我们为什么爱美？
Why We Love Beautiful Things

GREAT design, the management expert Gary Hamel once said, is like Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of pornography — you know it when you see it. You want it, too: brain scan studies reveal that the sight of an attractive product can trigger the part of the motor cerebellum that governs hand movement. Instinctively, we reach out for attractive things; beauty literally moves us.

管理专家加里·哈梅尔(Gary Hamel)曾说，伟大的设计就像法官波特·斯图尔特(Potter Stewart)对色情所下的知名定义：当你看到它时，你就知道它是伟大的设计。你还想得到它：大脑扫描研究显示，看到一件有吸引力的产品，会激发控制手部动作的运动小脑部分。我们会本能地把手伸向有吸引力的事物；美丽真的能够打动我们。

Yet, while we are drawn to good design, as Mr. Hamel points out, we’re not quite sure why.

然而，正如哈梅尔所指出的，我们在被优秀设计吸引时，并不太确定这是为什么。

This is starting to change. A revolution in the science of design is already under way, and most people, including designers, aren’t even aware of it.

这一点正开始改变。设计科学领域的一场革命已经展开，但包括设计师在内的多数人甚至都还没有意识到。

Take color. Last year, German researchers found that just glancing at shades of green can boost creativity and motivation. It’s not hard to guess why: we associate verdant colors with food-bearing vegetation — hues that promise nourishment.

以颜色为例。去年，德国研究者发现，仅仅瞥一眼某些绿色色调，就能提升创造力和积极性。其原因并不难猜测：我们把翠绿的颜色和孕育食物的植被联系起来，绿色是代表营养的色彩。

This could partly explain why window views of landscapes, research shows, can speed patient recovery in hospitals, aid learning in classrooms and spur productivity in the workplace. In studies of call centers, for example, workers who could see the outdoors completed tasks 6 to 7 percent more efficiently than those who couldn’t, generating an annual savings of nearly $3,000 per employee.

这可以部分解释，为什么研究显示，窗外的风景能加速住院病人的恢复，能有助于课堂学习，还能提高工作场所的生产率。例如，在对客服中心的研究中，能够看到户外景观的员工的工作效率比那些看不到的员工要高出6%到7%，这样算来，每位员工每年能多产出近3000美元。

In some cases the same effect can happen with a photographic or even painted mural, whether or not it looks like an actual view of the outdoors. Corporations invest heavily to understand what incentivizes employees, and it turns out that a little color and a mural could do the trick.

在某些情况下，一幅照片甚至是绘制的壁画也能起到同样的效果，不管它看上去是否真的接近户外景象。公司投入巨资来研究什么能够激励员工，而其实一点颜色和一幅壁画就能解决问题。

Simple geometry is leading to similar revelations. For more than 2,000 years, philosophers, mathematicians and artists have marveled at the unique properties of the “golden rectangle”: subtract a square from a golden rectangle, and what remains is another golden rectangle, and so on and so on — an infinite spiral. These so-called magical proportions (about 5 by 8) are common in the shapes of books, television sets and credit cards, and they provide the underlying structure for some of the most beloved designs in history: the facades of the Parthenon and Notre Dame, the face of the “Mona Lisa,” the Stradivarius violin and the original iPod.

简单的几何图形也有类似的启示。2000多年来，哲学家、数学家和艺术学家对“黄金矩形”的独特性惊叹不已：在黄金矩形里减去一个正方形，剩下的还是一个黄金矩形，可以一直这样继续下去，形成一个无限的螺旋。这种所谓的神奇比例（大约是8:5）在图书、电视和信用卡的形状上相当常见，而且还为历史上一些最受欢迎的设计提供了基本结构，如帕特农神庙和巴黎圣母院的正面、蒙娜丽莎的脸部、斯特拉迪瓦里小提琴和最初版的iPod。

Experiments going back to the 19th century repeatedly show that people invariably prefer images in these proportions, but no one has known why.

从19世纪起，实验多次证明，人们就是喜欢这种长宽比例的图像，但没人知道为什么。

Then, in 2009, a Duke University professor demonstrated that our eyes can scan an image fastest when its shape is a golden rectangle. For instance, it’s the ideal layout of a paragraph of text, the one most conducive to reading and retention. This simple shape speeds up our ability to perceive the world, and without realizing it, we employ it wherever we can.

