Course Introduction

Brain Institute
Instructor: Christopher Bardt

What is reality? How is our mind formed from a 3 lb. organ? What constitutes our sense of self? How do learning and memory happen?

The human brain is the new frontier in science and medicine. Our capacity to probe its functions has reached a point where we can now emulate brain processes to design software, such as speech recognition. Great strides are being made on the mysterious mind/brain relationship. As perhaps the most complex organizational entity we know, the brain may give insights into the way we think about ordering space, program, and the architectural organization of cooperative work environments. It can be argued that architecture itself is an action of the brain extending and modeling itself into the world.

"A key aspect of creativity is the process of finding great metaphors-symbols that represent something else…..The metaphorical leaps that we consider of significance, tend to take place at the interstices of different disciplines. Working against this essential force of creativity, however, is the pervasive trend toward ever greater specialization in the sciences."   Ray Kurzweil, How to Create a Mind

Brown University has created the Brown Institute for Brain Science (BIBS) bringing together researchers from the Departments of Neuroscience, Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Physics, and the Division of Applied Mathematics.  BIBS is joining forces with the Norman Prince Neurosciences Institute (NPNI) at Rhode Island Hospital, which brings in the clinical neuroscience departments of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. The decision to bring together theoreticians, experimentalists and clinical researchers was made in the belief that such an interdisciplinary (brain-like) approach will yield breakthroughs, despite risks of failure.

John Robson and John Davenport, representing BIBS and the NPNI, will be working closely with the studio class, on the subject of the brain and the institute; giving informal talks; organizing relevant tours of Brown University laboratories and hospital clinical space; and participating in reviews of proposals. The hope is that the class will in turn propel the conversation, spark new design thinking and conceptualization about the new institute.

This studio will explore the brain; through direct experiments and demonstrations, analogous modeling and presentations by prominent brain researchers. Based on these investigations, each student will design a new Brown Institute for Brain Science (BIBS), reimagining architectural possibilities for cooperation, public and research interaction, and organized collaboration within a dense program of research laboratories, clinical and teaching facilities and conference center.