Percezione, Spazio, Natura. Linee guida per la biofilia e le neuroscienze applicate all'architettura

This research focuses on the analysis of some fields of study that are providing the basis for an important turning point in architecture: disciplines that investigate the influence of the built environment on people's psychophysical well-being. E. O. Wilson's 1984 Biophilia Hypothesis showed how humans are characterized by an innate need to be connected to natural ecosystems. It was the same year that Roger Ulrich's study, the cornerstone of scientific demonstrations on this topic, showed up: “view through a window may influence recovery from a surgery” showed with quantitative data the regenerative power of nature for our well-being. Today, exactly 40 years later, the research that followed forms a solid, structured and evolving body of studies. In the two decades at the turn of the century, another field of study has experienced a real revolution: neuroscience. With the advent of innovative technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, for the first time we have been able to see how the brain works while it is in action. The ensuing studies have had such a powerful impact that many scientific disciplines, such as cultural and social anthropology, philosophy and psychology have been forced to critically reconsider their basic assumptions. Architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, and design were at first reluctant to experiment with the implications of such findings, but since the new millennium, research in biophilic design and neuroscience for architecture has begun to develop. One of the main objectives of this paper has been to conduct a critical operation of analysis, synthesis and systemization to try to provide an integrated and shared common ground for those concerned with the relationships between space, perception, nature and well-being. These fields of study, at present, are developing in parallel, with very little consideration of possible disciplinary convergences. The points of contact between them are numerous and interesting and can be traced back to the following macro-themes: the evolutionary perspective, the need to put the human being and the perceptual phenomenon back at the center of architectural design, and the critique of the way the built environment has been conceived and realized from the early postwar period to the present. The last part presents field experiments. These are projects developed during the three-year doctoral program that apply the mentioned theories to two specific contexts: education and health. These practical tests allowed a double step between theory and practice: verifying the application of tools, methods and theories to the entire project process and, on the basis of this experience, confirming them or proposing revisions and implementations. This process led to the formulation of a new design tool: 16 patterns for the relationship between Perception, Spaces and Nature.