens Time Outdoors: Results and Implications of the National Kids Survey,” Journal of Park and Recreation Administration 29, no. 2 (2011); Donald Roberts, Ulla Foehr and Victoria Rideout, Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-Olds (Menlo Park, CA: ,[2005]); Thomas Juster, HIromi Ono and Frank Stafford, Changing Times of American Youth: 1981-2003 (Ann Arbor: ,[2004] 8 Silvia Collado et al., “Effect of Frequency and Mode of Contact with Nature on Children’s Self-Reported Ecological Behaviors,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 41 (2015), 65-73; Weizhe Zhang, Eben Goodale and Jin Chen, “How Contact with Nature Affects Children’s Biophilia, Biophobia and Conservation Attitude in China,” Biological Conservation 177 (2014), 116; Masashi Soga et al., “Urban Residents’ Perceptions of Neighbourhood Nature: Does the Extinction of Experience Matter?” Biological Conservation 203 (2016), 150; Timothy Beatley, Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011), 10. 9 For an excellent review of this literature, see Chapter One of Timothy Beatley, Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2016). 10 Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia (Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.]: Harvard Univ. Press, 1984).; Weizhe Zhang, Eben Goodale and Jin Chen, “How Contact with Nature Affects Children’s Biophilia, Biophobia and Conservation Attitude in China,” Biological Conservation 177 (2014), 116; Terrapin Bright Green, “Biophilic Urban Acupuncture: The Importance of Biophilia in Urban Places,” <https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/blog/2015/10/biophilic-urban-acupuncture-biophilia-in-urban-places/> accessed Mar 31, 2019 11 Stephen Kellert, “Experiencing Nature,” in Peter H. Kahn and Stephen R. Kellert, Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Investigations (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), 145. 12 Stephen R. Kellert, Judith Heerwagen and Martin Mador, eds., Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science, and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2008). 13 Terrapin Bright Green, “14 Patterns of Biophilic Design,” <https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/report/14-patterns/> accessed Mar 31, 2019 14 Judith Heerwagen and Bert Gregory, “Sensory Aesthetics,” in Kellert, Heerwagen, and Mador, eds., Biophilic Design 15 David Orr, “Architecture, Ecological Design, and Human Ecology,” in Kim Tanzer and Rafael Longoria, The Green Braid: Towards an Architecture of Ecology, Economy, and Equity (London ; New York: Routledge, 2007). 14

16 Orr, Nature of Design, 30. 17 Louis H. Sullivan, A System of Architectural Ornament According with a Philosophy of Man’s Powers (New York: Press of the American institute of architects, inc., 1924). 18 P.C. Stern, T. Dietz, T., T. Abel, G.A. Guagnano & L. Kalof, “A value-belief-norm theory of support for social movements: The case of environmentalism,” Human ecology review, 6(2), 81-98; Kolmuss and Agyeman “Mind the Gap: Why do People Act Environmentally and what are the Barriers to Pro-Environmental Behavior?” Environmental Education Research 8 (3) 239-260. 19 Gyorgy Kepes, The New Lanscape of Art and Science (Chicago: Paul Thiebold & Co, 1954), 18-19 20 Ursula K. Heise, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global (Oxford : New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 21 Ariane Lourie Harrison, Architectural Theories of the Environment: Posthuman Territory (New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013). 22 “Haptic Footprint: Project Overview,” MIT Media Lab, https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/haptic-footprint/overview/ 23 Kepes, The New Landscape, 102.

Figure 11 - diagram of major urban water flows from Richard Formanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Urban Ecology: Science of Cities

water The history of architecture and urbanism is full of magnificent examples of water features designed to celebrate the power and significance of this precious resource. Indeed, in the days before indoor plumbing, fountains, springs, and wells, as the source of water in cities, possessed a special cultural status. In Moroccan fountains, for instance, water spouts, as sources of life, and important aspects of Islamic ritual, become the holders of rich geometric ornament. The fountains of Rome, each grander than the next, are set up to glorify the immense power of nature–and of the popes who commissioned them. The systems involved in biological water infrastructure are increasingly complex and necessitate a very deliberate design approach to remain legible; take, for example, just one of the many Living Machines that John Todd has designed: the wastewater treatment system at Omega Institute in New York, where water is purified by being pumped through a series of seven distinct cleansing biotopes. How could such a complex system begin to make itself legible to building users? Robert Thayer Jr.’s idea of Visual Ecology provides a good starting framework. For Thayer, Visual Ecology is about undoing the concealment of ecosystem functions enabled by 20th-century science and engineering, and represents the “perceivable dimension of any ecosystem that allows us to see into, understand, and sustain ourselves and other life forms dependent upon that ecosystem.” In Thayer’s view, Visual Ecology necessitates the rediscovery of an “ancient art” and “language of ecological revelation.”With its clear symbolism and narrative flow, water, for Thayer, is “the easiest way to reveal an ecosystem.”1 The projects in this section approach urban water in its many forms through this lens, elevating everyday flows of rainwater, tidal estuaries, and bioswales to culturally relevant events. 1. Thayer RL,Jr. Landscape as ecologically revealing language. Landscape Journal. 1998:118-129

tide translator Designer: Stacy Levy Location: Miami, FL Ecosystem Type: subtropical coastal wetland Water elements: Tidal Motion Senses engaged: Sight, Touch, Time Design Strategies: Color, Dynamism, Placement in high-traffic area Description: “Despite only being three blocks from the Atlantic Ocean, faculty, staff, and students at MDCC easily forget the twice-a-day tide in the Biscayne Bay. A Month of Tides brings a sense of the sea’s tide into a huge atrium at the core of the school. At high tide, the 60-foot-tall transparent blue tube rises to the top floor of the atrium, and slowly sinks to the floor by low tide. The movement, which follow[s] the actual tidal sequence in the bay, averages a speed of one foot per eight minutes. Like the tide, the tube reveals its movement not through a few moments of watching, but over the course of the day. Students ride the escalator throughout the day and can witness the slow change of the tidal tube, as they enter and leave their classrooms.” (Stacy Levy) Applicability: Stacy Levy’s tidal column provides an important template for low-tech, highly-visible interventions that can make the daily movements of the ocean—so important to coastal ecosystems—more visible. Most importantly, besides telling a clear story, the installation also teaches building users how to see and observe. Understanding its relationship to the tides requires patience and observation skills, which are critical for observation of nature.

tidal terminal Designers: Kennedy Violich Architecture Location: New York, NY Ecosystem Type: Temperate Salt Marsh Water elements: Tidal motions, Currents Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Light, Reflections, Curved Forms Description: The lightweight, triangular steel structure of this ferry terminal holds up a translucent, reflective canopy that reflects light and water. Flowing, curvy elements at this transfer point where New Yorkers change modes from bikes, walking, and ground transportation to water taxis help to solidify the analogy between human and tidal flows. “An interactive river environment monitoring system, created specifically for this project, tracks the East River water speed and the direction of daily tidal flows which are important to the health of NYC’s water supply. This ambient river monitor is integrated into the three large lightwells of the Ferry Terminal roof canopy. Sensors along the boardwalk capture real-time pedestrian flows between water and land. Subtle changes in the color and direction of LED lighting in the roof canopy lightwells reflect the flows of people and water, creating a civic urban infrastructure that links natural and constructed urban ecologies.” (ArchDaily) Applicability: While the actual system for connecting passenger and tidal flows to lighting displays may seem esoteric, that does not take away from its more immediately obvious dynamic nature. KVA’s design allows room for both immediate reactions and intellectual processing. The linkage between human and tidal flows is apt in a city where the morning rush downtown and evening flow out to the suburbs are in themselves a cycle as predictable and essential to the city’s human ecology as the tides are to its natural ecology. 23

collector curves Designers: Lake | Flato Location: San Antonio, TX Ecosystem Type: Savannah Scrubland Water elements: Rainwater harvesting Senses engaged: Sight, Sound Design Strategies: Prospect & Refuge, Curved Forms Description: Constructed of concrete petals designed thoughtfully to sit lightly upon the land, the BHP Pavilion— the main pavilion— forms a geometry that collects and funnels rainwater into a sitewide water catchment system. The pavilions throughout the park provide shade and shelter, simultaneously engaging visitors to visualize the cycle of water at Confluence Park and how it relates directly to the San Antonio Rivershed ... the pavilion “petals” imitat[e] the form of plants that are structured to funnel dew and rainwater to their roots, down to the scale of the paver patterns reminiscent of the flow and confluence of waterways... Rainwater collected through the site-wide water catchment system serves as the primary source of water throughout the park. Applicability: The direct connection between the water use in the building and the concrete collection shells, which form a separate structural system, could be more direct. Still, the thin concrete pavilion provides an elegant illustration of the poetic potential of rainwater harvesting. Could similarly expressive structures, built at smaller scale on roofs and balconies of buildings, help to give voice to the urban water cycle, celebrating the thoughtful conservation of water while creating beautiful sheltered spaces?

