Architectures to catalyze CIWC

The way the environment is architectured around and within a group of people is determining what kind of emerging properties will manifest.

This concept is easy to understand with the physical architecture. Let's take any group of people we may know, and imagine this group being placed in different physical environments: a garden, a prison, a train, the beach, a conference room, a amphitheater, a restaurant... we know that different collective behaviors will manifest, depending on those external architectures, although this is the very same group. Then we understand how crucial is the architecture when we think about group process and emergence.

Even if there is still lots of cultural habits and unconsciousness around this question, it seems pretty normal to design and chose the physical environment according to the group's needs and purpose.

We are right now talking about a visible architecture, that is one that our organic senses can immediately perceive.

Therefore we can divide architectures in 2 main categories:

• the visible architectures: those that are perceptible to our senses, such as the 3D environment, the acoustic context... see page visible architectures to deepen this topic.
• the invisible architectures: those that not directly perceptible to our senses, such as ontology and language, the monetary system, the law system... see page Invisible architectures to deepen this topic.

Note that both visible architectures and invisible architectures have in common that they 'surround us'. In other words they appear as 'external to us' as individuals, although we are producing them.

The invitation here is to become aware of those architectures in the first place, then decide that we have the choice –and the responsibility– to design them upon our needs. Remaining unaware of those architectures, more specifically the invisible ones, might be one of the main characteristics of what we call ignorance. This is a crucial topic for those willing to catalyze CIWC.

---

Links

• Architectures and Human Resources