Topic > Influence of architectural stimulation on human cognitive response

ABSTRACTArchitectural design has always been interdependent on human psychology. All human beings are unique, as are their abilities to perceive and absorb from their environment. Human psychology begins to develop as soon as a child is conceived until death and continues to evolve from birth to infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age and death. And the same goes for human needs and, consequently, for human behavior. A child needs smaller architectural spaces, according to his scale, while a teenager will need intellectual but social spaces. However, the architectural design industry has transformed since its inception based on the customized needs of users. efficient spatial planning stimulates and is influenced by human cognition. Small like light, color, texture, smell and big like shapes, materials, built forms, open spaces, etc. they can influence both positively and negatively the human response towards the surrounding environment. Likewise, human psychology, social circle, economic status, and political environment can also alter natural or man-made architecture. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The human central nervous system meticulously processes all the smallest details to frame the bigger picture as a whole. Our brainstem is responsible for involuntary functions such as reflexes, breathing, heart function and transmits information to and from the brain to the body. The nervous system depends on our senses for emotion formation, learning, storage, motivation, mood patterns, and response to various actions formed by constructed and unconstructed spaces. This article focuses on myriad psychosocial responses due to different architectural vocabulary and vice versa. It highlights how psychological study can be effective in structuring architectural design elements and principles to demonstrate a model of physical and psychological well-being of human beings. It elaborates how architecture can change the social model making it more interactive or isolated, depressed or healthy. The scope of this article is limited to the use of the human sensory system in the experience of architecture. However, this article concludes with probable solutions and modifications that can stimulate the human cognitive response towards the surrounding environment. INTRODUCTION Psychology is the science of behavior and the human mind. It is influenced and developed by the human being's environment. This environment can be domestic, social, economic, educational or work-related. And these environments serve as the backdrop for the human conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind. The architectural planning of built and unbuilt spaces, in all these environments, significantly shapes human psychology both directly as a node of physical contact and indirectly as an influence. They are dominated by many simple and complex stimuli such as light, color, the structure of materials, sound and noise, fragrances and smells, the shapes of the built-unbuilt, etc. All these factors, when lacking or present in excess, give rise to extreme behavioral responses. . For example, depression due to lack of natural light, irritability due to high noise level in the home or work environment, calm and healing atmosphere due to the use of cold colors, high increase in the hormone adrenaline due to the presence of warm colors and vibrant like red/orange, lack of lightingsufficient resulting in a slowdown in the intellectual development of students. The use of colors can in fact make a built space appear larger or smaller than its actual physical dimensions and the same through lighting or the presence of reflective surfaces. People unconsciously map all the cognitive elements present in their surrounding environment through their observations and also through the perceptions developed since childhood, in turn framing their sense of safety, security, well-being and comfort in that natural or artificial environment .THEORIES OF COGNITIVE RESPONSES A lot of psychologists and philosophers have modulated theories relating to the way humans react, respond and evolve in various environments relating to architectural values. Such theories have been adopted in various design styles of architects where they stimulate the needs of the user. Evidence-based designs are prevalent in institutional, commercial, residential and hospitality sectors that play with human cognition. GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY THEORY: According to Gestalt psychology or Gestaltism, the philosophy of mind given by the Berlin School of Experimental Psychology, whenever the human mind perceives an idea, image, shape or figure, the entire surrounding environment or form it has its own reality, independent of its parts. This implies that the human mind collects information through all the senses and projects a complete image of its environment. POST-STRUCTURALISM: Post-structuralism theory revolves around the interdependent relationship between human beings, the surrounding environment and the process of interpreting meanings. Post-structuralism is closely connected to the theory of structuralism, which holds that the true character of this (in this case, architecture and elements of the built environment), lies not in these things themselves, but rather in the relationships that are built between them and the meanings attributed to them (Nessbitt, 1996: 450). He explains that every human being has his own unique perception generally dominated by his use or need. THEORY OF PERCEPTION: Perception is the ability of any human being to interpret information received through various senses from his direct-indirect environment. Each perception is distinctive and may be unreasonable but subjective. According to Van Kreij's Philosophy, the sensorial perception of architectural spaces is made up of three main concepts: Hacticity: generally three-dimensional sense of touch. The sense of depth, perceived through the sense of sight, is verified by atticity. Achieved in architecture through shapes, materials and textures.Kinesthesia:Concept of exploring the surrounding environment through visual or physical movement. In architecture, movement plays an extremely important role and is actively realized by fluid design patterns, for example, in museums or exhibition galleries, circulation flow according to functions, for example in healthcare buildings where segregation of departments inspiring interconnectivity between them, multi-layered but at the same time static flow, for example in hospitality buildings, etc. Synesthesia: Refers to the phenomenon that transfers sensory information from one sense to another. It is often seen as a combination of all the inputs from the senses into the mind. For example, the use of tactile floors in institutions for the blind makes the difference in texture felt and transfers tactile feedback to the nervous system. Van Kreij (2008) also goes so far as to conclude that the synaesthetic characteristics of materials are more important in an individual's perception than the acts of seeing, hearing, tasting and touching.IMAGEABILITY BY KEVIN LYNCH:Kevin Lynch explored the urban environmentsurrounding through