rainwater raceway Designers: The Kubala Washatko Architects Location:: Milwaukee, WI Ecosystem Type: Lakeside Prairie Water elements: Rainwater collection, storage, infiltration Senses engaged: Sight, Sound, Touch Design Strategies: Interactive Elements Description: As part of the redesign of an old warehouse into a community coffee shop, The Kubala Washatko Architects envisioned an interactive water treatment feature that could provide enertainment for the neighborhood. Rainwater from the roof is collected and run down a raceway filled with rubber ducks; kids are encouraged to engage with this fun feature.Excess water is slowly released into the adjacent bioswale, allowing for natural infiltration. Applicability: This kind of interactive water system is precisely what is needed to get young kids (and all ages really) engaged with urban hydrology. The duckies add another empathic element to the experience.

riverpulse Designers: Ray Chi, Julilly Kohler, Tim Ehlinger Location: Milwaukee, WI Ecosystem Type: Prairie Riparian Water elements: Stream flow, Pollution Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Light, Natural Shapes, Movement Description: “ ‘How can we visually show the general public changes in a river’s vital signs like the light on top of the old Wisconsin Gas Company used to show the weather?’ Ray had a vision of connecting residents and visitors to the river by reproducing the reflected light of the water that shimmers underneath the bridge in a form of public video-art. When Ray met Tim and learned about data sondes and the data that was measured, Ray and Tim began discussing a concept of using live data to drive the look of the video-art to reflect the changing “mood” of the river. RiverPulse pulls water quality data from a device in a river – a ‘data sonde’ – and turns the data into flowing video-art. The data sonde measures qualities of water such as: temperature, oxygen, turbidity (amount of debris), water flow and electrical conductivity. The vital signs of rivers change throughout each day due to natural temperature changes, which in turn affect other measurements such as the amount of oxygen in the water. These signs can be indicators of water quality.” (RiverPulse) Applicability: There is something magical about being able to walk over a river and to see the water quality data “translated” in real time onto an adjacent wall. Riverpulse represents a great model for making the changes in urban water bodies more clearly visible to residents.

bioswale spiral Designers: City of Portland Location: Portland, OR Ecosystem Type:Valley Grassland Water elements: Rainwater infiltration Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Curved Forms Description: This string of bioswales in Portland actively tells teh story of infiltration through the use of a spiral motif that doubles as both land-art and a descending pathway for water flows. Underneath the spiral is a deep basin that allows stormwater to percolate into groundwater, avoiding flooding and overflow impacts. Applicability: Bioswales are becoming ubiquitous in US cities, yet they are often deployed without any regard for legibility. This installation shows what is possible with even with a small investment beyond the standard layout.

Figure 12 - diagram of urban air movement

air This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe both the visible and invisible aspects of air pollution and air movement, also discussing how the design of the built environment affects air flows. This section will describe 33

wind painting Designer: Ned Kahn Location: San Francisco, CA Ecosystem Type: coastal scrubland /dunes Air elements: Wind flow Senses engaged: Sight, Hearing Design Strategies: Light, Reflection, Dynamic Response Description: the SFPUC headquarters in downtown San Francisco boasts a series of integrated wind turbines that provide a portion of the building’s electricity. To draw attention to the dynamic presence of the wind, the building designers commissioned environmental artist Ned Kahn to create a shimmering wall that acts as a gantry for the wind turbines. In the artist’s words, “The hinged, polycarbonate panels swing with the unseen patterns of the wind. Each panel has a small embedded magnet that connects with an electrical reed switch. By day, the work appears like rippling waves of glass. By night, the back and forth swinging of the panels trigger the flickering of tiny led lights.” (Ned Kahn) Applicability: Besides making invisible aspects of the environment visible through form, Kahn’s sculpture brilliantly links the power generation infrastructure of a building to an emotionally arresting visual expression, allowing occupants to experience the very natural force that keeps their lights and computers running.

empathic ventilation Designers: Antoni Gaudí Location: Barcelona, Spain Ecosystem Type: Mediterranean coastal scrubland Air elements: Ventilation, Exhaust Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Anthropomorphic forms, curves, human scale, sculptural elements, color Description: Perched atop Gaudi’s late masterpiece, the Casa Milà, are a set of unique rooftop mechanical elements. While many buildings in Barcelona feature chimneys for ventilation, these ventilation and exhaust stacks are uniquely anthropomorphic, creating an enchanted inhabitable roofscape. Applicability: Gaudí’s chimney designs from over a century ago present a promising alternative to the contemporary ventilation systems hidden on the roofs of buildings: functional elements that, in their subtly anthropomorphic form, become objects of empathy. What if we thought about humanizing our exhaust and circulation infrastructure as a way of drawing attention to its critical daily task?

dynamic wind scoop Designers: Bill Dunster Location: London, UK Ecosystem Type: Temperate deciduous forest Air elements: Wind, Ventilation Senses engaged: Sight, Sound Design Strategies: Color, Sculptural Form Description: Hovering atop the homes in the BedZED development, a net-zero housing project in a suburb of London, are distinctive “wind cowls” designed to aid in passive ventilation of the apartments. The cowls swivel to orient themselves to the prevailing winds. A heat exchange mechanism in their base allows the cold entering air to absorb heat from outgoing indoor air before flowing in through the roof. Indoor air, meanwhile, rises and exits into the area of low pressure created on the back end of the cowl. These large features are a distinctive element of the development, and their daily movements help residents be aware of wind conditions. Applicability: Using bright colors and eye-catching forms, these scoops create an awareness of the wind-driven ventilation in the building and make residents think about their homes’ metabolisms and the weather outside.

inhabitable instrument Designers: Davis Butner Location: Marfa, TX Ecosystem Type: Desert Scubland Air elements: Wind flow Senses engaged: Hearing Design Strategies: Dynamism, Narrative, Configurability Description: This design proposal for a set of houses for visiting scholars and artists suggests a new way to harness wind as a part of architecture: aurally. The house itself is designed in the shape of an enormous whistle. A tilting roof panel can be hinged open to turn the entire living space into an enormous woodwind instrument. Applicability: While this approach may not work in all climates and densities, the auditory aspects of Ecoempathy are underexplored in architecture today. Besides the tidal organs in San Francisco and Zadar, few urban features translate natural elements into sound. Yet on windy sites, this can be a significant way to connect occupants to their environment.

living light Designers: The Living Location: Seoul, Korea Ecosystem Type: Temperate deciduous forest Air elements: Air pollution Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Light, reflections, shelter, abstraction Description: “This building facade of the future is a giant map of Seoul that glows and blinks according to both air quality and public interest in the environment. First, each neighborhood lights up if its air is better than a year ago. Second, every hour the map goes dark and the neighborhoods light up in order of best current air quality to worst. Third, citizens can text the pavilion with a postal code, receive a message back with that neighborhood’s real-time air quality, and cause the neighborhood on the map to blink. The pavilion becomes a register of our collective concern about an important urban and personal issue. The more blinking, the more collective concern. And once people text in a request, the building becomes a contact in their phones, offering a new framework for human communication with buildings.”(The Living) Applicability: This display condenses a city-wide, live feed of environmental and spatial data into the physical space of a single pavilion that is just large enough to fit a group of people yet just small enough to allow full visual comprehension in one glance. Living Light is an interesting blend of what Wilhelm Worringer presented as two ends of the artistic production spectrum—empathy and abstraction. It is abstraction that initially allows us to compress a larger phenomenon, such as data on air pollution in Seoul, into the human scale, and it is empathy that allows for that phenomenon to become sensually legible. 43

