1 BEAUTY, LIFE, AND THE GEOMETRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT Nikos A. Salingaros The University of Texas at San Antonio The Athens Dialogues — The Alexander Onassis Foundation, Athens, 2427 November 2010. Published in The Athens Dialogues EJournal, Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies, November 2010. Revised version published as Chapter 2 of: Reclaiming Beauty, Volume I, Agnes Horvath & James B. Cuffe, Editors, Ficino Press, Cork, Ireland, 2012: pages 63103. Introduction Moving towards sustainability and a greater understanding of how human life is connected to the earth’s ecosystem goes beyond mechanistic notions. Totally consistent with the Greek concept of geometry underlying life, increasing evidence shows that the geometry of the natural and built environments is responsible, to a large extent, for the quality of human life. Certain geometrical characteristics of natural and living structures, such as fractal scaling, mathematical symmetries leading to complex coherence, and structural invariants (patterns) found in disparate forms seem to be responsible for a fundamental healing connection between the body and its environment. In what is known as the “biophilic effect”, we draw emotional nourishment from structures that follow general biological rules of composition. It is perhaps not surprising that natural environments should nourish us, but what about artificial environments: the environments we build? Artificial environments that are the most healing emotionally and physiologically embody traditional design techniques that themselves arose from imitating nature. Superficial imitation does not provide the intended effect: a form (artifact, building, urban space, or city region) has to be built according to principles that derive from the organization of living matter. This discovery opens up two major topics of application: (1) validation of older design techniques as ultimately healing, and which should not be rejected in the interest of achieving novelty; and (2) applications of the biophilic effect on the urban scale to restructure alien urban environments. We are thus led to a reappreciation of traditionalscale urban fabric, with the added benefit of energy sustainability, since traditional methods of design and planning necessarily had to be sustainable. Applying geometrical rules of design as