Neuroarchitecture

Architectural spaces are anchors for our memory. We find our place in the room by means of our sensory perception; the brain makes use of surfaces and spatial systems in order to store and organize the world we live in. The understanding of this principle forms the basis for the transfer of the results of recent neuroscientific research to architectural practice, as discussed in this book.

Neuroarchitecture links neuroscience, perception theory, and Gestalt psychology, as well as music, art, and architecture, into a holistic approach that focuses on the laws of structure formation and the movement of the individual within the architectural space. Christoph Metzger, the author of Building for Dementia and Architecture and Resonance, analyses buildings designed by Alvar Aalto, Sou Fujimoto, Hugo Häring, Philip Johnson, Hermann Muthesius, Juhani Pallasmaa, James Stirling, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Peter Zumthor in the context of the Amsterdam School of Architecture and their criticism of functionalism in order to develop bases and criteria for a modern, people-related architecture that is indebted to neuroscientific knowledge.