M-term Architectonic Context and Meditation Practitioners: A Concept to Be Implemented in an Informatic Application to Help Architects

Abstract

In the cities of industrialized countries, long-term stress with effects on physical and mental health is considered a problem. Meditation shows effective therapeutic benefits to physical, and in some cases, mental health. There is some neuroscientific evidence, and traditional belief, that certain buildings may induce contemplative experiences. The creation of these buildings by architects might be mainly based in cultural, aesthetic and even poetic assumptions. Assumptions that some-times might be in contradiction to the real needs of its users. We verify the necessity of an approach to determine how medium-term meditation practitioners’ behavior could be influenced by the architectural context. Our main objective is to propose the development of a concept for an informatic application that supports architects in planning decisions concerning architectonic contexts for meditation in urban environments. A concept that should allow architects to know which visual, haptic, and other architectonic context features influence medium-term practitioners’ meditation. We will meet with the research team to define the variables to study; we will also use an experts’ survey and finally search in the literature for architectonic contexts prone to be manipulated. This problem will be addressed in three stages: 1. Understanding the interaction context; 2. Defining the architectonic context variables to be manipulated; 3. Defining the body-mind reactions related with meditation of medium-term practitioners; 4. Proposal for the informatic application. To conclude, we will discuss the positive and negative aspects of this decision sup-port tool, the variables selection, the subtleties of meditation and this model acceptance amongst architects.