Figure 13 - diagram of urban energy systems

energy This section will describe the importance of visualizing and connecting to a building’s energy metabolism. It will detail some promising on-site energy generation technologies. This section will describe the importance of visualizing and connecting to a building’s energy metabolism. It will detail some promising on-site energy generation technologies. This section will describe the importance of visualizing and connecting to a building’s energy metabolism. It will detail some promising onsite energy generation technologies. This section will describe the importance of visualizing and connecting to a building’s energy metabolism. It will detail some promising on-site energy generation technologies. This section will describe the importance of visualizing and connecting to a building’s energy metabolism. It will detail some promising on-site energy generation technologies. This section will describe the importance of visualizing and connecting to a building’s energy metabolism. It will detail some promising on-site energy generation technologies. This section will describe the importance of visualizing and connecting to a building’s energy metabolism. It will detail some promising on-site energy generation technologies. This section will describe the importance of visualizing and connecting to a building’s energy metabolism. It will detail some promising onsite energy generation technologies. This section will describe the importance of visualizing and connecting to a building’s energy metabolism. It will detail some promising on-site energy generation technologies. This section will describe the importance of visualizing and connecting to a building’s energy metabolism. It will detail some promising on-site energy generation technologies. This section will describe the importance of visualizing and connecting to a building’s energy metabolism. It will detail some promising on-site energy generation technologies.

basement waterfall Designer: Centerbrook Architects + 19th Century Mill Location: Essex, CT Ecosystem Type: Riparian temperate forest Energy elements: hydropower generation Senses engaged: sight, hearing Design Strategies: Light, Noise, Movement/Dynamism Description: The office of Centerbrook, an architecture and planning firm headquartered in central Connecticut, is located in a 19th-century factory building that was originally powered by the flow of water in the adjacent creek. The firm has maintained the original pond and raceway and built a 10 kW electric turbine, which provides about 10% of the firm’s electricity needs and emits a calming hum that resonates throughout the first floor. A hole was drilled in the floor of the main meeting room to reveal the turbine below, and a set of adjustable LED lights was installed to illuminate the raceway. The future ability to adjust the color of the LEDs based on intensity of water flow presents another new way for the firm’s employees to connect to local hydrological cycles–and perhaps adjust their electricity use accordingly. Applicability: Much like the warm light and crackling of a central fireplace gives sensuous expression to a building’s energy use, Centerbrook’s intervention allows the building’s dependance on the renewable resource of water to be a constant presence in the lives of employees and visitors. If more renewable energy systems were highlighted in this way instead of being hidden, users could be far more engaged with these amazing technologies.

solar strips Designers: Kennedy Violich Architecture Location: Hamburg, Germany Ecosystem Type: Continental deciduous forest Energy elements: Solar energy harvesting Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Movement, Curved forms, reflections Description: On this housing prototype in Germany, “a responsive energy harvesting façade adjusts to sun orientation, creating a two-axis solar tracking system that provides shade and twists open to create views. “ (KVA) The flexible solar strips twist throughout the day to follow the sun, providing both optimal shading and energy harvesting, while the strips on the roof are able to flex to achieve maximum solar angle exposure. When a major storm is forecast, the strips twist to acquire maximum rigidity. Applicability: KVA’s solar facade becomes a mechanism for connecting building inhabitants to the daily movement of the sun and ever-changing weather. It is a beautiful way to highlight the dependence of renewable energy on environmental conditions. Because inhabitants view the world through the screen of the solar panels, their experience of the outdoors is framed by a deep awareness of time of day and year.

tellemotion monitors Designers: Dartmouth Department of Computer Science Location: Hanover, NH Ecosystem Type: Temperate deciduous forest Energy elements: User energy consumption Senses engaged: Sight, Sound Design Strategies: Cute animals, colorful visuals Description: At Dartmouth University, a student project called Green Lite was able to reduce energy use by 10% through the use of animated dashboards in buildings featuring a polar bear; the polar bear remained happy on a stable iceberg when energy use went down and started to drown when energy use went up. As the professor behind the project explained, “What we’re trying to do is create an emotional connection to the data… Turning a light on and off may not directly mean that the polar bear’s environment is getting warmer, but it does at the same time.” Applicability: While replacing architectural expression with cute on-screen animal animations is hopefully not the only future for architecture, the success of this project serves as an important reminder that people pay attention when the abstract metabolism of a building is personified in the form of a charismatic character. How can architecture elicit this same kind of empathy?

projecting usage Designers: HeHe Location: Helsinki, Finland Ecosystem Type: Boreal coastal forest Energy elements: Fossil fuel energy production Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Light,Color, Responsiveness Description: HeHe’s Nuage Vert is a green cloud designed to project over the smoke plume from a Helsinki power plant. The brightness of the cloud in the night sky is directly correlated with the district’s electricity usage, rendering previously hidden pollution visible and giving city dwellers for miles around a real-time assessment of their resource consumption. The project was, in fact, successful at reducing energy consumption. “Nuage Vert is based on the idea that public forms can embody an ecological project, materialising environmental issues so that they become a subject within our collective daily lives.“ (HeHe) Applicability: Part of Nuage Vert’s success comes from the fact that it gave individuals a sense of agency, or locus of control, something that environmental psychologists believe is essential to promoting pro-environmental behavior. Dynamic messaging that responds in real time to user inputs can give urban dwellers this sense of empowerment.

Figure 14 - diagram of the Urban Heat Island and other microclimatic effects in urban environments

climate This section will discuss ways in which we can be more attuned to urban climatic conditions. It will discuss the uniqueness of urban temperature, humidity, and climate change effects, and ways we can affect these and visualize them through our architecture. This section will discuss ways in which we can be more attuned to urban climatic conditions. It will discuss the uniqueness of urban temperature, humidity, and climate change effects, and ways we can affect these and visualize them through our architecture. This section will discuss ways in which we can be more attuned to urban climatic conditions. It will discuss the uniqueness of urban temperature, humidity, and climate change effects, and ways we can affect these and visualize them through our architecture. This section will discuss ways in which we can be more attuned to urban climatic conditions. It will discuss the uniqueness of urban temperature, humidity, and climate change effects, and ways we can affect these and visualize them through our architecture. This section will discuss ways in which we can be more attuned to urban climatic conditions. It will discuss the uniqueness of urban temperature, humidity, and climate change effects, and ways we can affect these and visualize them through our architecture. This section will discuss ways in which we can be more attuned to urban climatic conditions. It will discuss the uniqueness of urban temperature, humidity, and climate change effects, and ways we can affect these and visualize them through our architecture. This section will discuss ways in which we can be more attuned to urban climatic conditions. It will discuss the uniqueness of urban temperature, humidity, and climate change effects, and ways we can affect these and visualize them through our architecture. This section will discuss ways in which we can be more attuned to urban climatic conditions.

prismatic sundial Designer: Sim Van der Ryn Location: Hopland, CA Ecosystem Type: oak woodland Climate Elements: sun Senses engaged: sight Design Strategies: Light, Reflection, Color, Dynamism Description: The Real Goods Solar Living Center, designed by Sim Van der Ryn in collaboration with landscape designers Chris and Stephanie Tebbutt, uses 90% less energy than an equivalent conventional retail space, with such features as fully passive cooling/heating and waterless toilets. The hemicycle shape of the building responds directly to the path of the sun; the Solar Oasis fountain is in fact a large solar calendar and sundial. The clerestory windows, outfitted with light shelves and solar scoops, are precisely positioned to allow for full natural lighting in daylight hours. As a result, the building itself magnifies and accentuates a reading of the time of day, and employees are said to take great joy in watching the sun rake its way across the roofs. Moreover, the south-facing windows are outfitted with prisms that project the incoming sun in beautiful patterns on the floor, â&#x20AC;&#x153;translatingâ&#x20AC;? the movement of the sun into a visually stimulating form. Add to this the deciduous vines employed as seasonal shading devices, and the final result is a building that celebrates the dynamism, movement, and change of the very element that powers it: the sun. Applicability: This is a perfect example of a building that not only fosters awareness of outdoor conditions, but is also itself dependent on them for every aspect of its function. Through its layout and details, the building fosters a sense of codependence.

