Design & Intuition: Structures, Interiors & the Mind

Scholarship has sought to explain design primarily as developments and trends by understanding the influential ideas of a period, which doesn't explain why people become attached to design and cultivate it over time. For this purpose we must also gain understanding of collective cognitive processes and the meaning of design to people. This work, the result of thirty years of observation and study, examines the interplay between culture, design, and conscious and unconscious thought processes through the development of design observed first in ancient structures and then in interiors and artefacts associated to architecture. A key observation of the author is that buildings and people sometimes suggest each other, a mind phenomenon that connects people and buildings intimately in cognitive and sensory ways. While architecture can be evoked in the design of peoples appearance, anatomy can be echoed in architecture too. The designs of some structures materialize over and over in architectural interiors and objects. Their repetitive manifestation says that this event is not transitory. The two representations, architecture in people, and people in architecture, are interesting concepts in need of explanation. The important products of creativity have outlasted their creators. Society holds fast to favorite architecture--the attraction of ancient aesthetics is still active today. Images from the past connect with the contemporary psyche, reflecting architecture as an instrument of expression to which people respond. Because the cultivation of design involves both created outcomes and the cognitive behavior of people, the input of the public is vital, and an important piece in the picture of creativity that has been missing from the existing literature. Among the books conclusions is that the mind has its own built-in processes (important in pre-human history) that prompt individuals to find or construct shelter. The author also recognizes a phenomenon observed in philosophy, namely that in developing knowledge the mind sometimes arrives at solutions that parallel the solutions of nature. The workings of the mind that arrive at human outlines could be a natural theme, or a way to function and comprehend a sheltering form, a phenomenon that is intimately a part of the larger picture