Human Response To Architecture

1.1. Research Approach
“Built environment, is an important part of our living conditions, affecting our experiences, feelings, memories, and ultimately the decisions we make.” (Pallasmaa J., 1994)
“Design is a tool we use to touch people, engage their senses and enhance their lives.”Michael Graves

Human response to architecture is usually based on subjective emotions: I like that building, I hate this space; this room is so open, this office is oppressive. But something more nuanced is happening to elicit these responses. (Outcome of the 2014 conference of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture-ANFA by Berg N.)
Neuroscientists have found that distinctive processes occur in our brains—consciously and subconsciously, cognitively and physiologically—from the moment we step into a space. These processes affect our emotions, our health, and even the development of

“Life Enhancing Architecture has to address all of our senses simultaneously and fuses our experience of self with our experience of the world” Goethe presented this idea about the art work in 1890. This notion is developed later by many scientists and researchers. Architect Juhani Pallasmaa, in his book “The Eyes of the Skin-2005”, reinforced Goethe’s statement and gave a criticism that the visual sense is given primary attention in the built environment and as a result does not allow for most environments to contribute to people’s experience as completely as it could.
The dominance of visual sense can be seen through history; in the ancient Greeks philosophers writings; for Plato “Vision is greatest humanity’s gift”, for Aristotle “Sight is the most noble of the senses because it approximates the intellect most closely