Distinct fragrances, visuals of landscapes that kink a particular way, vintage graffiti—these sensorial cues often trigger autobiographical memories when encountered abruptly. With these memories, one also experiences the associated discrete emotions. The activation of our senses via this Proust effect exemplifies the perceptive nature of our senses to not only evident cues but also to the more concealed and subtle details of our surroundings. These surroundings vary in scale and spatiality—from the perimeter of a room to the expanse of an entire settlement. Each entity within these spaces is a potential harbinger of specific emotions and consequently, one’s larger experience within that expanse. Many such spatial attributes might be the result of organic infrastructural expansion in juxtaposition with proximal natural entities.

In urban centres, however, one’s exposure to the pre-designed man-made entities is far more acute and rigorous. This presents the opportunity or rather, the responsibility, to configure spaces that can prompt positive emotions and inclusive experiences amongst its users. Doing so demands not only the consideration of hardline bylaws but also the assessment of the impact that infrastructural features, colours, scale and other architectural attributes have on the human experience. But how does one go about this task?

Surveying individuals to understand their perceptions of their environments is a methodology that is often employed when seeking to reconfigure or rejuvenate a space. However, individual perception can often be limited, especially if a person is not trained to grasp subtleties in their environment and articulate their experiences cohesively. This is where the discipline of neuroarchitecture steps in. It is an interdisciplinary research field where neuroscience and architecture meld and where expertise in the former is utilised to find the impact of proximal built environments on individuals, via the usage of the latest technology such as the electroencephalogram (EEG), Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), eye tracking (ET), Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and Heart Rate Monitor (HRM). These biometric methods can help in directly measuring the impact of the designed built environment on its users. In their latest book, Neuroarchitecture: Designing High-rise Cities at Eye Level, authors Frank Suurenbroek and Gideon Spanjar seek to investigate the impact that urban infrastructure has on our lived experiences.

Published by nai010 publishers (based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands), the book aims to trace the experiences of users at the street level, especially in the midst of high-rise structures, by studying the response and reaction of one’s body to the sensorial stimuli from the proximate built environment. “This book about designing with the help of knowledge from neuroarchitecture is an example of the discovery and testing of possible new solutions. It offers architects, urban planners and other designers an additional instrument for creating the right conditions for a robust urban environment. It is precisely these kinds of building blocks that, if we use them well, will help us to set in motion and shape the larger system transition, from bottom-up and from project to project,” writes Francesco Veenstra, Chief Government Architect of the Netherlands, in the foreword to the book.

Neuroarchitecture is the product of a two-year research project entitled Sensing Streetscapes. As part of this project, the authors, in collaboration with a consortium of Dutch design firms, the municipality of Amsterdam, housing corporations and developers, studied “a number of actual streetscapes in order to discover which spatial design solutions achieve a human scale in street spaces (from building to ground plane) in densified residential areas,” as mentioned in the book. The project employed new knowledge, insights and technology gleaned from neuroarchitecture to make the design solutions measurable. “It is our hope that in the context of today’s fragmented spatial practice, the analyses of reference images and the registration of user experience will contribute to the creation of a shared lexicon as well as an understanding of and discussion about the different design solution options – and their consequences at eye level,” the authors delineate.

The first chapter of the book, namely Perception as the Key to the Built Environment, details the more prominent challenges that are faced within high-rise and dense settlements. It also details some popular solutions to achieve human scale within urban spaces, such as active street fronts, introducing greenery as soft borders, usage of tactile materials, rhythmic heights and style variation along streets and adding transitional zones between buildings and streets, amongst others. The authors further elaborate on these mechanisms in the second chapter, Urban Densification and Human Scale, via examples of the current trends in urban housing and the new highrise environments that are being developed. Juxtaposing these current trends against the urban development that took place in West European cities during the past centuries, the authors postulate that the need for extrinsically reconfiguring urban spaces to the human scale is fairly recent since urban expansion before the mid-20^th century was intrinsically horizontal. Some strategies for achieving the human scale that are enunciated upon, in this portion, include scaling the street-facing facade by adding setbacks limiting the height of the structure and focusing on the city at eye level by improving the street-level interfaces.

Within the book’s third chapter Neuroarchitecture: How it Works and its Potential, the authors introduce the hybrid field—its emergence, the key theories associated with its application, technologies that are an intrinsic part of its process and its potential and usage within spatial design. “When we are outdoors, we are continually scanning the environment in search of information. [...] All that processed information contributes to our perception of the situation and the place. [...] The design of the place plays a major supporting role, both in the extent to which we are able to carry out certain activities like finding our way and in our general well-being. So what exactly is the impact of the (densified) built environment on human beings and how can we enhance that impact with the right design solutions?” the authors query. Enunciating upon the potential of neuroarchitecture to help measure how users consciously and subconsciously experience a place and to see what role architecture plays in this, the chapter details different mechanisms such as EEG, fMRI, eye tracking, GSR and HRM, which can measure brain activity, slight changes in blood flow that occurs with brain activity, body’s sweat output and eye movement, amongst other bodily reactions. To test these devices, 15 streetscapes across Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, which exhibit classic design solutions, were studied by the Sensing Streetscapes team and are illustrated in this chapter.

Within Chapter 4, namely Exemplary Streetscapes in Highly Urbanised Cities, the authors present an analysis of 12 streets across six Western cities, Vancouver, Toronto, Manchester, London, Oslo and Amsterdam. “Within those cities, we looked for high-density areas where the buildings exceed 30 metres (98 feet) in height and several of the design solutions associated with a human scale are present or, totally absent,” the authors state, detailing the choosing process. Studying the eye movements of the participants, the researchers on the project charted heatmaps and gaze paths for the different streets. Conclusively, Alberni Street in Vancouver scored the highest rating from the participants in the neuroarchitecture test.

The concluding chapter Humanizing Densification encapsulates the analyses made in the preceding chapters, to chart a list of different types of design solutions that can help rescale densification to human proportions at street level. It was inferred that dark surfaces attract very little attention, which is instead attracted by street edges, softer surfaces, prominent entrances and raised ground floors. Registering these softer details at the street and eye level further helps make sense of the space. These exemplary design solutions, namely textured, richly hued and tactilely rich attributes, when affixed at the eye and street levels, help reduce the visual massiveness of the space to a human scale.

Designing structures to tend to the human scale is known to enhance user experience and promote social inclusion and engagement. In the midst of scalable entities, one tends to feel calmer and at home, as opposed to an inundating sentiment that washes over when in the thick of dense towering structures.