folding facade Designers: Aedas Architects Location: Abu Dhabi, UAE Ecosystem Type: Arid Desert Climate elements: Sunlight, temperature Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Dynamism, Geometric shapes Description: “the 145 meter Al Bahar towers’ Masharabiya shading system was developed by the computational design team at Aedas. Using a parametric description for the geometry of the actuated facade panels, the team was able to simulate their operation in response to sun exposure and changing incidence angles during the different days of the year... The screen operates as a curtain wall, sitting two meters outside the buildings’ exterior on an independent frame. Each triangle is coated with fiberglass and programmed to respond to the movement of the sun as a way to reduce solar gain and glare. In the evening, all the screens will close... It is estimated that such a screen will reduc[e] solar gain by more than 50 percent” (ArchDaily) Applicability: While the folding facade in the context of Abu Dhabi is meant as an iconic design feature that lets this tower stand out from its neighbors, there is no reason that systems like this cannot be deployed at a larger scale on a range of building types and budgets, especially in hot climates like this one. While automated louver systems are becoming more common, few are as visually expressive as this one. combining energy-efficient shading with a vivid translation of the sun’s movement across the sky.

fire flowers Designers: Jenna Didier and Oliver Hess Location: Los Angeles, CA Ecosystem Type: Coastal scrub Climate elements: Temperature, Humidity Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Color, Natural Shapes Description: “Live Forever, the work of Infranatural (Jenna Didier and Oliver Hess), is a network of custom laser-cut origami-like brass flowers affixed to the exterior wall of a Los Angeles fire station. Nested within the flowers is a series of LED lights connected through a controller programmed to run animations based on humidity and temperature data collected from sensors mounted on the roof of the building. Lighting is varied in intensity relative to the incoming data which gives the piece an evolving nature and enables it to indicate the current fire-risk in the County of Los Angeles.” (eco-publicart.org/liveforever) Applicability: While many interventions in this catalog focus on connecting urban dwellers to restorative and regenerative aspects of ecology, it is equally important for urban dwellers to be aware of the potential for more destructive aspects of nature. By serving as a real-time fire danger warning system, these exquisite flowers invite the neighborhood to make fire vigilance a more present—and perhaps more pleasant—aspect of their daily lives.

inverse aquarium Designers: BIG Location: New York, NY Ecosystem Type: Temperate deciduous forest Climate elements: Sea Level Rise Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Light, reflections, shelter, abstraction Description: The “reverse aquarium.” proposed as part of a waterfront resilience projects, enables visitors to see the current tide level and compare it to highs, lows, and historic events. It also becomes a useful tool for tracking sea level rise. Applicability: While the proposed design details draw from an admittedly uninspiring minimalist vocabulary, the idea that these kinds of viewing windows could become more commonplace in tidal cities–perhaps as features of waterfront parks or visitor centers–is quite intriguing.

icicle cornice Designers: James Gamble Rogers Location: New Haven, CT Ecosystem Type: Temperate Deciduous Forest Climate elements: Snow Senses engaged: Sight, touch Design Strategies: Levels of scale, Ornament Description: This roof in a residential college at Yale University is perfectly shaped for the formation of icicles. As snow collects in the sawtooth cornice and begins to melt, it forms ideally shaped icicles that harmonize and blend with the gothic architecture. Applicability: Imagine if we built more buildings that are designed to transform and manipulate the precipitation that falls on them. Through the deliberate formation of icicles, architects can reinvigorate a sense of wonder about winter precipitation.

forecast flame Designers: Wisconsin Gas Co Location: Milwaukee, WI Ecosystem Type: Lakeside Prairie Climate elements: Weather conditions Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Light, Color, Curved Forms Description: A Milwaukee classic, the “flame” on top of the historic Art Deco gas company building, tells residents for miles around the weather forecast for the next day. “When the flame is red, warm weather is ahead. When the flame is gold, watch out for cold. When the flame is blue, there’s no change in view. When there’s a flickering flame, expect snow or rain!

Applicability: Since it was installed in 1956, the flame has been a fixture on the Milwaukee skyline, alerting thousands of people to the weather. While the intervention is particularly appropriate for a gas company whose profits depend on cold weather, it is possible to imagine many kinds of weather signaling systems for prominent urban buildings.

Figure 15 - diagram of main characteristics of urban soils, from Richard Formanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Urban Ecology: Science of Cities

earth This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. This section will discuss the uniqueness of urban soil conditions and the importance of underlying geology and soil type to the city built over them. 69

geological fireplace Designer: Mary Colter Location: Grand Canyon National Park, AZ Ecosystem Type: Southwest desert Earth Elements: geology Senses engaged: sight, touch Design Strategies: Natural materials Description: “Known as the “Geologic Fireplace,” the layered stones of [Colter’s] design were put together in the same geological sequence as the rock found along the Bright Angel trail - from river to rim. Stacked on each side of the hearth is a collection of water-worn Colorado River rocks. The base of the fireplace consists of dark-colored Vishnu Schist. The next layer of rock represents the Grand Canyon Supergroup, their tilted appearance caused by the separation of ancient continents. Above the fireplace opening is a distinctive layer of flat-lying sedimentary rocks that give the Grand Canyon its “stairstep” appearance. Some of the youngest rocks are found at the top of the fireplace. That band of light-colored stone completes the geologic timeline of the Grand Canyon. With assistance from the park’s Chief Naturalist, Edwin McKee, Colter had all of the stone gathered or cut from the canyon walls and brought up by pack mules for her project. Today’s visitors can be thankful for Colter’s perfectionism and attention to detail, qualities that are showcased in this historic, scientifically accurate, and powerful re-creation of the Grand Canyon’s natural environment - in this unique fireplace.” (nps.gov) Applicability: Colter’s hotel lounge acts as a translation device, ompressing and condensing the geological lessons of an enormous canyon into the scale of a single fireplace. The lesson is reinforce throughout the lodge, as many of the pioneer cabins for guests to stay in also feature these geological chimneys. It is a fantastic model for interpretive national park architecture. 71

shale stream Designers: Stacy Levy Location: Pittsburgh, PA Ecosystem Type: Temperate Deciduous Forest Earth elements: Geology Senses engaged: Sight, Touch, Hearing Design Strategies: Dynamism, Curved Forms, Tactility Description: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Ecological, educational, and evocative, this design unites the building with the weather--- vivifying the passage of rainwater from the sky to the ground...Stone basins and runnels serve to collect all the water that falls onto the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s roof and adjacent surfaces. The meandering path for the water visually demonstrates how much rain can be collected from just a single rooftop... This installation magnifies the local geology of the site: the layered, curving edges of stones of the Rain Ravine are translations of the intricate shale patterns found in the streambed in the park below the building ... Visitors to the building are invited to play in the water ... the subtle natural patterns of shale geology of the park become more apparent after seeing the layered path of the Rain Ravine. (Stacy Levy) Applicability: Most impressive is the way that the project develops a regionally-specific language of flow that continues to tell the story of water movement even during dry spells when it is entirely still. Moreover, the project activates visitorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; awareness of the layered rock features found in the park, making them more likely to connect with the processes of sedimentation and erosion on a more empathic level.

dendritic decay Designers: Stacy Levy Location: Philadelphia, PA Ecosystem Type: Temperate Riparian Zone Earth elements: Soil & Pavement Senses engaged: Sight, Smell Design Strategies: Natural Forms, Material juxtaposition Description: “This project harnesses freeze/thaw cycles and the destructive power of plant roots to break down remnant industrial hardscape in Washington Avenue Green... The site’s design links economic and ecological efficiency. While mechanical removal of the entire concrete and asphalt surface would have exhausted the project’s budget, here the natural processes were orchestrated to do the work of decaying the landscape over time... The garden provides a space where children and adults alike can wonder at the power of plants as they break through the surface of the concrete.” (Stacy Levy) Applicability: Levy creates an ecoempathic space out of an industrial site by infecting and inflecting an existing parking lot. She selectively breaks into the concrete of the parking lot in beautiful dendritic patterns, allowing plants to begin to take over. To help communicate the hydrology of the site, glass beads are set into the paving help to communicate the flow of water down the dendritic planters and into a pond and bioswale that treat the water before it reaches the river. Projects that demonstrate the regenerative capacity of plants and reveal the soil underneath the paving we walk on every day can create powerful experiences for urban dwellers.

