Author: Nikos A. Salingaros
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"A precise straight edge has no information. The more complex a curve is, the more information it contains."
"Detail is nothing more than contrast on the smallest scales."
"There is another reason why our eye/brain system has evolved to prefer detail, and that is our capacity to predict future events . . . Our cognitive system normally has no time to process all available visual information . . . and has to rely on first input in order to make almost instantaneous decisions. . . Further information from the retina is processed more slowly, and any kind of rational analysis of the form can begin only after that is completed."
"Researchers believe that the brain developed concurrently with the eye in order to handle the increasingly complex optical information input from the evolving eye. A startling proof of this co-evolution lies in the left/right reversal of functions in the two brain hemispheres, corresponding to the reversal of an optical image on the retina."
"Particular brain cells, and some groups of cells, have a preference for all possible oblique orientations in addition to vertical and horizontal. The directional preference of successive cells in a cortical region distinguishes between angles of 10 to 20 degrees (Hubel, 1988; Zeki, 1993). The existence of orientation-specific cells in the visual cortex proves the importance of angular information. In addition,
"end-stopped" cells in the visual cortex respond to lines of a distinct orientation up to some maximum length, beyond which the response drops to zero. End-stopped cells are biological receptors that are directly sensitive to corners, curvature, and to discontinuities in lines."
"Visual information can be ordered via linear continuity:
This corresponds to the simplest possible expedient of lining up high-contrast objects on end; not necessarily in a straight line, but on some sort of curve. What this lining-up does is to significantly narrow the scan path that the eye needs to follow in order to grasp the information encoded in the components, since now there are fewer excursions to farther regions. Lining-up corresponds to a condensation of information, yet there exist other techniques of organizing information spatially without condensing it along a line."
"The alternative is to organize the high-information units using symmetry, which leads to patterns in space. A further savings of effort is accomplished in visual compression, by repeating a similar unit."
"High-contrast objects on the small scale can be arranged in a symmetrical pattern, and the smaller units made similar to cut down the total information."
"A well-defined unit that is repeated does not need to be processed by our mind each time anew."
"Organization endows structural information with meaning, which in turn connects that object with the human mind without the need for conscious reflection. Here is where hierarchy, the topic of (Salingaros, 2000), comes into play in an essential manner. A symmetric arrangement of units is perceived on a higher level of scale than the units themselves. As soon as one starts to do this, then recursion can be applied to define increasingly higher levels of scale, with each coherent arrangement on a particular level being very easily comprehended."
"Interestingly, the cone cells in the retina responsible for color vision are also responsible for our ability to see fine detail (Hubel, 1988), thus linking color with geometry in our perceptual apparatus. Contrary to what is frequently assumed, therefore, color and linear design are intimately related."
"...buildings should either have a continuous swath of high-density visual structure that the eye can follow in traversing their overall form, or focal points of intense detail and contrast arranged in the middle or at the corners. These could include a thick border or edge of the building; a thick boundary around openings and discontinuities; concentrated structure in the centers or corners of walls; etc. The visually-intense structure should organize information via patterns and symmetries. Color can appear throughout the structure, and can help to define the visually-intense regions. Our neurophysiology thus resurrects an element of architecture that was arbitrarily condemned a century ago -- that is, ornament (Alexander, 2001; Bloomer, 2000)."
"People actively seek perceptual connection with their physical environment to satisfy a fundamental physiological need. This is consistent with the view of buildings and people forming a unified, interacting system (Alexander, 2001)."
"Successful ornamentation requires the recursive capacity of only the most highly-developed brains, those of human beings. Different types of recursion include rhythm and repetition that generate translational and rotational symmetries; the iteration of structure on smaller and smaller scales that generates fractal patterns; and iteration on the same scale that generates denser and denser connections. The human capacity for spoken and written language is in fact made possible by our capacity for recursive logical thought."
"Ornament organizes detail in a very precise and sophisticated fashion in order to make a larger form more comprehensible."
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