Mind in Architecture: Neuroscience, Embodiment, and the Future of Design

by Sarah Robinson (Editor), Juhani Pallasmaa (Editor)

Leading neuroscientists and architects explore how the built environment affects our behavior, thoughts, emotions, and well-being.

Although we spend more than ninety percent of our lives inside buildings, we understand very little about how the built environment affects our behavior, thoughts, emotions, and well-being. We are biological beings whose senses and neural systems have developed over millions of years; it stands to reason that research in the life sciences, particularly neuroscience, can offer compelling insights into the ways our buildings shape our interactions with the world. This expanded understanding can help architects design buildings that support both mind and body. In Mind in Architecture, leading thinkers from architecture and other disciplines, including neuroscience, cognitive science, psychiatry, and philosophy, explore what architecture and neuroscience can learn from each other. They offer historical context, examine the implications for current architectural practice and education, and imagine a neuroscientifically informed architecture of the future.

Architecture is late in discovering the richness of neuroscientific research. As scientists were finding evidence for the bodily basis of mind and meaning, architecture was caught up in convoluted cerebral games that denied emotional and bodily reality altogether. This volume maps the extraordinary opportunity that engagement with cutting-edge neuroscience offers present-day architects.

ContributorsThomas D. Albright, Michael Arbib, John Paul Eberhard, Melissa Farling, Vittorio Gallese, Alessandro Gattara, Mark L. Johnson, Harry Francis Mallgrave, Iain McGilchrist, Juhani Pallasmaa, Alberto Perez-Gomez, Sarah Robinson

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction, Neuroscience, Art

259 pages, Hardcover

First published March 20, 2015

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Reviews

[Yamil Vidal Dos Santos · Rating 1 out of 5]

A bit of context. I’m working in Neuroscience as a PostDoc, and I have an interest in Architecture as a field that offers a nice crossover between arts and science. I appreciate the attempt of this book, but it doesn’t close the gap between the two. On the Neuroscience side, the books elaborates on the concept of embodied cognition and mirror neurons, which are probably two of the most abused concepts in neuroscience. The theoretical consequence of this concepts are routinely taken too far. The problem with the approach that the book proposes might well be that Architecture and Neuroscience live in very different scales. It might prove more fertile to connect Architecture with Psychology (and human behaviour) instead.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but the writing is often very dense and is hard to appreciate without a much more thorough background in philosophy than I have. As others have pointed out, the existence of neuroscience concepts is stretched pretty thin. That being said, it did have me looking at the world differently, and that’s worth something

[Ersin Bactisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I find the idea of writing this book really intriguing and with a good sense for the future, but the studies and the info presented are not necessarily correlated. All it's saying throughout the whole book is that it would be good to study neuroscience in relation to architecture, to enhance how we grasp and sense our built environment, but not giving anything more. I read it from start to finish just seeking for the enlightenment, but the enlightenment didn't came. Disappointment, out.

[Alireza · Rating 2 out of 5]

من ترجمه این کتاب که توسط رضا امیر رحیمی انجام شده را خواندم. ایده های جالبی در مورد علم اعصاب و تاثیر ذهن بر درک محیط داره. با این حال بواسطه مطرح کردن بعضی موضوعات علم اعصاب شناسی کتاب را کمی سنگین دیدم و بخش هایی از آن را متوجه نشدم
به نظرم کتابی نیست که در این زمینه بتونید به عنوان کتاب اول انتخاب کنید و ازش بهره ببرید. احتمالا نیاز هست کتاب های سبک ترو مقدماتی تری راجع به علم اعصاب خواند شود و بعد به این کتاب برگشت.

[Caelan Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intriguing connections between neuroscience and architectural design. Addresses current states of architecture and the ways in which we are affected by space. These connections are still quite novel but are presented in such rich content, these are issues future architecture will need to address, and this book paves the way.

[Douglas Wittnebel]

An interesting dive into the mind and design

[Maranda Siegfried · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of the few thoughtful resources on an emerging topic. Essays by leading thinkers in their respective fields all weigh in on the implications of embodied cognition and neuroscience and the importance of these insights to the practice of architecture. This is a complex discussion that does not easily yield itself to easy tropes and quick fixes but one that requires thoughtful consideration which this book amply provides. If you are looking for a recipe book on how to apply neuroscience to architecture and vice versa this book is not for you. In fact if there is a point to this book, it is that sensitivity and awareness to the interconnectedness of body, mind and world are fundamental to the design of a humane and sustainable future and that such an undertaking does not lend itself to a vapid checklist.