Architect and Empathy: The Importance of Human Experience in Architectural design

Architecture usually pursued as a response to human needs, a need for shelter, security, fellowship, etc. For the last couple of decades, the criticism of architecture for being emotionally cold starts to emerge, accused of creating distance between human from the life. As Jullio Pallasma said, the emotional coldness might be caused by the adoption of formalist attitude since the industrial revolution. Modernism arguably, have brought an ideology which focused on function and aesthetic into architecture, but the notion also resulting in a far less empathic architectural. The building becomes apathetic, as function and aesthetic pushed aside the liveliness context. Designs are becoming less authentic, as architects prefer to use existing data to save their time. In short, it can be said that the presence of empathy has far been less acknowledged as an essential aspect of architecture. To address the notion of the problems, This paper will examine the terms of empathy, As understanding, the terms would provide more information about how it could relate to architecture. Further extensions of the notion will be explored, based on the existing precedents which already points out the presence of empathy-related topics in architecture. The paper will later examine the relevance of these examples to architecture and claim what defines the scope of empathy in this particular context to help understand it's potential use in architecture.