Figure 16 - relevant figures from Richard Formanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Urban Ecology: Science of Cities

fauna This section will explain the uniqueness of urban fauna and why a new relationship with them is critical for the anthropocene, harnessing thinkers like Donna Haraway and David Gissen. “Strapping cameras onto pigeons or translating fish or bat behavior into text messages are in some ways fundamentally analogous to the early hominid strategies of reading the behavior of other animals in the landscape to aid in the search of water or food. As this eventually developed into the human “art of tracking” (Liebenberg), Sanford Kwinter describes these increasingly sophisticated tactics of reading signs of other organisms in the landscape, accompanied by encephalation, as the origins of a science of the environment from which architects and designers continue to draw.”1 1) Jennifer Wolch and Marcus Owens, Animals in Contemporary Architecture and Design, Humanimalia Volume 8, Number 2 - Spring 2017 http:// www.depauw.edu/site/humanimalia/issue%2016/wolch-owens.html

moth cinema Designer: Natalie Jeremijenko Location: London, UK Ecosystem Type: Temperate Woodland Fauna Elements: moths Senses engaged: sight Design Strategies: Light, Shadow, Animation Description: “Put a garden in the middle of a city, and you have a nice green space. Nestle a bright light in the middle of that garden, and you have a hot new moth hangout. Direct that light at a big blank screen to display the moths’ shadows, and you have the Moth Cinema. “Instead of being bedazzled and fried,” Jeremijenko said, “the moths find a moth garden with native plants and host plants so that they bounce around, casting dramatic shadows, playing out their nightly dramas, their love triangles, their adventures.” Every moth cinema features two nocturnes — one that humans can hear and one in the ultrasonic spectrum that moths and bats can hear. By scrambling bats’ ultrasound, Jeremijenko said, the moth cinema creates a safe haven for city moths.” (grist.org) Applicability: In this installation, Jeremijenko brilliantly turns an enormous liability for urban moths—an excess of nighttime lighting—into an opportunity for interspecies connection. By creating a beautiful shadow theater out of the moths’ evening rituals, the moth cinema helps to create a deeper connection with and interest in urban insect life.

salamander superhighway Designer: Natalie Jeremijenko with Alex Felson Location: New York, NY Ecosystem Type: Temperate Forest / Wetland Fauna elements: Amphibians Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Color, Visibility Description: “Jeremijenko built this tube to provide [salamanders] safe passage across a busy road. To attract the salamanders, Jeremijenko put a large black arrow at the entrance of the tube to make the ground slightly warmer than the surrounding area. She also placed little holes along the tube to mimic the kind of spotty lighting that salamanders are used to in the wild. Jeremijenko designed these “micro-speed bumps” to connect salamander habitats and draw attention to the other organisms using human infrastructure. She also installed sensors in the tube to detect movement, so when a salamander used the superhighway, a twitter account would tweet” updates (grist.org) Applicability: Amphibians are especially vulnerable to the effects of development and are often ignored by urban residents where they do survive. While meant more as a provocation than a ready-to-go infrastructure toolkit, the Salamander Superhighway offers an intriguing vision for accommodating the needs of salamanders in cities while increasing their visibility to passerby. The subtle echoes between the salamander skin and the yellow stripe pattern on the “speed bump” help to insert an otherwise hard-to-spot creature into the aesthetics of the urban environment.

nest facade Designers: Harrison Atelier Location: Brooklyn, NY Ecosystem Type: Temperate woodland Fauna elements: Birds, Bees Senses engaged: Sight, Sound Design Strategies: Organic Shapes Description: “‘The Birds and the Bees’ proposes a locus of cohabitation for pollinators and humans” comprising “a multi-species façade system. Modular wall panels propose combinations of materials and aperture sizes to create new dwelling typologies for local cavity-nesting birds and solitary bees ... Most commercially available or even DIY birdhouses are designed for human convenience, often to maximize the use of a single piece of lumber, and usually resembling a miniature human house. The human-like roof makes a good perch for predators, especially during nesting season when birds may leave the nest as often as every fifteen minutes; also, the flat base of most bird boxes do not allow for drainage and can accrue fungus and bacteria.” Here, “panel installation directly into the building façade eliminates the need for a roof, while channels along the panel interiors drain water from the nest cavities. Apertures are sized to deter predators, while the outpocketing that forms the nesting cavity contains a ladder to help fledglings crawl out of the nest.” (Harrison Atelier) Applicability: Harrison Atelier’s critique of the standard birdhouse is on point: in designing house-like birdhouses for human cultural legibility and not for the needs of the birds themselves, we do our cohabitants a disservice. On the other hand, does this facade proposal inspire nearly as much empathy for the birds as a bird “house” would?

bat billboard Designers: Chris Woebken with Natalie Jeremijenko Location:Urban America Ecosystem Type:-Fauna elements: Bats Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Subversion of existing infrastructure, dynamism Description: “The Bat Billboard, an interactive billboard that doubles as housing for bats, is a way to... [create] a bridge between bats and humans. Inside a standard billboard structure, urban bats find a safe space to live and hibernate... Monitoring equipment inside the billboard uses voice-recognition software to map and translate the calls of resident bats, matches them to archives of various call patterns and meanings, currently being compiled by biologists, and displays the resulting messages on a screen. The billboard inventively reclaims urban infrastructure for animal habitat and also functions as a public face for the bats, translating their habits and activities in a way that humans can understand ... The billboard can become an interactive display and a public face for the bats and can enable them to communicate with us about their needs in the urban environment. This communication can be playful and has the potential to create a previously unseen form of viral advertising, as well as an ongoing attention to fostering, studying, and maintaining the bat population therein.” (Chris Woebken) Applicability: Woebken’s proposed design is an intruguing form of interspecies translation, one that hijacks one of the most pernicious attention-hogs in the urban environment—the billboard—for pedagogical purposes. Could the design be even more effective if the intervention more actively altered the form of the billboard instead of being “tacked on?” 85

multispecies hearth Designers: Sarah Gunawan Location: Suburban America Ecosystem Type: -Fauna elements: Racoons, Swallows Senses engaged: Sight, smell Design Strategies: Subversion of existing infrastructure, Participatory elements Description: “The project explores possible conditions of cohabitation through the design of domestic prosthetics for the single-family detached house... By engaging animals within human systems, the domestic prosthetics seek to shift the conceptual limits of human territory to enable animal cohabitation within the suburban biome. The Compost Chimney prosthetic engages a common and problematic species, the raccoon. In the city, the raccoon is an inevitable neighbour ... the Compost Chimney prosthetic seeks to productively employ them in the conversion of organic waste to nutrient rich soil. Homeowners insert food waste from the kitchen into the composting chamber. An external gear wheel, which the raccoon can easily rotate, circulates a conveyor belt inside which aerates and moves the compost. In exchange for their labour, the raccoon receives a morsel of food dispensed from the Wage Tube. Meanwhile the upper volume of the Compost Chimney provides much needed habitat for chimney swifts, a unique bird... Affixing a Compost Chimney prosthetic to any suburban home could provide chimney swifts with safe habitat while simultaneously managing food waste and fortifying the suburban soil.“ (Sarah Gunawan) Applicability: More than a device to increase the visibility of urban animals, Gunawan’s chimney actively engages them in the creation of a new kind of symbiotic ecosystem. This is a fascinating example of one way that ecoempathy can be built at a private scale into the daily 87

avian window Designers: DesignGroup Architects Location: Columbus, OH Ecosystem Type: Prairie / Wetland Fauna elements: Birds Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Light, Ornament, Zoomorphic Patterns, Framed View Description: Since the appearance of large expanses of glass on building facades, bird deaths from window collisions have been a huge problem. While there are many â&#x20AC;&#x153;bird-friendlyâ&#x20AC;? design tools to steer birds away from dangerous facades, as one simple solution, many builders have opted to make windows more bird-friendly, and less transparent-looking, by putting decals shaped like birds on large expanses of glass. The Grange Insurance Audubon Center in Columbus, Ohio, is an excellent example of this applied in a more intentional manner. Here, bird-safe fritting on the glass of offices and clerestory windows erupts into an abstracted celebration of bird flocks. Applicability: It seems fitting that the facade element designed to protect the birds also helps to celebrate them. Flora and fauna integrated into glazing systems can help to tell an ecological narrative and make building occupants more aware of the life outside the window, acting as a framing device for their natural setting.

