Space Also Participates in We - When Architecture Allows Us to Be

From Local Optima to the Man of Maize: perception, metabolism, and the possibilities of transcending our ways of Being

The World We Do Not Perceive

Imagine walking through a forest.

You recognize the trail, hear birds, and notice sunlight filtering through the trees.

But as you walk, roots continue growing, insects change their trajectories, and the wind moves leaves you never notice.

Your body adjusts its balance, breathing, and preparation for the next steps.

How much of this do you consciously perceive?

Every perception is a construction, but many of the processes that make it possible do not appear within perception itself.

Our sensory systems encounter only part of the environmental conditions. Memories, expectations, and metabolic states participate in the experience.

The world we perceive does not exhaust the world in which we exist.

And perhaps space offers possibilities we have not yet learned to recognize.

When the Familiar Path Becomes a Limit

Imagine following the same trail every day.

You know its turns and obstacles.

Your movements have become efficient.

At BrainLatam, we investigate this persistence as a possible expression of a local optimum.

A familiar organization allows us to act without reconsidering every gesture.

This is important for learning.

But a difficulty may arise.

When the path that works becomes the only possibility we recognize, what we could still perceive may remain inaccessible.

Now imagine a child walking beside you.

The child stops in front of a tree.

Points to something you have never noticed.

Your movement must stop as well.

The same territory begins to offer another experience.

Architecture Participates in Attention

Imagine entering an unfamiliar building.

You are looking for a room.

You walk down a corridor.

As you approach a corner, you prepare to encounter what you cannot yet see.

Djebbara and colleagues investigated how architectural turns modify spatial attention demands during navigation.

Using mobile EEG and virtual reality, they found behavioral and electrophysiological differences associated with environmental configurations.

The wall does not need to move to transform the movements our Body-Territory prepares.

But the study does not demonstrate that a particular architectural configuration universally produces fear, safety, or freedom.

The question is how the environment participates in perceptual and motor possibilities.

APUS: What We Can Reach

James Gibson developed the concept of affordances: possibilities for action offered by the environment in relation to the capabilities of the organism encountering it.

Imagine a staircase.

For one person, it provides access.

For another, it creates a barrier.

A ramp can transform those possibilities.

In BrainLatam's extended conceptual framework, APUS allows us to investigate position, orientation, reach, and movement as extended proprioception.

But a possibility does not depend solely on architectural design.

It also depends on the conditions of that Body-Territory.

Space does not offer the same possibilities of Doing to everyone.

Architecture that allows us to Be must recognize differences without turning some of them into permanent barriers to participation.

Tekoha: The World We Encounter Within

Now imagine entering a kitchen.

You feel hungry.

The smell of food awakens memories.

Perhaps you recognize a recipe from your ancestors.

At BrainLatam, we use Tekoha as an original conceptual window for investigating extended interoception and the territory as bodily lived.

This interpretation does not replace the original Guarani meaning of Tekoha, deeply connected to ways of living and territory.

Hunger transforms our experience of the kitchen.

Food changes metabolic processes.

Memory participates in the meaning of the encounter.

What happens outside participates in what we experience inside, and our internal conditions transform what we encounter outside.

APUS and Tekoha do not represent two separate worlds.

The Man of Maize

Imagine a child holding an ear of maize.

The child looks at it, smells it, and begins to eat.

But where did that food come from?

From the seed, the soil, water, sunlight, and the work of those who cultivated it.

Now its matter participates in digestion and cellular metabolism.

What was outside becomes part of internal processes.

The child also learns a recipe, listens to stories, and recognizes cultural practices.

Food does more than provide energy. It also participates in knowledge, feelings, and belonging.

In BrainLatam's metaphorical interpretation inspired by the Popol Wuj, the Man of Maize recognizes the continuity of existence through the relationships that sustain life.

We do not replace the original meanings of the K'iche' Maya tradition.

School Also Participates in Metabolism

Now imagine this child entering school.

The child encounters walls, teachers, classmates, languages, and narratives.

The body continues breathing, eating, and regulating its temperature.

At the same time, the child learns movements, changes expectations, and constructs knowledge.

Education, food, and coexistence participate in the conditions under which the Body-Territory develops, although through different mechanisms.

Not every educational transformation corresponds to a specific metabolic change that has already been demonstrated.

But we do not need to artificially separate the organism from the experiences in which it participates.

The Man of Maize does not merely inhabit the Biome. His existence continues to be produced through the material, cultural, and educational relationships he establishes with it.

Trust Also Needs a Place

Let us return to school.

