Emergent Behavior II - The Idea Incubator

Can architecture inspire emergent behavior? In the last post we entertained the idea of applying the scientific principle of emergent behavior to personal development. Now we ask, "Can the actual architecture structure, play a role in emergent behavior? Can the dynamic of these elements: volume, material, light, and flow, create behavior that might not emerge in a different physical space?"

Eugene Kohn says one of the guiding philosophies of KPF Architecture is to build
environments that, "allow the inhabitants to be the best they can be, at what they do, within the space created for their purpose." Doesn't a physics lab need space for experiments? Don't theaters need backstage spaces to rehearse intimate dialog? Don't restaurant kitchens need easy access to fresh produce? Don't ideas need space to flourish?

In his innovative book, "Where Good Ideas Come From" Steven Johnson describes platforms of creative breakthroughs. "Most hotbeds of innovation have similar physical spaces associated with them: Homebrew Computing Club in Silicon Valley; Freud's Wednesday salon at 19 Bergasse; the eighteenth-century English coffeehouse. All these spaces were, in their own smaller-scale fashion, emergent platforms." These were the spaces where the ideas that emerged were markedly different from the sum of the components of ideas carried in by the travelers, the students and the innovators. "The spaces turned out to have these unsual properties: they made people think differently, because they created an environment where different kinds of thoughts could productively collide and recombine." So it wasn't simply a stockpile of ideas, but a place where ideas were cross-pollinated and blossomed as better ideas.

I have said that we should think of our productive self in terms of a place, meaning our persona and surrounding temperament should be approachable, like a welcoming front garden, open to new perspectives, challenging, creative and fun. It should encourage the free exchange of ideas and acknowledge that bad ideas aren't bad per se, but may just have bad applications. What eventually will unfold from a platform that's open-all-night is a behavioral mindset that refuses to condone anything less than wondrous.

Ideas need a forum to be observed. They need a place to linger in the collective energy of your mentors and friends; a pot and filter through which to percolate.

Architect Philip Frelon explains that innovation happens in an organic way, “when ideas are put on the table and discussed. And that the question remains suspended in the air for a while before a solution settles to the ground, and that can only happen in the kind of environment that encourages communication and introspection at all levels.”

In an interview on ArchDaily.com, Eugene Koh spoke about what goes on inside of buildings. "Our goal as architects is to create buildings that inspire people to do whatever it is in that space they need to do. That inspiration comes from within the building as much as from the way it looks from the outside."

Think back on some of the places you've worked; those with long hallways, little natural light, plenty of walls and cubicles to forbid human interaction. How creative and inspired were you in that place? Cubicles and prison cells have a lot in common.

Now imagine working in an open space, with high ceilings and waves of natural light; a place where the exchange of greetings is as essential to the environment as the sharing of ideas; a place you can't wait to grow in, not a place you can't wait to escape from. If architecture can inspire the thrill of walking into an arena, or the awe of a cathedral, certainly it can lend itself to the amalgamation of ideas and the personal transformation of the individual who grows within that place.

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