From Charles Jencks on the extraordinary life-affirming design of the Maggie's Centres, to Arup's Tristram Carfrae on the collaborations in completing Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, to Mads Mandrup reflecting on the architectural and political journey C.F. Moller's Storstrom Prison, the second issue of the award-winning BE: Journal of the Built Environment Trust explores how materials, spaces and atmospheres create that amorphous sense of self we call 'Wellbeing.'
In an extract from her book, 'Welcome to Your World,' Sarah Williams Goldhagen draws on developments in neuroscience to document the design impact of Louis Kahn's Salk Institute, from the exterior geometries and nods to nature to the informationally and emotionally dense experiences of the interior materials, "Materials and surface detail command our attention. In order for us to make sense of surface-based cues such as texture, density, colour, pattern and so on, our visual impressions are primarily processed through a pathway that involves the medial temporal lobe and the hippocampus, necessitating that - in contrast to form-perception - we call up our memories of prior experiences with similar surfaces."
Featuring work by philosopher Frederic Gros, the late neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, architect Tadao Ando and photographer Iseult Timmermans, the issue's theme is expressed in the wonderfully textured secret of its cover material.
