Landscape Architecture Frontiers 053: Cognitive Sciences and Landscape Design

Cognitive sciences that aim at establishing scientific and explicit interpretations can diversify approaches to exploring users feelings and experiences of a specific environment. For example, peoples emotions and feelings change with their environment, closely related to peoples sensory processes and brain wiring, personal experiences, and visiting purposes, etc., can be understood as a prompt intuitive response. Environmental information and responses are processed very fast to support quick decision making in relation to peoples survival and benefits. Environmental Psychology explains the environmental types people prefer and why certain environments make people feel, for example, anxious or excited. Understanding peoples emotional responses to the environment facilitates, or nudges (a term usually used in the inter-discipline of Psychology and Behavioural Economics), users to act or make choices as desired. Moreover, research on attention in cognitive sciences can also inform designers: by controlling the spatial elements and intangible elements (such as light and sound) to minimise environmental disturbance or noise, users attention can be directed to specific elements, element combinations or series. During this process, users specific emotional memories or symbolic implications are activated, which augments desired feelings and experiences.

This issue explores the mechanism of how landscape design affects users feelings, experiences, and behaviours, as well as usability, by introducing theories, knowledge, and research methods and findings in Cognitive sciences, psychology, neurobiology, and computer science, so as to support landscape architects decision making.