The Quest for Empathic Architecture: Prospects, Concepts and Critical Aspects

Starting from the emotional turn in the understanding of reality, the book retraces some thematic core concepts of aesthetic, philosophical and neuroscientific thought that have thematized empathy as a fundamental way of relating to otherness. From this point of view, we can consider the relationship between us and architecture, rethought as an incorporated medium of our emotional experience, where empathy -as a multi-component experience, characterized by both an affective response towards the other and the cognitive capacity to assume the subjective perspective of the other person - opens the space to the other-than-self. The transition from object to experience in rethinking the work of architecture in terms of relationship and no longer of simple form therefore appears crucial, because it means considering as a priority function of architecture something that does not belong to the work itself but to its consequences, the emotions and behaviors that can be engendered in the users.