Anna Anzani – författare

This book explores the contributions of psychological, neuroscientific and philosophical perspectives to the design of contemporary cities. Pursuing an innovative and multidisciplinary approach, it addresses the need to re-launch knowledge and creativity as major cultural and institutional bases of human communities. Dwelling is a form of knowledge and re-invention of reality that involves both the tangible dimension of physical places and their mental representation. Findings in the neuroscientific field are increasingly opening stimulating perspectives on the design of spaces, and highlight how our ability to understand other people is strongly related to our corporeity. The first part of the book focuses on the contributions of various disciplines that deal with the spatial dimension, and explores the dovetailing roles that science and art can play from a multidisciplinary perspective. In turn, the second part formulates proposals on how to promote greater integration between the aesthetic and cultural dimension in spatial design. Given its scope, the book will benefit all scholars, academics and practitioners who are involved in the process of planning, designing and building places, and will foster an international exchange of research, case studies, and theoretical reflections to confront the challenges of designing conscious places and enable the development of communities. 

Through a transdisciplinary perspective, this book examines the complex urban dimension, in front of increasing density, soil consumption, abandoned places, and the recent pandemic which proved megacities particularly inadequate to provide healthy psychophysical conditions. Assuming bodily and emotional comfort as a reference horizon, it tends to inspire the design research overcoming a paradoxical binary logic that separates public and private, outside and inside, culture and nature, mind and places. The first part of the work explores built spaces and addresses sustainable strategies not only to overcome an ecologic and systemic crisis but also to improve places liveability in our contemporary city. The second part deals with our perception of aesthetic spaces, welcoming the stimuli coming from neuro-aesthetics studies on affordances and atmosphere and encouraging the intersection between interior architecture and design culture and arts. The third part examines relational spaces and how they influence human behaviour, starting from psychological, anthropological, and philosophical perspectives.

The book explores care as a transition strategy to a healthier and more sustainable world. After the lesson learned from the pandemic, health as a fundamental human right is increasingly related to a care component: caring for sick people, persons with disabilities, elders, migrants and refugees, women and children, caring for bodies, minds, cities and nature. Endorsing the care system as a female knowledge based on complexity, flexibility, management of the unexpected, sense of responsibility, the project culture can extract this paradigm from the domestic perimeter, bring outside and make it accessible to all in work, politics, relationships, places and communities. The systemic connection between planet and people wellbeing will be grasped through a transdisciplinary perspective that allows to deal with the city of care at a mental, physical, social and global level. The first section addresses care and interior space, dealing with dwelling, working, proximity and cities on a human scale, with a particular attention to the post Covid conditions. The second section deals with healthcare design, the evolution and trend of healing spaces, the influence of technology and robotics on inclusive design processes. The third section considers a social care attitude and deals with the multiethnic urban dimension, care and creativity in design, society and relationships, the right to health of immigrant people.