From Object to Experience - by Harry Francis Mallgrave (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Harry Francis Mallgrave combines a history of ideas about architectural experience with the latest insights from the fields of neuroscience, cognitive science and evolutionary biology to make a powerful argument about the nature and future of architectural design.

Today, the sciences have granted us the tools to help us understand better than ever before the precise ways in which the built environment can affect the building user's individual experience. Through an understanding of these tools, architects should be able to become better designers, prioritizing the experience of space - the emotional and aesthetic responses, and the sense of homeostatic well-being, of those who will occupy any designed environment. In From Object to Experience, Mallgrave goes further, arguing that it should also be possible to build an effective new cultural ethos for architectural practice.

Drawing upon a range of humanistic and biological sources, and emphasizing the far-reaching implications of new neuroscientific discoveries and models, this book brings up-to-date insights and theoretical clarity to a position that was once considered revolutionary but is fast becoming accepted in architecture.

Review Quotes

"Encouraging a way of thinking about design as the center of human experience in the built environment, author Harry Francis Mallgrave convincingly argues for a humancentric focus of perception and understanding for appropriate design responses in designed human habitats." --Choice

"This book is a seminal source for the currently growing interest in approaching architecture as a mental reality and experience rather than an aestheticized object." --Juhani Pallasmaa, Architect SAFA, HonFAIA, IntFRIBA, Professor Emeritus, Author

About the Author

Harry Francis Mallgrave is an architect, scholar and editor and distinguished Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, USA. He is the author of over 15 books, the recipient of the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, and is an Honorable Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.