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Tag Archives: Ann Sussman
Perils of architecture school
Common/Edge is a website about architecture. All of the essays are written well, but many seem to try to have it both ways about the battle over style in architecture. So I’m not quite sure how Prof. Nikos Salingaros managed … Continue reading
Classicism’s relevance today
The Boston Design Center in the city’s Innovation District hosted a panel today, as part of Boston Design Week, on the relevance of classicism in contemporary design. All five panelists agreed that yes, classicism is still relevant. Classicism has a … Continue reading
Sussman on Corbu’s autism
One reason people prefer traditional to modern architecture is that their eyes literally refuse to look at blank walls. Shown a picture of a building with a blank wall, the eye of an observer will linger anywhere – on a … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Books and Culture
Tagged Ann Sussman, Autism, Boston, Cognitive Architecture, Eye Tracking, ICAA, Le Corbusier, Modern Architecture, Neurobiology
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The eye, the mind, the heart
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so sayeth just about everyone, but how does the mind influence what the eye of the beholder sees? If the eye informs the brain and the brain informs the taste, then there … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Art and design
Tagged Ann Sussman, Beauty, Cognitive Architecture, ICAA, ICAA New England Chapter, Taste
2 Comments
Facing the faces in facades
Most architects don’t get it. The brain is hardwired to prefer traditional buildings over modernist buildings because building facades with more things going on – windows and doors clearly marked, ornament and detail at a range of scales – make … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture
Tagged Ann Sussman, Biology, Heat Map, Neurobiology, The Genetics of Design
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Our buildings, our selves
Ann Sussman, author with Justin Hollander of Cognitive Architecture, has an article in Planning magazine, “Planning for the Subconscious,” that suggests that the millennia-long evolution of how we shape buildings and places placates the inner urges of our minds and … Continue reading
Posted in Architects, Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Art and design, Books and Culture, Development, Urbanism and planning
Tagged Ann Sussman, Biology, Biometrics, Boston, Brain, Christopher Alexander, classical architecture, Hancock Tower, Modern Architecture, Neuroscience, Nikos Salingaros, Perception, Science, Trinity Church
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Better ideas not worse, pls!
Yesterday I sent in my monthly blog post for Traditional Building magazine, and today I’m thinking, well, I left out some really important stuff. My TB post was a reply to TB’s Forum in which the architectural historian Paul A. … Continue reading
Posted in Architects, Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Art and design, Landscape Architecture, Preservation, Urbanism and planning
Tagged Ann Sussman, design, Forum, Freud, Michael Mehaffy, Michel Foucault, Modern Architecture, modernism, Nikos Salingaros, Ornament, Paul Ranogajec, Philosophy, Psychology, Traditional Building
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Beauty and the bore
Several people have sent me “The Psychological Cost of Boring Buildings,” by Jacoba Urist in New York Magazine. The title hooked me, of course, but her essay hardly went down like an oyster. First, I am distrustful of “studies,” especially … Continue reading
Posted in Architects, Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Art and design, Development, Preservation, Urbanism and planning
Tagged ADHD, Ann Sussman, Beauty, Boring Buildings, Cognitive Architecture, Hearst Tower, New York Magazine, Psychology, Ugliness, Whole Foods in NYC
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Fie on a million years!
For his latest piece in CityLab, “Making the Case for Symmetrical Cities,” peripatetic architecture critic Anthony Flint, housed at the Lincoln Institute in Cambridge, does a very nice job adding up the evidence for the superiority of classical and traditional … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Art and design, Books and Culture, Urbanism and planning
Tagged Ann Sussman, Anthony Flint, Christopher Alexander, CityLab, Cognitive Architecture, Congress for the New Urbanism, Da Vinci, Le Corbusier, Lincoln Institute, Nikos Salingaros, Vitruvius
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Helfand’s Boston City Hall
As I remarked in my last post, “Edges, shapes and patterns!,” Boston City Hall’s famous inhumanity came up in Tuesday’s lecture by Ann Sussman, co-author of Cognitive Architecture. At her lecture was Aaron Helfand, an architect at the Boston firm … Continue reading
