ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how we pay attention to, focus on and perceive architectural forms and make a mental representation of the built environment. Attention is a cognitive process in which the mind concentrates on specific stimuli in the surrounding environment by excluding other data to perform more accurate mental processing of the subject matter. The subject of attention and concentration and its impact on perception and mental reconstruction of the built environment is a key concept in cognitive science. Contemporary architectural aesthetics, often ignoring the human experience and individual preferences, makes this need for a scientific basis for the creation of our living spaces particularly urgent. The study of attention and concentration as visual and mental phenomena is potentially a means of reaching this goal. Historic Persian architecture is an ideal subject for exploring these cognitive mechanisms. Through its continuous and long history, Persian architecture relies on specific spatial and formal patterns. Studying this architecture using empirical data and experimental methods is a logical way of examining the rationale behind its continuity. A potential result of this chapter is to find the relationship between mental cognition and built forms to create a more scientific foundation for architectural aesthetics.
