People-Centered Architecture: Design, Practice, Education, (Paperback)

"This unique book looks at architecture through the lens of cognitive sciences to promote human-centered design. While many architects and architecture students have good design intuition and an empathic temperament, the rigors of academia and stresses of practice often mute these instincts. This leads to architects at an unhealthy distance from the people they serve, and designs and projects which lose focus on the clients and customers for whom they have been developed. On the other hand, architecture succeeds when projects "come alive" for their users, providing not just function but also resonating with their inner selves. People-Centered Architecture: Leveraging Design, Practice, and Education is a toolkit designed to help hard-working architects and devoted students of architecture create richer, more compelling, more humane architecture, that convinces clients and saves design time. Author Milton Shinberg has spent decades in dialogue with architects and designers, clients, artists, scientists, teachers, and his students and their families. Taking lessons from human-centered sciences including anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience, the book's pragmatic ideas and strategies will make design more robust, more deeply connected to clients and users, and more rewarding for the design team"--