Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives

One of the nation’s chief architecture critics reveals how the environments we build profoundly shape our feelings | memories | and well-being | and argues that we must harness this knowledge to construct a world better suited to human experienceTaking us on a fascinating journey through some of the world’s best and worst landscapes | buildings | and cityscapes | Sarah Williams Goldhagen draws from recent research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology to demonstrate how people’s experiences of the places they build are central to their well-being | their physical health | their communal and social lives | and even their very sense of themselves. From this foundation | Goldhagen presents a powerful case that societies must use this knowledge to rethink what and how they build: the world needs better-designed | healthier environments that address the complex range of human individual and social needs.By 2050 America’s population is projected to increase by nearly seventy million people. This will necessitate a vast amount of new construction—almost all in urban areas—that will dramatically transform our existing landscapes | infrastructure | and urban areas. Going forward | we must do everything we can to prevent the construction of exhausting | overstimulating environments and enervating | understimulating ones. Buildings | landscapes | and cities must both contain and spark associations of natural light | greenery | and other ways of being in landscapes that humans have evolved to need and expect. Fancy exteriors and dramatic forms are never enough | and may not even be necessary; authentic textures and surfaces | and careful | well-executed construction details are just as important.Erudite | wise | lucidly written | and beautifully illustrated with more than one hundred color photographs | Welcome to Your World is a vital | eye-opening guide to the spaces we inhabit | physically and mentally | and a clarion call to design for human experience.