Neuroarchitecture

How do we design the streets in large-scale housing projects so that they retain a human scale? In Western cities, the need to house growing numbers of inhabitants frequently involves the introduction of ever taller tower blocks. Although such urban projects are designed to maintain a human scale through attention to residential characteristics, it remains unclear how users actually experience high-rise and other forms of density at street level.

This book seeks to remedy that by exploring the new hybrid field of neuroarchitecture in which researchers use advanced technology to find out how the body responds to sensory stimuli from the built environment. Neuroarchitecture introduces the discipline and systematically analyses examples of high-density streets in Western cities like Amsterdam, Toronto, Manchester and Oslo. What design solutions have been employed there? And how are the places experienced visually? What lessons we can draw about designing with a human scale? Neuroarchitecture challenges conventional design guidelines and offers practical tips for enhancing the human scale of densely built environments.