Cephalization!
As Jim mentioned in the Director’s Blog, I was away last week at Woods Hole for a Neuroscience and Architecture Workshop on “Mapping Memory of Space and Place”. The workshop provided an opportunity for neuroscientists and architects to dialogue on related interests. Our particular break-out group utilized the raw data from the Krasnow Institute interviews as a case study to focus our discussions – to talk in terms of actual, versus hypothetical, programmatic and spatial conditions. As you can imagine, the coincidental timing (of the workshop and Krasnow programming study) proved very opportune as this produced another layer of “stuff” to inform the design process for the Krasnow new construction – stay tuned for upcoming blogs!
In a sidebar conversation at the workshop, one of the participants from Krasnow shared this poignant metaphor with me:
Krasnow’s existing long, linear, symmetrical building can be thought of as the “notochord”, and the additions as the “cephalization” of the institute. This metaphor incorporates a couple different architectural implications we have previously addressed:
- that the new infrastructure will be designed to allow more complex and specialized functions to take place (e.g. an imaging center)
- that the appropriate physical structure and organization is perhaps more branch like, and does not occur along a segmented, double-loaded corridor
- that essential to the function of the organic whole are rich and integrated pathways for communication within and among the lobes and cord (i.e., how would we design a “corpus callosum” for the new addition?)
Having gotten to know Krasnow during the summer months, I can't wait to see how it becomes activated during the school year. Best wishes for a successful fall semester.
In a sidebar conversation at the workshop, one of the participants from Krasnow shared this poignant metaphor with me:
Krasnow’s existing long, linear, symmetrical building can be thought of as the “notochord”, and the additions as the “cephalization” of the institute. This metaphor incorporates a couple different architectural implications we have previously addressed:
- that the new infrastructure will be designed to allow more complex and specialized functions to take place (e.g. an imaging center)
- that the appropriate physical structure and organization is perhaps more branch like, and does not occur along a segmented, double-loaded corridor
- that essential to the function of the organic whole are rich and integrated pathways for communication within and among the lobes and cord (i.e., how would we design a “corpus callosum” for the new addition?)
Having gotten to know Krasnow during the summer months, I can't wait to see how it becomes activated during the school year. Best wishes for a successful fall semester.
posted by Meredith Banasiak, ANFA @ 1:25 PM
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