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An understanding of spatial cognition or knowledge is key to architecture.Here Daniel R Montello, Professor of Geography and Affiliated Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), explains the significance of cognitive structures and processes for understanding, perceiving, imagining and designing architectural space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'syntonic' in psychology refers to an emotional responsiveness to the environment. Here Guest-Editors Christian Derix and Åsmund Izaki explain how they developed syntonic systems that place an emphasis on the representation of the occupant-user during a guest-professorship at the Technical University of Munich (2012-13). This was explored as a means of enabling students to bridge the gap between the mutually exclusive specialisation of the architect as computer programmer and architect-designer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The celebrated architect, educator and author Juhani Pallasmaa is well-known for having forged a new understanding of perception and the experiential in architecture with his seminal book The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Sensory (3rd edn, Wiley, 2012). Here he describes how 'imagining human situations' is at the core of architecture, relying on the interrelationship of physical space, behaviour and the capacity for mental tuning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the examination of the paradox of human joy in the eidetic immediacy of the moment by Mauro Baracco in Melbourne, Victoria. He also considers how often simultaneous joy of generalizing or theorizing the same experience creates an unavoidable condition of potentiality in human affairs. It eventually affects the stability and the existence of several architectural structures in the city.

An essay is presented on the psychological impact of the structure of houses to the personality of a person in London, England. Gaston Bachelard, a French philosopher, suggests that a house is associated to the emotional capacity of a person. A house can then be identified as the house of reason, the house of love and the house simile. Every section in the house reflects on the needs and the desires as well as the desire of the person and it is also notable that he may aim for objectivity.

The article explores the psychogeographical potential of the architectural works of Jon Jerde in the U.S. His projects depicts the method of combining ambient effects such as sublimity of natural landscapes, synchronized fountains and lighting with fantastical architecture. They include Horton Plaza in San Diego, California and Freemont Street Plaza Experience in Las Vegas, Nevada. It inspires the new generation of megaplanners and creative practices in developing an exciting urban environments.

Operating between the obscene and methods of estrangement and displacement, parrhesia-stases interrogates the agendas of aesthetics present in repulsiveness, condemnation and punishment. François Roche and Camille LacadÉe here present a body of work by their Bangkok-based practice New-Territories/M4, which speculates on the ramifications of architecture as a paradigm of disobedience. Deeply rooted in Michel Foucault's proposal for a re-evaluation of an ethico-political approach, the work investigates an alternative architectural position that utilises strategies of transfiguration to provoke pathological behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London-based architect Gilles Retsin is seeking out a new spatial experience. Enough of refined and carefully articulated surfaces and volumes. As demonstrated by these projects from his own practice and from the Softkill Design team - of which he is also a member - new digital techniques make it possible to devise environments that are infused with raw atmosphere. Here, the boundaries between interior and exterior, or between classic elements such as wall, floor and ceiling, are blurred to the point of nonexistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forces that were previously invisible to the human eye are now being materialised in new aesthetics made possible by algorithmic design. The aptly named Wonderlab studio at University College London's Bartlett School of Architecture is running an ongoing research programme on these awe-inspiring possibilities. Its XenoCells project uses a cell division algorithm that can be applied in varying resolutions, to vastly different effect - achieving 3D-printed forms that range from sharp crystalline structures to organic folds reminiscent of internal organs. Alisa Andrasek, director of Wonderlab, explains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evocative design is not only concerned with enriching our experience of our environment: it can also be used to seduce us into consuming. Empathy is as crucial to this strategy of entrapment as it is to designing with more magnanimous aims in mind. Benjamin H Bratton, Professor of Visual Arts and Director of the Center for Design and Geopolitics at the University of California, San Diego, reflects on the matter, and considers whether the moodlessness that defines seemingly empathy-free design is necessarily a bad thing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the importance of the discipline of an international language of rational architecture to the connection between an architect and his clients in the U.S. It is stated that the potential of architecture exists in human spirit because of the association between the desire of a person and realizing it. Moreover, the degree of fertility that exists in the imagination of an architect is directly proportional to his readiness in relating his memory to the users or clients.

Munich-based architect Andreas Vogler, and co-founder of Architecture and Vision, here presents his speculative project MoonCapital, a proposal for habitation of the Moon in 2069, a century after the first lunar landing. Located in the most promising place on the planet for human settlement, the lunar south pole, MoonCapital accommodates 60 or so people in a series of modules, allowing for cellular growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]