Zak's Blog

Symposium taking place in Kansas State University March 28, 2023 at  8:30 AM - 12:30 PM CDT. Organized by professor Professor Bob Condia and Dr. Elisabetta Canepa. 

To attend this free event, please RSVP to bcoudriet@ksu.edu, project manager of the KState P\Lab2003, by Monday, 27 March, 2023.
Official webpage: https://www.resonances-project.com/ 

8:30: Dr. Elisabetta Canepa (MS.Eng., Ph.D.) – The Elusiveness of Assessing the Atmospheric Essence of Architecture by Body and Emotions. She will suggest new empirical evidence for how architects can understand what atmosphere does and how it primes experiences. Elisabetta is an architect and researcher from Genoa, Italy. She is currently an EU Marie Curie Fellow running the RESONANCES project (2021–2024) in collaboration with the University of Genoa, KStateU, and Aalborg University. Her research focuses on the hybrid connection between architecture and cognitive neuroscience, analyzing topics such as atmospheric dynamics, the emotional nature of the architectural experience, embodiment theory, the empathic phenomenon between humans and space, and experimentation in virtual reality. 

9:30: Dr. Zakaria Djebbara (Cand. Polyt., Ph.D.) – new research Rhythms in the Brain, Body, and Environment. Dr. Djebbara employs mobile electroencephalographic neuroimaging methods in combination with virtual reality and physiological measures. All attempting to understand how spatial configurations relate to human experience, cognition, and behavior. His research is supported by computational modeling of human experience and neural dynamics. He currently holds a postdoctoral position at Aalborg University (Denmark), focusing on the role of sensorimotor brain dynamics in behavioral and cognitive performance. 

10:45: Dr. Kory Beighle – new research A History of Tool-Atmospheres. He will address the atmosphere not as an ephemeral but as a mechanism of practice. Kory received a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati (2020), focusing on 20th and 21st century architectural theory. In Architectural Alchemy: Collaging Disciplinarily in the Kaleidoscopic, he examines the interdisciplinary practice of Charles and Ray Eames. Dr. Beighle has also studied the role of time in architectural practice by exploring methodological intersections of film and architecture. His work as a historian, theorist, scholar, and educator is framed through design to explore the intersection of tools, pedagogy, disciplinarily, and spatial narrative in our kaleidoscopic paradigm. 

11:30: Dr. Harry Francis Mallgrave – Atmosphere “how have architects thought about atmosphere in architecture and what it does?” Harry Francis Mallgrave is a Distinguished Prof. Emeritus from Illinois Institute of Technology and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He received his Ph.D. in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and has enjoyed a career as a scholar, translator, editor, and architect. In 1996, he won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award from the Society of Architectural Historians for his intellectual biography Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century. Along with a dozen published books, his most recent book, Building Paradise: Episodes in Paradisiacal Thinking (2021), argues on behalf of a design and planning ethic centered squarely on cultural needs and personal aspirations.

Moderator: Prof. Bob Condia, FAIA of APDesign and design partner at Condia+Ornelas Architects. His place in the neuroscience for architecture debate is as an architect and studio critic, seeking the consequences of applied biological sciences for architects. Regarding architectural affordances, atmosphere, and mood, he edited three books published by New Prairie Press: Meaning in Architecture: Affordances, Atmosphere and Mood (2019), Affordances and the Potential for Architecture (2020), and Generators of Architectural Atmosphere (2022).