A child was humiliated for months.

Now the desks have been rearranged into a circle.

The child can see the other students.

But is that enough to feel trust?

Perhaps another act of aggression is still anticipated.

Architecture can offer opportunities for encounters, but it cannot replace the transformation of relationships.

A circle does not create belonging when people are still punished for disagreeing.

We need spaces where asking questions, making mistakes, and experimenting do not necessarily lead to exclusion.

Psychological safety may encourage learning behaviors.

And the possibility of moving beyond what we already know how to Be also depends on not losing our place Between Us.

Consciousness Is Movement

Within the 5D Consciousness hypothesis, we propose:

“Consciousness is a movement that perceives itself as Being within the metabolism produced.”

This does not mean that consciousness controls every process sustaining its experience.

Metabolism involves continuous exchanges of matter and energy.

Perception involves processes that need not become explicit.

Alfredo Pereira Jr., in his Triple-Aspect Monism, investigates relationships among physiological processes, unconscious mental patterns, and conscious experience.

This theory does not prove the 5D Consciousness hypothesis.

But it offers an important dialogue.

We do not need to perceive every process involved in our existence for those processes to participate in the conditions under which we can perceive ourselves as Being.

We Extends Beyond Walls

Ailton Krenak invites us to recognize rivers, trees, mountains, and other beings as participants in the relationships of life.

A public square is not merely a place for human encounters.

Trees provide shade.

Soil and water participate in environmental conditions.

Other organisms encounter their own possibilities of existence.

We does not have to end where human presence ends.

This does not require attributing human cognition to mountains.

It requires recognizing that the Biome materially participates in the conditions under which we live.

In the metaphor of the Man of Maize, belonging does not mean dominating the territory.

It means recognizing that our existence depends on relationships we can care for or transform.

Decolonizing Also Means Transforming Spaces

Imagine a school where only one person is allowed to speak.

Now imagine another where students investigate their territory, cultivate food, and participate in shaping the questions.

No architectural configuration guarantees democracy.

But the possibilities for participation may differ.

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui invites us to question the persistence of coloniality even within discourses intended to overcome it.

Decolonizing architecture does not mean imposing another universal model.

It means allowing Body-Territories to participate in constructing the places where they will learn, live, and produce their futures.

Those who were not previously heard may recognize needs that earlier designs failed to consider.

How Can We Investigate Spaces That Allow Us to Be?

We can compare environments with different conditions of accessibility, circulation, lighting, vegetation, and participation.

We would record movements, choices, spatial orientation, feelings, and reported experiences.

Mobile EEG, fNIRS, ECG, and respiration could provide complementary measurements.

But no isolated signal demonstrates belonging, freedom, or collective consciousness.

We would also need to observe transitions.

What changes when someone encounters an unfamiliar path?

When a child becomes able to participate?

When a community transforms the design of its school?

The question is not merely which space requires less effort, but which possibilities become available to those who previously could not find them.

When Space Participates in Jiwasa

Imagine a community planning its school.

Architects present designs.

Teachers identify difficulties.

Children ask unexpected questions.

Residents recognize relationships involving water, food, and vegetation.

Perhaps no single person possesses the complete project in advance.

Within the Human Quorum Sensing hypothesis, we investigate whether reciprocity expands individual and collective possibilities.

A Jiwasa space does not force everyone to live in the same way. It allows people to encounter, refuse, reconsider, and transform movements without losing their sense of belonging.

Our question remains:

What architectural, metabolic, educational, and territorial conditions allow us to expand our possibilities of Being, feeling, perceiving, and acting Between Us?

Perhaps architecture that allows us to Be is architecture that does not keep us trapped in a local optimum.

Architecture that recognizes the Man of Maize.

And that provides conditions for perceiving possibilities we did not yet know could emerge.

Annotated References

Gibson, James J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton Mifflin.

Develops the concept of affordances, relating possibilities for action to environmental characteristics and the capabilities of organisms. Supports the discussion of spaces offering different opportunities to different Body-Territories.

Djebbara, Zakaria et al. (2025). Turning corners in built environments shifts spatial attention costs. NeuroImage, 322, 121549.

A study using mobile EEG and navigation in virtual reality that demonstrated changes in spatial attention demands associated with architectural turns. It does not establish universal relationships between geometry and particular feelings.

Pereira Jr., Alfredo (2014). Triple-aspect monism: Physiological, mental unconscious and conscious aspects of brain activity. Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, 13(2), 201–227.