movements. According to his theory, almost all senses are used through navigation in an architectural space. This theory is powerful in achieving a holistic experience achieved through multiple sensory stimulation. He defines it as: “…that quality of a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in a given observer.” (Lynch, 1960: 9) PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTING SPACES This Norberg-Schulz theory, set out in Genius Loci - Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, elaborates a methodology for the creation of places and proposes that the essential purpose of architectural spaces is to transform a site to a place and to discover the meaning of that place. Architecture reinforces the existential experience, the sense of being in the world, and this is essentially a strengthened experience of self. (Norberg-Schulz, 1966: 41, 422). According to this theory, the human being orients himself accordingly according to architectural space. SENSORY STIMULI AND ARCHITECTURE To stop the alienation of architecture and reintegrate the human being into the built environment, designers should strive towards a greater awareness of multisensory cognitive perception in the today's architectural world. By understanding how a human responds, architects will be able to stimulate the human mind to increase human productivity, elevate positive response, meet user needs, and improve the human-world interface. For a long time, the built-unbuilt architectural elements of the internal and external physical spaces of the human-environment interface have influenced human cognition and behavior, in turn speculating on responses, emotions, moods and human actions. This direct-indirect influence can be positive or negative. However, an architect creates a man-made environment and conserves or develops a natural environment that conforms to the needs of users. Therefore, the surrounding physical environment and human responses are interdependent. All these physical elements invigorate all five senses of the human being, that is, visual influence through materials, color, light, lighting, body movements; Audio detection via sound or noise level; Olfactory sense through fragrances or smells; sense of taste and sense of touch through texture and tactility. The sensitivity of these increases as soon as a change or transformation occurs in one of them, in turn influencing the cognitive response. The Gestalt School of Psychology reveals the importance of relationships between stimuli to the human senses and the contextual environment. Human cognitive responses can be temporary, permanent, or sequential. For example, the childhood environment is a scaffolding of childhood memories and that same human being as an adult may wish to recreate the same architectural atmosphere on the home front using the same colors, interiors, open playful spaces, fragrances of flowers in the neighborhood . And the same insecure childhood can lead to a desire for closed, caged interior spaces with dark, gloomy lighting. So, here is the role of an architect to balance the physical environment as per the user-oriented needs to improve his physical and psychological condition. The five most common senses can be used to varying degrees and even unconsciously, as explained below. The Visual Sense The visual sense is the strongest stimulating sense, among others, in influencing and shaping human behavior in any architectural physical unit. It is through vision that a human being sees the nature of any space, its shapes, sizes, shape, mass, texture, colors and depth. Light The different frequencies of daylight (which includes sunlight and skylights) create different physical stimuli.The human eye can see colors and objects that are in the electromagnetic wavelength of the light spectrum of 400-700 nm. Within this range, the human eye can distinguish one of the main properties of light: color. The recognition of color from the light spectrum, due to its reflection, refraction, absorption or transmission through form or space, results in heterogeneous human responses and reactions such as irritability, happiness, joy, love, hope, excitement, encouragement, frustration, anger, sadness, isolation, depression, restlessness, etc. Objective and subjective images are created in the human mind by the play of light in our architectural environment. And our perceptual environment may not be a real space. The perception of spaces in their entirety is due to the visual characteristics that are active only in the presence of light. Light influences the qualitative characteristics of architectural elements and also their specifications. Any space filled with light and shadow is rich in visual forces and is sensitive, both physically and visually. Light controls the physical properties of spaces such as color, texture, depth, shape and intensity. Optimal lighting in any architectural space balances the following: Human needs For example, the productivity of an office worker can be positively transformed by a combination of sufficient daylight and artificial lighting. The playfulness of light in pediatric waiting areas can calm children, while controlled lighting in wards leads to healing. Likewise, the lack of optimal lighting in the operating room can have serious negative repercussions. In short, light can contribute greatly to humans' sense of well-being. Architectural Considerations The primary purpose of lighting in any built and open space design can be inferred to complement the presence of myriad shapes, sizes and colors. Color Color is the resulting result of physical phenomena interaction between the light source and any space or object. It is the second most important stimulus that helps human cognition index events in the conscious or subconscious mind. It galvanizes human perception with respect to variables such as time, position, shades and shadows, materials and textures of surrounding elements with different characteristics. Controls emotions and regulates cognitive reactions. In the manifestation of each color changing to another color, each color will show its essential darkness or brightness compared to another color. Reversing this natural order will cause color incompatibility. Each color has three variable characteristics: hue, luminance and saturation. Hue is the quality of colors that determines their place in a series of colors (from red to violet) equivalent to light of different wavelengths in the visible spectrum. Red, yellow and blue are primary colors and because they form the basis of other shades they are also called major colors. Secondary shades include orange, green and purple which are obtained by mixing equal amounts of two primary shades. Tertiary shades are those obtained by mixing primary and secondary shades. Primary colors attract children and are generally used in primary schools, pediatric spaces, patients with neurotic problems, for sensory stimulation. Luminance is the second quality of color and determines the relative degree of its brightness and darkness. In the color cycle, yellow is the brightest color (light gray to almost white) and purple is the least bright color (dark gray to almost black). A higher luminance than required can cause glare, irritability and lack of,, 1977: 33).