ecological post Designers: Chris Woebken with Elliott P. Montgomery Location: Minneapolis, MN Ecosystem Type: Northern plains Fauna elements: Birds, Butterflies; Lichens Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Subversion of existing infrastructure Description: “Handwritten letters are still considered to be among the most persuasive form of political messaging despite the prevalence of digital communication... The iconic US mail collection box served as a starting point for an inter-species postal service. What if the nation’s mail collection boxes were redesigned as dual-purpose message collection stations, for humans as well as another species group?... Three mail collection boxes have been designed ... each focused on a group of indicator species which can be used to infer environmental conditions. First, a migratory bird mail collection box serves as a birdhouse that listens to the calls of birds such as warblers and simultaneously allows us to track shifts in their migration patterns in the spring and fall. Second, a pollinator mail collection box photographs monarch butterflies and other insects by alluring them with an artificial flower. These indicators can signal environmental stressors such as pollutants and radiation. Third, a lichen mail collection box straddles a boulder covered in lichen, enabling viewers to observe growth patterns and color changes. Lichens are good indicators of air quality.” (Chris Woebken) Applicability: Woebken’s project is a delightful extension of an already-existing piece of urban infrastructure: the USPS collection box. The idea that these universal features can also become real-time ecological sensors, monitoring indicator species, is an intriguing one, as is the notion that they could be rendered aesthetically attractive to other species besides ourselves. 91

underwater choir Designers: The Living with Natalie Jeremijenko Location: New York, NY Ecosystem Type: Tidal Wetland Fauna elements: Fish, Mussels Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Light, Reflections, Dynamism Description: “Though New York is surrounded by rivers, residents have little to no interaction with the water and little understanding of the ecosystem below ... Installed in the East River and the Bronx River, two networks of interactive tubes contain underwater sensors monitoring water quality, presence of fish, and human interest in the river ecosystem. The buoys light up when fish swim underneath and display the water quality with a shift in color. An SMS interface allows visitors to communicate with the fish, to receive real-time information about the river, and spark conversations by contributing to a display of collective interest in the river ecosystem.” (The Living) Even more ambitious is the project’s next planned phase: the introduction of biosensors in the form of live mussels. Mussels open their shells wider when water quality improves and cease filtration when it is too polluted, so a new set of sensors is being installed that will measure the river mussels’ gape and beam the information back to the lights in the river. Applicability:The idea behind the project is brilliant, but an important question remains: how legible is this form of Ecoempathy to the average passerby, and how can the connection of the beautiful twinkling lights in the East River to the fish and mussels they are “speaking for” be made more obvious without being overt? This is where the on-shore experience of signage and visual cues and connections becomes most significant.

Figure 17 - graphs showing benefits of street trees in various environments, from Richard Formanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Urban Ecology: Science of Cities

flora This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their important aesthetic and neurological role in cities. This section will describe the importance of plants to the health of the urban environment, as well as their im95

forest frame Designer: Alvar Aalto Location: Noormarkku, Finland Ecosystem Type: Pine forest Flora Elements: pines Senses engaged: sight, touch Design Strategies: View framing, natural materials and patterns Description: At this villa, one of Aaltoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great masterpieces, repeating vertical elements in the living room precisely mirror the rhythm of pine trunks in the woods outside the window. So intent was Aalto on the color of the lacquered wood posts matching that of the Finnish pinesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; bark that he custom-ordered red pine wood from Oregon for the job. These vertical posts, through which one visually accesses the window and the woods beyond it from the living room, help to create a powerful unity between outside and inside. The house forces its inhabitants to see the woods outdoors differently, as a symphony of verticals; this is especially so because the tall pines host most of their foliage above the top border of the picture window. One starts to see the artifice in the natural arrangement of the trunks outside as well as in the architect-designed interior. Because the indoor verticals are as tall as humans and particularly prevalent along circulation routes, they evoke a sense of empathy and serve as an intermediate scale for empathizing with the giant pine trees outside. The wooden handrail, meanwhile, invites occupants to touch and physically connect with the pines. The quirky collection of horizontal elements and appendages helps to create the feel of an irregular set of pine trunks. Applicability: While Aaltoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s meditative design is particularly appropriate to the Finnish landscape, these kinds of interventions can help heighten awareness of local flora even in an urban forest. 97

urban canopy Designers: Kas Leiva and Misha Semenov Location: New Haven, CT Ecosystem Type: Temperate Deciduous Forest Flora elements: Urban street trees Senses engaged: Sight, Touch, Smell Design Strategies: Fractal Shapes, Natural Forms, Prospect and Refuge, Human Scale Description: The Urban Canopy Parklet is an ecological classroom built over two former parking spaces. Designed as a gateway to deeper experiences with urban nature for a traditionally underserved community, the parklet abstracts the shapes of the city’s most prominent tree species into beautiful canopies built with recycled wood of former street trees, with tables, seating, and signage in English and Spanish. As they pause under these “trees,” their canopies just large enough to envelop a person, the parklet’s users may notice the distinctive leaf cutouts, which look just like the shapes of foliage on the towering real trees overhead. As they sit among fragrant herb plantings, visitors are invited to run their hands along the undulating edges of the tabletops, getting to know these unique trees’ characters through texture, color, and form. Educational signage throughout the space explains that each of these unique pieces of wood came from a tree that grew in New Haven, and that each canopy represents one of the tree species that share this city’s streets with humans. Visitors to the Urban Canopy Parklet leave with a sense of appreciation for all that trees do for our city. Applicability: By inviting visitors to sit and hang out under a human-sized representation of an urban street tree, the parklet helps to foster more personal, empathic connections between people and the species they coinhabit the city with. The architecture becomes itself a field guide and a bridge to greater engagement with the environment. 99

Figure 18 - relevant figures from Richard Formanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Urban Ecology: Science of Cities

100

urban mosaics This section will discuss the idea of the urban landscape mosaic, largely based on the theories and writing of Richard T. Forman and the Baltimore School of Urban Ecology’s patch theory. It will present the importance of understanding one’s place in the landscape mosaic to successful ecological citizenship. This section will discuss the idea of the urban landscape mosaic, largely based on the theories and writing of Richard T. Forman and the Baltimore School of Urban Ecology’s patch theory. It will present the importance of understanding one’s place in the landscape mosaic to successful ecological citizenship. This section will discuss the idea of the urban landscape mosaic, largely based on the theories and writing of Richard T. Forman and the Baltimore School of Urban Ecology’s patch theory. It will present the importance of understanding one’s place in the landscape mosaic to successful ecological citizenship. This section will discuss the idea of the urban landscape mosaic, largely based on the theories and writing of Richard T. Forman and the Baltimore School of Urban Ecology’s patch theory. It will present the importance of understanding one’s place in the landscape mosaic to successful ecological citizenship. This section will discuss the idea of the urban landscape mosaic, largely based on the theories and writing of Richard T. Forman and the Baltimore School of Urban Ecology’s patch theory. It will present the importance of understanding one’s place in the landscape mosaic to successful ecological citizenship. This section will discuss the idea of the urban landscape mosaic, largely based on the theories and writing of Richard T. Forman and the Baltimore School of Urban Ecology’s patch theory. It will present the importance of understanding one’s place in the landscape mosaic to successful ecological citizenship. This section will discuss the idea of the urban landscape mosaic, largely based on the theories and writing of Richard T. Forman and the Baltimore School of Urban Ecology’s patch theory. It will present the importance of understanding one’s place in the landscape mosaic to successful ecological citizenship. 101

102

living biotope map Designer: Urbanarbolismo and Singulargreen Location: Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain Ecosystem Type: Riparian Valley Mosaic Elements: Ecosystem network layout Senses engaged: Sight, Smell, Touch Design Strategies: Abstraction, Color, Light, Plants Description: The green wall on the convention center in the Basque capital of Vitoria-Gasteiz is an abstracted diagram of the transect of ecosystem types found in the region, from marshes and river valleys to forests and mountains. The aim is to depict these primary ecosystems both literally, by cultivating plants and microclimates specific to each type, and more abstractly, through variation in shapes and colors. As one walks from left to right along the facade, the vegetation transitions from moisture-loving valley plants to higher-altitude succulents. This move can be felt physiologically, as moist, dripping stretches of wall give way to fragrant, bushier patches. Remarkably, the wall has spawned an incredible diversity of accompanying insects and birds. A backlit metal panel running the length of the wall explains the locations and species composition of each biotope in a graphically engaging way, while, at a larger scale, a series of LED lights running diagonally across the facade mirrors the journey of the river and its tributaries from the mountains to the valley. Applicability: This layering of ecological information at different scales allows for a richness of intellectual and emotional experience, giving the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s residents a new way to understand and connect with the plants that grow around them. The clear connection between literal plants, abstract geometric patterns, and the more scientific knowledge conveyed by the informational panels makes the project particularly pedagogically effective. 103

