Description
*Winner of the Environmental Design Research Association 2016 Place Research Award!*
In Cognitive Architecture, the authors review new findings in psychology and neuroscience to lend a hand architects and planners better bear in mind their clients as the sophisticated mammals they’re, arriving on this planet with built-in responses to the environment that have evolved over millennia.
The book outlines four main principles—Edges Matter, the fact individuals are a thigmotactic or a ‘wall-hugging’ species; Patterns Matter, how we are visually-oriented; Shapes Carry Weight, how our preference for bilateral symmetrical forms is biological; and after all, Storytelling is Key, how our narrative proclivities, unique to our species, play a role in successful place-making. The book takes an inside-out approach to design, arguing that the more we bear in mind human behavior, the better we will design for it. The text suggests new how you can analyze current designs before they’re built, allowing the designer to anticipate a user’s future experience. Multiple hundred photographs and drawings illustrate its key concepts. Six exercises and additional case studies suggest particular topics – from the significance of face-processing within the human brain to our fascination with fractals – for further study.