Designing 'pre-reflective' architecture

The essence of neurophenomenological ‘twist’ in architecture lies in its particular strength of approaching in more concrete terms the issue of architectural experience in its multi-sensorial richness. By placing human experience as a central matter of architectural design – that is, acknowledging the phenomenal body as the only genuine architectural subject, this specific union of the latest neuroscientific research with the extensive phenomenological legacy, can offer valuable insights for interpreting our embodiment and how we relate with architectural environment. Accordingly, the notion of ‘pre-reflective’ architecture argues for the profound interdependence of architectural spaces and our perceptual experience, and is to a large extent determined by the deeply embodied, pre-conscious processing of internal and external stimuli. In a nutshell, the neurophenomenological investigations of architecture are aimed at identifying and approaching the conditions of embodied (i.e. authentic) experience of architecture, while unveiling that a purely conceptual engagement with architectural spaces is only a misconception. Also, it raises awareness of the embodied nature of design process itself, and the necessity to be attentive to the discordance between the daily used architectural designing and representational tools conceived upon the physical-mathematical notion of space and the spatiality of the phenomenal world.