104

beach interface Designers: Burle Marx Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Ecosystem Type: Tropical Beach Mosaic elements: Beach-City Interface Senses engaged: Sight Design Strategies: Ornament, Figurative Motifs, Contrast Description: Along Ipanema Beach, Burle Marx’s wave pattern pavement design creates a connection between the carefree sand on one side and the busy, dense street on the other. Beginning as repetitive wave patterns closest to the beach, the shapes in the pavement become more abstract and geometric as they reach toward the buildings. At the same time as it creates this compositional flow, the sidewalk itself acts as a liminal urban space, being wide enough to serve purposes beyond walking: people sit, socialize, or purchase snacks from any of the many kiosks found along the path. The ornamented walkway serves as the anteroom to the beach and creates a seamless relationship between city and ocean in a way that it could not were it paved with simple, unornamented concrete.The sinusoidal wave, a symbol of the cycles and tidal energy of the ocean, becomes the main figural trope anchoring the threshold and serving as a basis for its representation and communication of the “nature” it helps to frame. The more abstract shapes on the urban side of the road help to draw the human habitat into this synthesis. Applicability: Marx’s paving starts to suggest a kind of synergy between the energy of the city and that of the ocean; As people move across the sidewalk, they themselves become like the ever-mobile waves. How can the design of thresholds and transition zones within the urban landscape mosaic highlight key points of interdependency and connection at the interface between the urban and natural systems? 105

106

empathic translation strategies

Ecology and Communication: A Synthesis It is instructive at this point to revisit the important conceptual intersections between Figures 9 and 10, drawn from two texts representing traditions that the Ecoempathy Project aims to bring together. The first, a diagram from Richard Forman’s Urban Ecology: Science of Cities, shows the features and processes of urban ecology that are visible and invisible to our sensory apparatus. As is readily apparent, a vast array of things—from air pollutants to underground creatures—are outside of our sensing abilities, even if they are quite important to our health. A revealing complement to this figure is the summary of architecture’s field of communication from Ashgar Talaye Minai’s Architecture as Environmental Communication. Here, the many environmental cues that our evolved system of perception and cognition is attuned to are summarized. Together, the diagrams suggest a future synthesis: what if Talaye Minai’s communication field of architecture could be employed as a language for the translation of Forman’s “invisibles” into sensable form? How might we tune symbolic and environmental cues to best cater to humans’ sensing abilities? The findings from neuroscience summarized below begin to offer some suggestions.

An Appeal to Empathy Ecoempathy arises from the notion that buildings can help generate feelings of emotional identification with nature. This idea is nothing new; in fact, the discourse on architecture and empathy, recently revived by scholars like Henry Francis Mallgrave, has been active for the last two centuries. Tracing the origins of empathy in design requires a quick detour to 19th-century Germany, where a group of art historians and theoreticians first began to develop a 107

Figure 19 - a page from Charles Moore and Kent Bloomer’s Body, Memory, and Architecture, showing the inherent reading of bodies into architectural form.

theory of empathy in art and architecture. As Kirsten Wagner writes in her essay “Animating Architecture,” by proposing that our spatial representations come out of subjective physiology and intuition rather than predetermined structural properties, Kant opened up the door to investigations of architecture that focused on experience and physicality As Wagner summarizes, the philosopher Lipps believed that “to perceive an object aesthetically and thus to empathize with it is to comprehend the mechanical forces that give the object its specific form. These forces can only be perceived by a body that is itself subject to them.”24As humans cognizant of the mechanical forces acting on us, we perceive something beyond the form itself. Prominent art historian Heinrich Wolfflin picked up this thread and began to more seriously develop a theory of embodiment. Wolfflin believed that every object we see is judged by analogy to our own bodies: “The object–even if completely dissimilar to ourselves–will not only transform itself immediately into a creature, with head and foot, back and front … we go so far as to experience, to a highly sensitive degree, the spiritual condition and contentment or discontent expressed by any configuration, however different from ourselves.” Seeing every physical form as the manifestation of an internal process causes us to experience a recurrence of that emotion as we would feel it with our own bodies.25 It is for this reason, writes Geoffrey Scott in The Architecture of Humanism, that “soaring spires,” “springing arches,” and “swelling domes” are far more than mere turns of phrase. According to Scott, the “concrete spectacle” of architecture can “stir[…] our physical memory,” allowing us to identify with the apparent state of a structure. In other words, we “transcribe[…] ourselves into terms of architecture.”26 In the twentieth century, the mantle of studying the bodily experience of art and architecture was carried by the phenomenologists, notably Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, and later absorbed by a generation of postwar American architects, among them Kent Bloomer and Charles Moore, whose Body, Memory, and Architecture (Figure 19)27 is a beautiful exploration of architecture’s ties to the human body. With the aid of neuroscience, we are finally discovering experimental evidence for some of the ideas that the empathy theorists and phenomenologists first put forth. As David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese (the latter a co-discoverer of mirror neurons in monkeys) write in their article on “Motion, Emotion, and Empathy in Esthetic Experience,” multiple studies have confirmed that there is an MNS (Mirror Neuron 108

System) in the human ventral premotor cortex and posterior parietal cortex. When the MNS is activated, observation of an action being completed by a different subject leads to the activation of the same neutral networks that fire during execution of that same action. While initial findings were limited to simple physical gestures such as grasping or hitting, MNS has now been shown to respond to implied actions, where the actual final stage is occluded but inferable (for instance, a hand reaching for but not quite grabbing an object still activates the “grasping” neurons). Moreover, the authors write, “when we see the body part of someone else being touched or caressed, or when we see two objects touching each other, our somatosensory cortices are activated as if our body were subject to tactile stimulation.” These findings help to explain the potency of such images as Caravaggio’s Incredulity of Thomas and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel creation scene(Images 20, 21)—when viewing such images, we feel the poking of flesh and the reaching of hands with our own bodies. Most importantly in terms of our evolutionary history as a social species, the mirror neuron system is also directly involved in what Freedberg and Gallese call “embodied simulation,” our capacity to comprehend the feelings of other subjects in social interactions. As they explain, when we perceive actions, emotions, and sensations in others, they “activate our own internal representations of the body states that are associated with these social stimuli,” allowing us to build an implicit model of those others’ behavior before our rational thinking even has a chance to kick in. MNS enables our perception of communicative facial actions (for instance, cheek movement neurons that activate when an interlocutor smiles) and learning of complex motor acts, allowing us to acquire the ability to do something with our bodies simply by watching another person. The fact that mirror neuron activity is reduced in autistic people suggests that it may be one of the key building blocks of our ability for socialization and cooperation. Studies have also found that inhibition of the MNS leads to patients’ inability to distinguish and perceive the bodies of other humans, suggesting that this system is at the root of how we perceive other individuals and objects as individual subjects.28 Moreover, these findings suggest that while we are most prone to using our empathetic processing capacities to respond to other humans, we are also prewired to read other elements of our world as expressive and sentient subjects or objects of empathizable processes. One can imagine that plant stems striving 109

Figure 20 - detail, Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo

Figure 21 - Caravaggio’s Incredulity of Thomas

toward a light source, though not explicitly body-like, can still cause an embodied simulation of reaching and stretching. As Michael Arbib writes, there are limits to our ability to empathize with other species and subjects—for instance, a dog barking does not trigger the neural networks associated with speech production— but “if enough of the population fires in relation to the building, it might trigger a related population that corresponds to your interaction with another person.”29 Though mirror neurons are found in other social species of primates, it is useful to step back and assess why the empathetic systems of Homo sapiens are particularly well-developed. According to Robin Dunbar’s social brain hypothesis, the expansion of social networks and the evolution of the social brain worked in a positive feedback loop; the increasingly social nature of human beings favored the development of brains better-wired for embodied simulation and empathy.30 At the same time as our brains grew larger and more complex, our dependence on others in infancy and childhood grew ever-greater. Human babies are uniquely helpless; to reach the same developmental stage as a newborn chimpanzee, human infants would have to gestate for almost two years.31 It is as a result of our need to form close bonds in order to survive infancy and childhood, scientists speculate, that we evolved many of our strongest social and empathetic characteristics. Even our loss of fur may be seen as an adaptation that allows for greatest bonding between a mother and child or a couple, ensuring higher survival rates. As a result of this, designer Sarah Robinson writes, “we dwell in a reciprocating circuit. We are built to be received into a world to which we must connect.”32

