Neurocosmos: The Emotional and Cognitive Correlates of Architectural Atmospheres

Through its inherent spatial presence, the architectural action instills an emotional potential in the physical environment, shaping the ground for the architectural atmospheric perception. The term “atmosphere” defines a state of resonance and identification (sensorimotor, emotive, and cognitive) between an individual and their surrounding built space. Human subjects can feel empathy for inanimate rooms when they interiorly establish an embodied simulation of some architectural features as form, proportions, rhythm, materials, light and shade, temperature, sounds (that is the so-called “generators of atmosphere”). Performing an experimental test, we propose to verify the existence of an empathic reactivity in subjects put into contact with architectural settings, loaded by variable arrangements of atmospheric tension. The goal is to determine which architectural features ignite the atmospheric perception, based on emotional sensitivity and if this supposed empathic performance is shared among subjects and gradable as a model in architectural theory, according to the scientific principle of objectivity and replicability. The test is based on observation of reproductions of architectural settings designed about their atmospheric skills. These settings, modeled in VR, are showed to engaged subjects, who have to draft a self-assessment questionnaire, aimed at analyzing the multicomponential nature (emotive and cognitive) of the architectural atmospheric perception. The sample is founded on 205 individuals, of mixed-sex, aged 20-35, and collected from the same sociocultural milieu. Their dispositional empathy is preliminarily examined by a brief form of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (B-IRI). Every experimental session employs 21 digital settings, composed of a standard element and 20 variations on the theme. The case study is the spatial unit of the corridor, inflected with five categories of design parameters. In the questionnaire the first questions rate the subjective measure of the atmospheric emotive component, using a self-report visual analog scale (VAS), based on arousal and hedonic valence. Following questions explore the cognitive dimension, asking the participants to describe with an adjective the emotional experience lived, extracting a tag from a prearranged set of “atmospheric features” (emotive qualities) and “objective features” (physical and geometrical properties).