Einfühlung and Architecture: about language from things to design criteria

The text tries to think about the impact that the discovery of mirror neurons might have in the field of architecture. Starting from the idea of empathy as a gestural prelinguistic language developed as extensive engine of a gradually more complex gestural communication of which word is the last stage and empathy as aphasic language of cultural transmission that allows us to have and pass on the cultural knowledge necessary to live in social groups, the text examines the most interesting experiences of the last century from the point of view of empathy and links them to contemporary design experiences, trying to understand what contribution can provide a critical concept as old as empathy, but now extremely topical as it is biologically justified, in the Information Technology era, tracking down a common basis of social experiential sharing for a heterogeneous and fragmented landscape as the contemporary one is.