最后，在2009年，杜克大学(Duke University)的一名教授展示出，当图像的形状是黄金矩形时，人类眼睛的扫描速度最快。例如，这是一段文字最为理想的排版形式，最利于阅读和记忆。这个简单的形状加速了我们感知世界的能力，而我们一直在无意识地使用这种形状。

Certain patterns also have universal appeal. Natural fractals — irregular, self-similar geometry — occur virtually everywhere in nature: in coastlines and riverways, in snowflakes and leaf veins, even in our own lungs. In recent years, physicists have found that people invariably prefer a certain mathematical density of fractals — not too thick, not too sparse. The theory is that this particular pattern echoes the shapes of trees, specifically the acacia, on the African savanna, the place stored in our genetic memory from the cradle of the human race. To paraphrase one biologist, beauty is in the genes of the beholder — home is where the genome is.

另外一些图案也具有普遍的吸引力。自然分形——不规则、自相似的几何形态——在自然中几乎随处可见：在海岸线和河道中，在雪花和叶脉中，甚至在我们的肺中。最近几年，物理学家发现人们就是喜欢某种数学密度（不要太密，也不要太稀）的分形。其理论是，这种特定图案和树的形态相呼应，特别是非洲大草原上的洋槐，而非洲自人类摇篮时期起就深藏于我们的遗传记忆中。借用一位生物学家的话，美丽存在于欣赏者的基因中——家园便是基因组所在的地方。

LIFE magazine named Jackson Pollock “the greatest living painter in the United States” in 1949, when he was creating canvases now known to conform to the optimal fractal density (about 1.3 on a scale of 1 to 2 from void to solid). Could Pollock’s late paintings result from his lifelong effort to excavate an image buried in all of our brains?

《生活》(Life)杂志在1949年称，杰克逊·波洛克 (Jackson Pollock)是“美国最伟大的在世画家”，当时他正在创作一系列油画，这些油画在当今被认为符合最佳分形密度（如果从空到实的尺度为1至2，其密度大约是1.3）。波洛克的晚期作品，是否源自他为挖掘埋在人类大脑中的图像而付出的毕生努力？ We respond so dramatically to this pattern that it can reduce stress levels by as much as 60 percent — just by being in our field of vision. One researcher has calculated that since Americans spend $300 billion a year dealing with stress-related illness, the economic benefits of these shapes, widely applied, could be in the billions.

我们对这种图案的反应相当激烈，以至于只要这种图案在我们视线所及的范围内，我们的压力水平就能降低至多60%。一名研究人员计算得出，鉴于美国人每年花费3000亿美元治疗和压力相关的疾病，如果这些图案得到广泛应用，它们有望产生巨额经济效益。

It should come as no surprise that good design, often in very subtle ways, can have such dramatic effects. After all, bad design works the other way: poorly designed computers can injure your wrists, awkward chairs can strain your back and over-bright lighting and computer screens can fatigue your eyes.

优秀的设计（经常以甚为微妙的方式）产生如此强烈的效果，这不足为奇。毕竟，糟糕的设计会产生相反的效果：设计不当的电脑会损害你的腕关节，不舒服的座椅会损害你的背部，而太过强烈的灯光和电脑屏幕会让你的眼睛感到疲劳。

We think of great design as art, not science, a mysterious gift from the gods, not something that results just from diligent and informed study. But if every designer understood more about the mathematics of attraction, the mechanics of affection, all design — from houses to cellphones to offices and cars — could both look good and be good for you.

我们认为伟大的设计是艺术，而不是科学，是神祗赋予的神秘礼物，而不是有资料根据的勤奋研究所结出的果实。但如果每个设计师能加深理解吸引力的数学规则和喜爱之情的机制，那么从房屋到手机，从办公室到汽车，所有的设计都可以既美观又好用。

兰斯·荷西(Lance Hosey)是建筑事务所RTKL的首席可持续发展官，也是《绿色的形状：美学、生态学和设计学》(The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design)一书的作者。

翻译：林蒙克、陶梦萦