Have you ever gotten lost in a building that was difficult to find? Thoughtful building design should be centered around the people who will use the building. But that’s not an easy task.
It’s not just about navigation. Think of a sleepy or unproductive office or a health center with a stimulating atmosphere. What works for one person may not work for another. People have different minds and bodies, and they want and need different things. So how do you take everything into account?
To answer that question, neuroscientists and architects have joined forces in a massive laboratory in East London where researchers can build simulated worlds. In this laboratory, scientists can control light, temperature, and sound. They can create illusions of a foggy night or the echo of birdsong in the morning.
And they can study how volunteers react to these environments, whether they’re simulated grocery stores, hospitals, crosswalks, or schools. So I was walking around a fake art museum wearing a modified baseball cap with sensors that tracked my movements.
I first visited the Human-Environment-Activity Research Center, or PEARL, last July. I spoke with Hugo Spears, a neuroscientist at University College London, about his work using video games to study how people navigate. Spears said he’s working on another project that explores how people navigate in realistic environments and how they react during an evacuation, which can be a matter of life or death.
For their research, Spiers and his colleagues have set up what they call a “mock museum” within PEARL. The entire center is a fairly large laboratory, measuring about 100 meters long, 40 meters wide, and in some places having ceilings as high as 10 meters. Spiers says there is no other research center like it in the world.
The gallery’s layout resembled a maze when viewed from above, with black sheets hanging to create pathways. The exhibit itself was a video of dramatic artwork created by UCL students.
When I visited in July, Spears and his colleagues were conducting a small pilot study to test their setup. As a volunteer participant, I was given a numbered black cap with a square board on top, displaying a large QR code. This code was tracked by cameras above and around the gallery. The cap also had sensors that transmitted wireless signals to devices around the maze, pinpointing my location within 15 centimeters.
At first, we asked all the volunteers (most of whom seemed to be students) to explore the gallery as they would any other place. I walk around, watch videos, and eavesdrop on other volunteers talking about their research and upcoming paper deadlines. It’s all pretty fun and calming.
That feeling disappeared in the second part of the experiment, when we were each given a list of numbers, told that each referred to a numbered screen, and told that we had to visit each screen in the order in which it appeared on the list. “Good luck, everyone,” Spears said.
Suddenly everyone seemed to be rushing around, trying to move quickly while passing each other and avoiding collisions. “Everyone’s a little excited, huh?” I overheard one volunteer say as I bumped into another volunteer. I hadn’t finished my work yet when Spears said the experiment was over. As I walked toward the exit, I noticed that several people were noticeably out of breath.
The full study took place on Wednesday, September 11. This time, there were about 100 volunteers (I wasn’t one of them). Almost all wore modified baseball caps, but some wore more sophisticated equipment, such as EEG caps that measured brain waves or caps that measured blood flow in the brain using near-infrared spectroscopy. Some even wore eye-tracking devices that monitored where they were looking.
As the experiment began, Spears told the volunteers, staff and observers, “Today we’re going to do something quite remarkable.” “It’s a world first,” he said, to have taken such detailed measurements on so many individuals in such an environment.
What I’m trying to say is that observing is much more fun than participating. The stress of remembering directions and navigating the maze was gone. I could sit down and watch data collected from cameras and sensors being projected onto a screen. Volunteers, represented by squiggly colored lines, moved through the gallery in a manner reminiscent of the game Snake.
The study itself was similar to the pilot study, but this time the volunteers were given an additional task. At one point, they were given an envelope with the name of a town or city and were asked to find another person in their group who had received the same envelope. It was interesting to see the groups form. Some groups were given the name of a destination city, such as Bangkok, while others were given a relatively nondescript British city, such as Sloe, famous for being the setting for a British television series. officeAt another point, volunteers were asked to evacuate the gallery from the nearest exit.
The data collected through this study is a treasure trove for Spears and his fellow researchers. The team wants to learn more about how people navigate spaces and whether they move differently when they are alone or in groups. How do friends and strangers interact, and does this depend on whether there are certain types of materials that help them form bonds? How do people respond to evacuation? Do they use the nearest exit as instructed, or do they run on autopilot to the exit they used to enter the space?
All this information is valuable to neuroscientists like Spiers, but it’s also useful to architects like his colleague Fiona Zisch, who works at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture. “We really care about what people think about the places we design,” Zisch said. The findings could help with efforts to not only build new buildings, but also renovate and redesign existing ones.
Built in 2021, PEARL has already been used by engineers, scientists, and architects to help understand how neurodiverse people navigate grocery stores, for example, and to figure out the ideal lighting for pedestrian crosswalks. Jishi himself is passionate about creating equitable spaces where everyone can utilize them to their fullest potential, especially spaces for health and education.
In the past, models used in architecture were typically developed with a physically fit male in mind. “But not everyone is a 6’2” man carrying a briefcase,” Zisch told me. Age, gender, height, and a variety of physical and psychological factors can all affect how people use a building. “We want to improve not just the space, but the experience of the space,” Zisch said. Good architecture, she said, is not just about creating striking features, but also about subtle adaptations that might not be noticeable to most people.
The museum study is just the first step for researchers like Zisch and Spiers, who plan to explore other aspects of neuroscience and architecture in more simulated environments at PEARL. The team won’t have results yet, but it’s an exciting start. Watch this space.
Now read the rest of The Checkup.
Read more from the MIT Technology Review archives.
Brain monitoring technology has advanced significantly, and techniques are already being used to read our minds and probe our memories. In a previous issue of The Checkup, futurist and legal ethicist Nita Farahani explained why we need laws to protect cognitive liberty.
Listening to the brain can give us amazing insights into how this mysterious organ works. A team of neuroscientists has discovered that our brains appear to fluctuate between states of order and chaos.
last year, MIT Technology Review We published a design issue of the magazine. If you’re curious, this piece on the history and future of the word “design” by Nicholas de Monchaux, head of MIT’s Department of Architecture, might be a good place to start.
Of course, design is not limited to buildings. Designers are creating new ways to help prosthetic device users feel more comfortable in their own skin, some of which feature third thumbs, spikes or “superhero skin.”
Achim Menges is an architect who creates “self-forming” structures out of wood that can bend and flex in response to changes in humidity. Menges told John Wigand that his approach was a low-energy way to create complex, curved structures.
On the web
Scientists are being forced to destroy research samples of the polio virus as part of efforts to eradicate the disease it causes. But lab leaks of viruses may be more common than we think. (Science)
Neurofeedback allows people to observe their own brain activity in real time and learn how to control it. It may be a useful way to combat the effects of stress. (Neuroscience Trends)
Researchers have shown that some of the microbes that cause disease in humans can travel more than 1,000 miles on the wind. Some appear to be able to endure the journey. (Guardian)
Is the X chromosome linked to Alzheimer’s disease? That’s what a study of more than a million people showed (JAMA Neurology).
More and more men are spending thousands of dollars a year on testosterone therapy to improve their physical performance. But some people develop enlarged breasts, shrunken testicles, blood clots and infertility. (The Wall Street Journal)
