HUMAN BEING: SOUL, BODY AND SPIRIT
Thinking of architecture solely as bricks, steel, and glass would be like thinking the human body is merely a poetryless jumble of bones and muscles: functional but unbearably boring. The issue becomes more complicated if we approach it from the perspective of that awkward triad that composes us—body, soul, and spirit—and filter it through the lenses of neuroaesthetics and psychology. In the end, what is a building but a material mirror of our miseries and aspirations?
The body
Let's start with the most tangible: the body. Architecture, in its most obvious dimension, satisfies the organism with shelter, shade, a stable temperature, and a place to hide its fragilities. But it's not enough to simply build walls; the body demands ergonomics, proportion, and, if we're picky, even a certain sensuality along the way. Why does a straight, white hospital corridor produce tachycardia rather than calm? Because Neuroaesthetics whispers to us that soft curves, natural light, and human scale make our limbic system feel less like we're in an operating room and more like we're being caressed by space. And yet, we continue to build cubicles that look like they were designed by someone who never had a body.
The soul
Let's move on to the soul, that awkward concept that psychologists often translate as "emotional state" so as not to seem esoteric. Here, architecture operates as a placebo of identity. Gothic cathedrals, with their absurdly high ceilings, weren't just an ode to medieval engineering: they were an attempt to make the soul feel small, vulnerable, almost pathetically insignificant. In contrast, Zen minimalism, with its calculated emptiness, mocks the contemporary anxiety of accumulation. Neuroaesthetics shows that spaces of silent contemplation activate brain networks similar to those of deep meditation. The soul, then, appreciates emptiness as much as monumentality, as long as the architect doesn't confuse emptiness with desolation or monumentality with a theme park.
The spirit
And then there is spirit, that abstraction that no one can fully define but that we all feel when we enter places that shake us from the inside out. Here, architecture becomes an embodied metaphor. A bridge is not just a transit structure: it is the embodiment of the trust that something invisible (tension, compression, faith in engineering) will sustain us. A well-designed cemetery doesn't just house corpses: it builds a dialogue with eternity, activating that uncomfortable awareness of finitude in our prefrontal cortex. Psychology would explain it as a "liminal space," but the truth is that spirit doesn't need technical explanations: it needs resonances.
The problem is that, instead of recognizing this complexity, many of our cities produce buildings that simultaneously insult the body, soul, and spirit. Skyscrapers that seem designed by poorly programmed algorithms, where the body becomes disoriented, the soul becomes stunned, and the spirit yawns. Public spaces that, under the guise of "democratizing art," end up resembling concrete gyms where the only possible exercise is escape. Neuroaesthetics tells us clearly: not every visual stimulus produces well-being, and yet we continue to celebrate glass facades that turn passersby into a roast chicken in the full sun.
In short, architecture has the arrogance to want to speak to us on three levels at once: physiological, emotional, and transcendental. The irony is that when it fails on one, it ruins the other two. Perhaps architecture's greatest contribution isn't so much solving housing problems as reminding us, with brutal honesty, how badly designed we ourselves are.