6 Conclusion

Though it is tempting to want to interface architecture directly with promising devices and data analysis we must do so with reservations. As these systems are not yet stable enough for consumer consumption, by designing with them we severely limit our audience for the time being. However there are still ways we can build emotional affordance into our projects. What might start as a screenbased UI interface could evolve into an application that would connect with a wearable device in the future. The value is in starting to consider how these innovations in technology will inevitably allow us to interface with emotions as architects. Perhaps architects should approach the subject in the same ways we already approach designing for end users via program. Instead of using a sensor to evaluate an emotion that is hypothetically in response to some kind of condition or stimulus, we should instead emphasize the underlying emotional states of groups of end users and their needs. This requires that architects, when wishing to design for emotions, pinpoint shared human experiences that have a prominent emotional dimension or aspect. Grief is just one example of such a condition. It can be said that by creating emotionally responsive architecture via technology we run the risk of the kinds of negative outcomes that other forms of digital media have shown to incur. At the time of this writing, the Covid-19 Pandemic has highlighted how at a global scale digital media affects communities, perceptions and livelihoods. There have been calls for a technological Hippocratic Oath that would engender digital processes with the same considerations for well-being that those in the medical profession must regard (Sample, 2019). As the architecture profession becomes increasingly more technological we are faced with many of the same ethical dilemmas. It is extremely important to ground our initiatives in evidence based research, such as that carried out by Nanda and Saleh, even when prototyping environments that are playful or more abstract. We can combat some of these negative outcomes through intentional empathy. Interacting with emotions in the built environment is an inherently empathetic process as it requires architects to contemplate and plan for the emotions of building occupants. In his meditation on empathy through semiotics,

Cognitive Scientist Yair Neuman supplies us with Kohut’s definition “The best definition of empathy … is the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person” (Neuman, 2010), p.235). He expounds that the “modern cognitive understanding of empathy [is] a kind of “mind reading”, a natural capacity or “endowment” that is deeply embodied in our neurology and the way our “mirror neurons” reflect the other’s mind” (Neuman, 2010). From this definition we can infer that empathy involves first and foremost a sharing of understanding between two parties, self or other. From this definition we can reframe the architect as “self” and the building occupants as the “other” to be empathized with. This research involves examining ways that a sense of empathy, or awareness of another’s experience can be facilitated in a digital environment.

Fig. 78 What is Empathy? (Oliveira, 2018)