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Navigating Complex Buildings: Cognition, Neuroscience and Architectural Design

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Studying Visual and Spatial Reasoning for Design Creativity

Abstract

This paper provides a tentative set of ideas which attempt to draw together research from neuroscience, spatial cognition and architecture (space syntax). It starts by considering the questions, “What does the brain do during the navigation of complex built space and how does it map it?” “What can cognitive studies tell us about navigation in complex buildings?” and “What does space syntax measure about structures of space and what does it tell us?” These questions serve as the starting point for the establishment of a framework for future collaborative efforts to bring together these disparate areas but with the fundamental aim of ultimately supporting architects to design more user-friendly buildings.

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Acknowledgements

To Peg Rawes (Senior Lecturer, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) and Kate Jeffery (Professor and Director of Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, UCL) for jointly organizing the “Spatial Thinking: visualising spatial thinking in architecture and neuroscience” one-day, interdisciplinary seminars in February 2010, which sparked off many of the ideas presented in this paper and to John O’Keefe (Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL) for some of his comments during the event, which were equally as inspirational.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University College London, London, UK

    R.C. Dalton & H.J. Spiers

  2. University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    C. Hölscher

Authors
  1. R.C. Dalton
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  2. C. Hölscher
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  3. H.J. Spiers
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Correspondence to R.C. Dalton .

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  1. Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

    John S. Gero

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Dalton, R., Hölscher, C., Spiers, H. (2015). Navigating Complex Buildings: Cognition, Neuroscience and Architectural Design. In: Gero, J. (eds) Studying Visual and Spatial Reasoning for Design Creativity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9297-4_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9297-4_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9296-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-9297-4

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