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This paper introduces the ongoing project The Cognitive User of Architecture, which investigates the relationship between architecture and user. The main thesis states that in order to receive knowledge of this relationship, the focus has to lie on the user rather than on the built environment. Accepting and validating the user as a subjectively perceiving and consciously processing 'actor' on the stage which architectural environments provide, the central claim is that architecture is a consciously experienced subjective product, emerging out of the user's perception. Focusing on cognitive science as a consequence, German philosopher Thomas Metzinger's work is examined and incorporated. In Being No One, Metzinger (2003) considers neuroscientific research to present a representational and functional analysis of what consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is. Metzinger's significance lies in the development of a conceptual toolkit, interlinking the humanities with the empirical sciences of the mind.
This research paper explores the capabilities, opportunities, and implications which Metzinger's studies have for the architecture / user relationship. Therefore not only theoretical concepts based on the neuroscientific debate are explained, but interactive spatial experiments – responsive architecture – are presented, verifying the theoretical concepts with supporting empirical data.

The following paper investigates the relationship between architecture and its user. The main hypothesis states that in order to acquireknowledge of this relationship, the focus has to lie on the user rather than on the built environment. Accepting and validating the user as a subjectively perceiving and consciously processing 'actor' on the stage which architectural environments provide, the central claim is that architecture is a subjectively experienced product, emerging out of the user's process of 'consciousness.' This process of subjective experience is what we have to understand in order to gain knowledge of the relationship between architecture and its user.

Paper

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Areas of Interest