Healthy Architecture! Can environments evoke emotional responses?


  •  Kirsten Kaya Roessler    

Abstract

We find environmental psychology at the intersection between architecture and psychology. This article discusses the ways in which individuals are affected by architecture, departing from an early source on the psychology of architecture and taking three architectural examples as illustrations: a public place in Berlin, a health environment in Sweden, and a fitness centre in Denmark. Each of these architectural examples creates what might be called its own psychological emotions, and these are analysed and discussed using a psychodynamic and existential attempt to understand the interrelationship between individuals and spatial reality. A health oriented existential approach is used as a methodological basis to conceptualise the psychological effects of various forms of architecture.



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