Connection, Measured Architect and researcher Ann Sussman, working together with the Tufts-based lab of Justin Hollander, has spent the last several years trying to understand the ways in which these kinds of evolved neurological mechanisms influence human responses to visual stimuli. Advertisers have already been studying and exploiting these mechanisms for decades. The studies performed by Sussman in tandem with those by Hollander involve using sensors to track the eye movements, facial expressions, and neural activity of trial subjects looking at buildings and cities in the first few seconds before conscious, rational processing begins. Sussman’s studies reveal that not only are people generally more stimulated by and attracted to buildings 110

that have features that can be read as faces, but our eyes, in the first few seconds of viewing a building, also tend to focus on the parts of a façade that most resemble human features. This is clear in the “heat map” for her eye tracking study of a New England carriage house (Image 22). Sussman cites neuroscientist Eric Kandel’s assertion that more of our brain is engaged in facial recognition than in the recognition of any other visual object–we may even have a gene for facial recognition.33 In a modern glass building, on the other hand (Image 23), our eyes tend to gloss over the façade, focusing on everything but the building itself—trees with their fractal patterns, people on the street, and areas of contrast. Moreover, all people tend to have the same eye-tracking “heat-map” when they are looking at human faces or geometries that are reminiscent of faces— except for autistic people. As Sussman writes, “For a social species like us, blank walls are of no interest. Our brain, knowing us well, saves its energy for focusing on what we love most: ourselves.” Product designers know this, which is why car makers work hard to give cars physiognomies that will attract customers and companies like Apple cleverly use faces to attract attention to particular parts of an advertisement.34 Sussman and Ward’s findings help to expand on the knowledge from mirror neuron studies and empathy theory by offering evidence that our evolved social brain is indeed constantly looking for subject-like features in the environment that surrounds us. Our innate tendency to focus on representations of faces and bodies explains the abundance of biologically-inspired ornament and statuary on traditional buildings around the world. As our first fixation in any façade or building (see Sussman’s heat map for Palladio’s Villa Rotunda, for instance, in which the statues are the first elements to receive attention), these elements can be key tools for emphasizing ecological features. Moreover, they can help create a narrative or story, which captivates our social brains.

Figure 22 - heat map of a carriage house showing our facial fixation, from Ann Sussman’s studies

Figure 23 - heat map of a modern building, from Ann Sussman’s studies

Image of the Self, Image of Vision The idea that we are looking for images of ourselves as biological beings in the world around us resonates with the thinking of Christopher Alexander, who, in his series on the Nature of Order, speculates that the kinds of objects and buildings that people feel most attached to are those that provide the most spiritually wholesome mirror of our own selves. In Alexander’s view, the ability of an object to act as the mirror of the self corresponds less to its resemblance to a human 111

Figure 24 - map showing clear visual preference for human figures, from Ann Sussman’s studies

Figure 25 - lllustration of fractal dimensions

Figure 26 - examples of natural patterns on the landscape, many of them fractal, from Richard Forman’s Urban Ecology: Science of Cities

body or face per se and more to its embodiment of the characteristics that we humans perceive to be the properties of life, things like fractal levels of scale, strong centers, local symmetries, and interlock. Alexander’s hypotheses about degrees of perceived “life” have also found concrete justification in contemporary studies. Studies reveal that our visual preferences may be dictated by the perceptual act of seeing itself, as determined by our evolved brain mechanics. University of Oregon neuroscientist Richard Taylor found that viewing fractal patterns is accompanied by stress reduction of 60 percent – a surprisingly large effect for a nonmedicinal treatment.35 Taylor’s explanation for this astounding statistic is that our retinal search patterns—the way that our eyes scan our environment—are themselves fractal. Because humans evolved in a natural environment in which we had to read shapes such as trees or follow the paths of game animals, our eyes have evolved to take in the world around us in several passes of decreasing scale. Fractals with the highest calming effects were in a precise range of D—the fractal dimension—, of 1.3-1.5, that mirrors our structure of vision. According to Taylor, “The stress-reduction is triggered by a physiological resonance that occurs when the fractal structure of the eye matches that of the fractal image being viewed.”36 It is no surprise that Ann Sussman found not just increased attention but also more smiling and positive emotion in subjects who observed a garage wall with fractal art as opposed to a blank façade. These applied studies help to better explain the conjectures of Alexander and mathematician and architecture theorist Nikos Salingaros, a fellow contributor to this volume, who has found other significant mathematical properties of buildings our brains react most strongly to. Nature’s patterns are pre-set by our evolution, built into the way we perceive the world around us. Looking at traditional ornament, whether the moldings on a greek temple or the geometric screens of Chinese gardens, confirms the universal importance of fractal scaling and biomorphic detail to human cultures around the planet.

Empathy as a Design Strategy Why do fractals, degrees of life, and faces matter for applying Ecoempathy to real-world design? They are tools that designers can use for generating emotional connections. In the course of her research, Ann 112

Sussman writes, her team developed the mantra that “fixations drive exploration” after discovering that “unconscious hidden habits, such as where our eyes “fixate” without conscious input, determine where our attention goes.”37 The design of buildings and cities has precisely this power with respect to ecology: it can direct our “fixations,” thus driving not just “exploration” and curiosity but also a deeper sense of empathy. If a hydrological feature is designed in a way that maximizes attention of all the senses, the office workers in that building will feel a more visceral connection to the building’s water usage. If the design of a framing device for nature takes advantage of our predilection for seeing certain templates in architecture—faces, bodies, fractals—it may make a previously-ignored view more immediately memorable. If a material is finished in a way that clearly demonstrates the natural forces that shaped it, its viewers may experience a mirroring of those forces on their own bodies. One does not have to buy into the idea that embodied simulation is the only mechanism for experiencing architecture to believe that forms explicitly, empirically designed for ecological empathy can be effective tools in the effort to connect humans more fully to nature. 24 Kirsten Wagner & Jonathan Blower (2014) Animating Architecture: Empathy and Architectonic Space, Art in Translation, 6:4, 399-435. 25 Heinrich Wölfflin, “The Causes of the Changes in Style,” in Renaissance and Baroque (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966). 26 Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of Humanism: A Study in the History of Taste, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1914, 212. 27 Kent C. Bloomer and Charles Willard Moore, Body, Memory, and Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). 28 David Freeberg and Victorio Gallese, “Motion, Emotion, and Empathy in Esthetic Experience,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11 (5) (2007), 197-203. 29 Arbib, Michael. “Toward A Neuroscience Of The Design Process,” in Sarah Robinson and Juhani Pallasmaa, eds., Mind in Architecture: Neuroscience, Embodiment, and the Future of Design, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015). 30 Harry Francis Mallgrave, “Enculuration, Sociality, and the Built Environment,” in Juhani Pallasmaa, Harry Francis Mallgrave, Sarah Robinson, and Vittorio Gallese, eds., Architecture and Empathy (A Tapio Wirkkala-Rut Bryk Design Reader, 2015). 31 Kate Wong, “Why Humans Give Birth to Helpless Babies,” Scientific American Blog, August 28, 2012 32 Sarah Robinson, “Boundaries of Skin,” in Gallese et al., eds., Architecture and Empathy. 33 Nicholas G. Shakeshaft and Robert Plomin, “Genetic specificity of face recognition,” PNAS October 13, 2015 112 (41) 12887-12892. 34 Ann Sussman and Janice Ward, The Genetics of Design: The Biology behind Design that Delights, https://geneticsofdesign.com/ 35 R. P. Taylor, “Reduction of Physiological Stress Using Fractal Art and Architecture,” Leonardo 39 (3) June 2006, 245-251. 36 Florence Williams, “Why Fractals are so Soothing,” The Atlantic Jan 26, 2017, 37 Ann Sussman and Janice Ward, “Game-Changing Eye-Tracking Studies Reveal How We Actually See Architecture,” Common Edge, Nov 27, 2017, 113

Figure 27 - an empathic nature experience in the Urban Canopy parklet (see the Flora chapter for more details on this project)

114