VENICE Perception & Behavior

December 11th- 19th

The architectural profession needs to bring the full-blooded human being into its very core. We will face this challenge using a new perspective that emerges in the rapidly evolving collaboration between architecture and the human sciences. We will study how places shape one’s behavior and how experiences arise in the interaction of sensory and motor systems of the person, focusing on tactile, acoustic and resonant qualities of space. Lectures about perception and imagination, haptics and memory, peripersonal space and embodiment will inform design applications. We will also discuss how ideas about movement and time can help to develop new strategies for architectural and urban design.

Designers need a framework capable of integrating concepts and methods developed by different disciplines. We will begin exploring this integration in a series of lectures and discussions dedicated to the interface of natural human sciences, architecture and design. In the following days, we will look into how such integration can be facilitated by grounding this inquiry in the local environment: the landscape, the local culture, its history and traditions. In the workshops and sketching sessions held during tours in the first week, we will delve into regional culture of Veneto, visiting multiple works of architecture, guided by local designers and historians. We will synthesize this knowledge by exploring how different human sciences could contribute to understanding place and culture, and we will investigate how human perception affects behavior.