Introduces Triple-Aspect Monism, distinguishing physiological processes, unconscious mental patterns, and conscious experiences. Offers a philosophical dialogue with 5D Consciousness without directly validating this original hypothesis.

Edmondson, Amy (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

Relates psychological safety to learning behaviors in teams. Helps explain why the physical organization of a space cannot replace relationships that allow questioning, mistakes, and disagreement.

Sudimac, Sonja; Sale, Vera; Kühn, Simone (2022). How nature nurtures: Amygdala activity decreases as the result of a one-hour walk in nature. Molecular Psychiatry, 27, 4446–4452.

An experimental study of amygdala responses after walks in natural and urban environments. Provides evidence of relationships between environmental experiences and stress processing without demonstrating identical benefits across all natural environments.

Krenak, Ailton (2019). Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo (Ideas to Postpone the End of the World). Companhia das Letras.

Questions the separation between humanity and Earth and the reduction of rivers, mountains, and forests to resources. Supports the ethical and philosophical expansion of We beyond exclusively human relationships.

Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia (2010). Ch'ixinakax utxiwa: una reflexión sobre prácticas y discursos descolonizadores.

Questions the reproduction of coloniality within discourses and institutions, contributing to the development of territorial projects that preserve differences without assimilating them into universal models.

Christenson, Allen J. (2007). Popol Vuh: Sacred Book of the Quiché Maya People.

An annotated translation of K'iche' Maya narratives, including the beings made of wood and maize. The interpretation of the Man of Maize as a metaphor for the relational Body-Territory is original to BrainLatam and does not replace the cultural meanings of the work.

De Jaegher, Hanne; Di Paolo, Ezequiel (2007). Participatory sense-making: An enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6, 485–507.

Develops participatory sense-making, providing a foundation for investigating how reciprocal encounters modify possibilities for action and interpretation.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2020). Neuroarquitetura — utilizando o EEG para criar ambientes mais alegres e produtivos.

Introduces applications of EEG in investigating experiences related to built environments, in dialogue with neuroarchitecture.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2022). Biofilia e Neuroarquitetura — fazendo a conexão da natureza com o nosso cérebro.

Discusses the integration of natural elements into built environments, relating architecture, sensory experiences, and potential effects on well-being.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2025). Arquitetura que pensa comigo — virar esquinas e o custo invisível da atenção.

Relates research on navigation and attention to the experience of the Body-Territory in built spaces.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2025). Ótimos Locais como Eus Tensionais — Formação, Restrição e Desenvolvimento.

Develops the original hypothesis of efficient perceptual and sensorimotor organizations that may, under certain conditions, restrict the exploration of other possibilities.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2026). Ótimos locais — quando uma crença funciona bem demais.

Investigates how effective narratives can become limits to new interpretations, without treating habits and prior knowledge as inevitable obstacles to learning.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2026). APUS e Tekoha — como o mundo entra no corpo e o corpo retorna ao mundo.

Presents the original interpretation of extended proprioception and interoception, preserving the distinction from their original Indigenous meanings.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2026). Território — o ambiente não é cenário: do Homem de Barro ao Homem de Milho.

Develops the interpretation of territory as a participant in the experience of Being and the metaphor of the Man of Maize as recognition of the relationships sustaining existence.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2026). O que não entra na atenção também pode limitar o futuro que conseguimos imaginar.

Investigates the relationship between attention, perceptual repertoires, and possibilities for anticipating and creating futures.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2026). Um mesmo evento — metabolismo, movimento e consciência.

Deepens the 5D Consciousness hypothesis by relating produced metabolism, movement, and the experience of perceiving oneself as Being.

Cionek, Jackson. Religare — Religiosidade Plena em um Estado Democrático, Laico e de Direito.

An original philosophical work on freedom of Being, belonging, spirituality, and the emergence of shared possibilities, in dialogue with the Jiwasa-State.

Scientific and conceptual note: Research on spatial attention, natural environments, psychological safety, and ecological perception provides foundations for investigating how space participates in our experiences. The proposed relationships among local optima, the Man of Maize, extended APUS/Tekoha, 5D Consciousness, and Jiwasa remain original interpretations and hypotheses rather than established neuroscientific mechanisms.

Central principle: Space also participates in We because what we can perceive is only part of the relationships that make our existence possible. Transcending our ways of Being may begin when trust, belonging, and new encounters allow other possibilities to become visible to our Body-Territory.

BrainLatam · W44/2026 · Blog 11 · Neuroarchitecture · 5D Consciousness · APUS and Tekoha · Man of Maize · Jiwasa-State