Profile

Email

id11350@alunos.uminho.pt

Science ID

D716-4C3F-7606

Ciênciavitae

Lab2PT Group

DeTech - Design and Technology

Scientific Area

Construction, Technology and Architecture

Supervision

Carlos Alberto Maia Dominguez António Bernardo Mendes Seiça Providência Santarém António Manuel Melo Soares de Almeida (EMed)

Project Title

Neurophenomenological analysis: emotion in the architecture of Alvar Aalto and Álvaro Siza

Abstract

This research seeks to demonstrate how architecture can elicit genuine, measurable, and potentially therapeutic emotional responses through an analysis of the works of Alvar Aalto and Álvaro Siza, considered as sensory and emotional laboratories of spatial experience, while also examining the relationship between their respective architectural approaches. The study develops an interdisciplinary framework structured around three complementary dimensions, theoretical, architectural, and neuroscientific, centred on the relationship between the body and emotion. It adopts a neurophenomenological perspective that integrates conceptual reflection, analysis of built works, lived experience, and scientific measurement. The theoretical dimension establishes the phenomenological, embodied, and neurobiological foundations that explain how architectural space influences affective states, contributes to physiological regulation, and supports processes of balance and well-being. The architectural dimension is developed through the analysis of selected works by Aalto and Siza, identifying the spatial strategies and architectural mechanisms involved in the construction and modulation of emotion. The neuroscientific dimension examines and validates these premises in real architectural settings through neurophysiological metrics capable of capturing and translating the body’s responses to the built environment. The central research question is: How does architectural emotion manifest itself in the human body, and how can it be empirically demonstrated? This approach contributes to an understanding of architecture as an active agent of emotional regulation, one in which the body senses, the brain registers, and consciousness recognises the profound and formative nature of spatial experience.

Keywords

Phenomenological architecture, Architectural emotion, Lived body, Neuroscience, Emotional regulation

Organic Unit

School of Architecture, Art and Design of University of Minho