ABSTRACT

Cognition and the Built Environment argues that interacting with our built environment, as users and as architects, is a cognitive process. It claims that architecture, in its form and meaning, is a basic, embodied level of human cognition.

The assumption is that we and our built environment together form an intelligent system, a cognitive feedback loop between us and the world of which we are part. With this as a vantage point, the book discusses the meaning and intelligence of concrete architectural environments as well as the agency of the architect, of his client and of the user.

The inquiry oscillates between abstract thought, topological models and cognitive semiotics, between pragmatist philosophy and the professional practice of planning cities, developing projects and using objects. Architecture serves more complex purposes than our caves, paths and landmarks did.

Written for students and academics of urban design, urban planning and architectural theory, Cognition and the Built Environment argues that human cognition feeds on the interaction between thought, agency and built environment, and that architecture is the spatial form of this interaction.

chapter |9 pages

Prologue

part |43 pages

Making Sense

chapter |16 pages

Some Steps Towards Meaning

chapter |15 pages

Umwelt

chapter |8 pages

Place and Interpretant

chapter |2 pages

Postscript to Making Sense

part |39 pages

The Field

chapter |19 pages

‘City’ as a Measure of Density

chapter |18 pages

An Architecture of the Field

part |28 pages

The Object

chapter |2 pages

The Tao of Architecture

chapter |11 pages

Physics of Meaning and Form

chapter |13 pages

An Architecture of the Object

part |40 pages

The Work

chapter |8 pages

Speed and Urban Development

chapter |18 pages

A Topology of the Work of Architecture

chapter |2 pages

Epilogue