The relationship between place and inhabitant beyond technical data
Once upon a time the relationship between man and place was identified with the genius locithe spirit of the place, a belief common to all the traditions of the populations scattered around the planet. For the ancient Romans the genius loci he was identified with a tutelary deity protecting a specific place. In the modern era, Christian Norberg-Schulz identifies it as a harmonious place where physical, historical and social characteristics, harmony of forms, energy of the living space come together, hypothesizing that the architect’s design action must be respectful of the pre-existence, in the work creating identity forms, which blend with the harmony of the site(1).
There is a discipline that brings together all the knowledge necessary for understanding the place in relation to the inhabitant and which we could define as an extra-investigation: “geobiology”, a word that derives from the combination of the Greek term “geo”, meaning earth, “bio”, meaning life and “logos”, meaning doctrine; in a word, the discipline that researches the interactions between life and place, a term coined almost eighty years ago in Germany.
If you search for the meaning of the word “geobiology” in current encyclopedic texts, you come across the definition of a practice that “…hypothesizes measuring the alleged “energy aspects” of a specific place. According to supporters of the practice, there are various characteristics of a place that influence living beings through alleged “energies”. In the category of telluric phenomena to the attention of supporters of the theory, there are faults, underground water courses, cavities, mineral deposits, “telluric chimneys”, the “Hartmann network” and the “Curry network”, and others. These unproven hypotheses, without any objective proof or support from scientific experiments, are considered a form of pseudoscience by the international scientific community, both physical and geological.”(2).
As can be clearly seen, the use of the conditional verb presupposes doubt about the truthfulness and validity of this research discipline, within which, until the 1990s, the investigation into the radioactivity of materials and radon was also included, topics then little known to construction workers.
When the investigation of the place goes outside the scientific perimeter
But what is science and what is handed down experience? Today we think pragmatically and rely on what can be replicated, explained and tested by everyone according to a Cartesian spirit of investigation. But once upon a time, until the dawn of scientific thought, handed down experience and tradition prevailed, which became operational practice. Among these experiences and traditions there were superstitions, popular sayings and unexplained customs, but which were once very popular.
Among these, for example, looking for water with a branch of forked hazelnut, applying dowsing, or looking for the correct position in which to build the house according to the earth’s magnetic field, adopting biophysical systems with dowsing, or even defining the correct place and time in which to build the building or open a profitable business using the ancient geomantic art of Feng Shui, as well as defining the favorable position to build a church according to one’s religion, be it Christian, Orthodox or Taoist, adopting proportions according to that esoteric discipline called “sacred geometry”, of ancient Pythagorean origin.
These customs, in certain indigenous populations were considered a shamanic gift, in Eastern traditions a millenary tradition handed down by geomancers, in the Western world also adopted as practice by expert Christian monks, until the predominance of scientific thought, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century which, in time to come, placed it as dogma.
Tradition, experience and non-scientific practices
Among all the customs, perhaps the most common that has remained intact is the position of the bed in the designated room. Once upon a time the bed was placed towards the magnetic North, but without knowing the reason. For many it was a tradition, for others a superstition. Some turned up their noses because there was no logical explanation. Today we know perfectly well the meaning of this custom: sleeping with your head to the North promotes sleep, because the blood flows better towards the head, which is oxygenated by hemoglobin, which is the protein molecule, the main component of red blood cells, responsible for transporting oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body, up to the peripheral sites of the organism, including the head.
But why is oxygenation accentuated towards the head? Hemoglobin, as part of red blood cells, is made up of iron ions in the ferrous oxidation state; the iron atom, which has a reversible bond with oxygen, orients itself towards the Earth’s magnetic pole, according to a phenomenon based on the interaction of magnetic fields, much like what happens to the magnetized needle of the compass, which orients itself towards the North, attracted by the lines of force of the Earth’s magnetic field. For this reason, the cardinal orientation towards the magnetic North becomes a stimulus to oxygenate the blood vessels of the brain and prepare the organism for the rest phase.
From empirical practice to scientific verification
This quality or sensitivity of the human being is not an exclusive peculiarity of our species. It is now well established, in fact, that a certain magnetosensitivity exists in many forms of the animal kingdom, including in many molluscs, in beetles, in hymenoptera, in fish, in amphibians, especially urodeles, in birds, in rodents, in marine mammals, including dolphins, in planarians, but also in bacteria. It used to be impossible to explain how migratory birds managed to travel thousands of kilometers without a navigator, finding the exact location of the nest in both directions. Recent scientific research has shown that migratory birds connect with the lines of force of the Earth’s magnetic field through one of their receptors, a magnetosensitive organ, located between the dura mater and the skull, also visible to the naked eye, being 0.5-2 mm in size (3).
Therefore placing the bed with the headboard facing the geographic North is one of the design dogmas of today’s (bio)architecture, but it was once a practice considered superstitious or indicated as a tradition without a logical explanation, absolutely not considered by the science of the time, until, thanks to biochemistry and homeopathic medicine, but also accepted by allopathic medicine, the mystery could be explained.
This anecdote teaches us many things: to never take anything for granted, to observe the world with a holistic thought, not to believe everything that is fed to us, because even science is not faith and without the demonstration of a reason, it is not reliable. But above all to experiment, letting oneself go to comparison, expanding knowledge, with a Vitruvian spirit.
Notes
(1) C. Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci. Landscape Environment ArchitectureElecta 1979
(2) https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobiologia
(3) S. Spanò in Magnetic fields in medicine by F. Bistolfi, Minerva Medica 1986
