by John P. Eberhard with a Forward by Rita Carter
O.K., so it’s not a catchy title. Nor is it a particularly catchy book, but it addresses a topic that's becoming increasingly catchy. What is the role of the brain in our perception of architecture? How can we better understand the effect different types of architecture have on the brain, so as to create architecture that the brain responds to positively? In some ways it’s a bit of a no-brainer really: if we can isolate the architectural characteristics to which we intuitively respond, we can design more responsive buildings.
Eberhard’s book attempts to distill a complicated topic into terms an attentive general reader can grasp. I’m not sure I was attentive enough. It’s a tough slog. I agree wholeheartedly with his premise that architects would find it “useful to know that there was some solid evidence based on fundamental studies to back up their intuitions.” It’s just that I hoped I’d find that evidence at the ready in the pages of his book.
What I did find was a welcome introduction to the field of neuroscience. In an early chapter on our sensory systems, I learned that we have six senses not five. The new-to-me sixth sense is called proprioception. “It tells us where our body is in space –- what is up and what is down, how to catch a ball, and how to find objects in the dark,” Eberhard explains. Clearly this sense is critical to how we perceive architecture, but we're not particularly conscious of it.
Turns out a lot of what we’re responding to in our environment happens on a subconscious level. Emotions work this way. We can have an emotional
