Last month Hacker News made our recent post on Boston’s new glassy Seaport district and its disappointing design their top story. That sent over 5,000 readers to GeneticsofDesign.com from over 100 countries in under two hours!

Given the broad international interest, we decided to show more images that drive home the key point: it’s very difficult for the human brain to take in big, blank, glassy, boxy buildings. It’s simply not what we evolved to do. That’s something architects, developers, community leaders, and the general public need to know if we want to make memorable places, ones where people feel happy and healthy, and at their best.

Above are more images from Boston’s newest business neighborhood, the Seaport District, sitting between the city’s airport and financial district. Using 3M’s VAS (Visual Attention Software), which predicts where people look in the first 3-to-5-seconds — before conscious thinking comes online — you quickly ‘see’ how your brain’s hard-wired to ignore the big, blank sheets of glass! The brain doesn’t direct your eyes there – so they don’t go, thus rendering the buildings essentially irrelevant! Remember, you can’t make happy thoughts and memories around places your brain directed your visual system not to take in!

Images at top left show heat maps which glowing brightest where people look most, are reddest around the details in the photos, the bicycle and lamppost and its shadow -not around the looming architecture behind which is shrouded in black: ignored! We can also see how the visual fixation sequence (middle images) focuses on these details and how they’re highlighted, encircled in red, as the prime regions of interest, garnering 76%-to-98% of viewers visual attention first.

And what’s true up-close, holds true, further out. Here is another view, pulled back, of the Seaport, showing the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) and neighboring glass tower. Again note how the glass block’s ignored, not much attention paid to the ICA either – it’s the contrasting white playground elements in a park that draw the eye.

Again, reiterating a theme in this blog, we discover how our ancient brain architecture, including how we’re hardwired to seek out faces and discrete areas of contrast, directs our experience of the modern built environment, and in fact, sets parameters for its design. When we ignore this ancient brain architecture, we all pay a price, creating places that are actually non-places, stressful for humans to see and be in, that belie our humanity, both today and into the future.

all photos ©geneticsofdesign.com