Neuroscienze per l’architettura

Discusses the Indian design treatise the Vaastu Veda in relation to visual neuroscience. Relates visual perception in architecture to functional organisation of the brain. Relates Hubel and Weisel’s orientation sensitivity to the sense of order and pleasure imparted by the regularity of colonnades and cable stay bridges. Suggests aspects of perception facilitated by neuronal architecture and the dynamic between familiarity and novelty, plasticity and visual attunement.

Corpi annidati

We are bodies start from other bodies. Yet, we rarely consider how our bodies extend into our surroundings. Discusses our body schema, peripersonal and extra personal space. Considers buildings as extensions of our bodies and minds and develops the con-cept of nested bodies that engage the senses, spatial cognition and a sense of place, audi-tory system and acoustic architecture, the haptic system and texture, tasting, smelling and the imagination, visual perception and chronobiology, atmospheric space.

Dall’intuizione all’immersione: architettura e neuroscienze

Argues that architect’s have a moral imperative to transform and support living conditions and recommends a hippocratic oath for architects to recognise their responsibility to support human wellbeing. A value change needs to shift from considering architecture as an object to architecture as experience and architectural education must take the lead. Discusses the importance of empathy and defining performance outcomes. Suggest ways to apply neuroscientific research at multiple scales

Prendersi cura del mondo

Discusses the role that attention plays in constituting the world, rather than reducing phenomena to the brain level. Discusses the different kinds of attention delineated by the divided hemispheres of the brain. On the one hand the left hemisphere specialised in grasping and manipulating the world, whereas the right hemisphere specialises in relat-ing to and understanding the world. Discusses how reliance on one or the other kind of attention has cultural, psychological and social implications.

Architettura e neuroscienze: una doppia elica

The founder of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture relates the story of its in-spiration in Jonas Salk’s insistence that his experience at the Abbey at Assissi helped him develop the vaccine for polio. He discusses the Golden Mean, children’s perceptual houses and optogenics, as well as the importance of designing incubators and neonatal intensive care units according to the developmental needs of infants, rather than the convenience of the medical staff, and open awareness as a creative approach to problem solving.

Il significato incarnato dell’architettura

Reflects on the nature of human meaning making through architecture. Meaning mak-ing is understood to be situated, relational, qualitative, dynamic and enacted. To appre-ciate the significance of architecture we need to understand how meaning is structured through the body. Some image-body schemas include containment, verticality, balance, forces and motion. Architecture’s moral imperative is to creatively transform the condi-tions of human habitation and interaction.

Simulazione incarnata, estetica e architettura: un approccio estetico sperimentale

This chapter, written by a cognitive neuroscientist and an architect, endeavors to suggest why and how cognitive neuroscience should investigate our relationship with aesthetics and architecture—framing this empirical approach as experimental aesthetics. The term experimental aesthetics specifically refers to the scientific investigation of the brain-body physiological correlates of the aesthetic experience of particular human symbolic expressions, such as works of art and architecture. The notion “aesthetics” is used here mainly in its bodily connotation, as it refers to the sensorimotor and affective aspects of our experience of these particular perceptual objects.

Corpo, mente e immaginazione: l’essenza mentale dell’architettura

In our culture, dominated by shallow rationality and reliance on the empirical, measur-able and demonstrable, the embodied, experiential and mental dimensions of design are supressed. Yet, there is an interest in the possibilities of neuroscience to reveal the roles of space, form, materiality, memory and imagery in our sensory experiences and mind. Neuroscience supports the mental objectives in design, which are in danger of being eliminated in the crudely rationalized, quantified and functionalized processes of de-sign. The task of architecture extends beyond its utilitarian purposes to the existential and mental sphere. Articulating lived existential space, architecture constitutes our sys-tem of externalized order, hierarchy, memory and meaning. Neuroscience will reveal how the external and internal, material and mental, utilitarian and poetic dimensions constitute an integrated existential experience. The interest in the mental dimensions of architecture will confirm the significance of intuition, empathy and imagination.

Verso le neuroscienze del processo progettuale

Introduces some key notions of cognitive (neuro)science including mirror neurons and perceptual and motor schemas. Much important processing may be subconscious. Af-fordances link multi-modal perception and action. Three linkages of architecture and neuroscience are noted: neuroscience of experience; neuroscience of design; and neuro-morphic architecture, “brains” for buildings. Examples are offered from Zumthor’s Therme at Vals (linking memory and imagination) and a case study of group creativity in choreography (illustrating four-dimensional planning).