Webinar Title: The Architecture of Resonance
Hosted by: What Design Can Do
Speaker: Sarah Robinson
Date & Time: Thursday, January 22, 2026
6:30 - 8:00 PM CET / 12:30 - 2:00 PM EST / 9:30 - 11:00 AM PST
The Architecture of Resonance: new book by Sarah Robinson
The profound impact that design has on human experience - physically, emotionally, cognitively, or ecologically - is now well established. And while this experiential and affective turn in architecture is gaining momentum, studio time remains primarily dedicated to the creation of buildings as independent objects with minimal regard for the interactions and impacts those buildings may have on their inhabitants and their surroundings.
With an engaging preface written by Harry Mallgrave, this book carefully details an alternative for thinking and designing that shifts attention from abstract formalism and object orientation to the creation of dynamic interacting fields of affective, tactile, kinaesthetic, ecological, and social engagement. The book articulates resonance as a model and metaphor for the way we interact with our environments. The word’s literal meaning is to re-sound, implying a surface or receptive body that amplifies and alters the sound - an interdependent relation and process occurring in between. Seven kinds of resonance specific to design are detailed theoretically and illustrated with practical and historical examples. These design strategies demonstrate the possibilities resulting from shifting attention and resources from the longstanding preoccupation with fixed forms towards structuring and supporting dynamic interactive relationships between the built and the natural and between people and place.
From Routledge: The Architecture of Resonance: from Objects to Interactions seamlessly combines architecture with cognitive science and neuroscience, environmental and evolutionary psychology, and social theory and anthropology, in clear, direct, and engaging prose, this book will be essential reading for all architecture students as well as those in these varied fields.
Sarah Robinson
Sarah Robinson is an architect, writer and educator. Her books, Nesting: Body, Dwelling Mind (2011), Mind in Architecture: Neuroscience, Embodiment and the Future of Design with Juhani Pallasmaa (2015) and Architecture is a Verb, (2021) are among the first works to engage the dialogue between architecture and the cognitive sciences. She was the founding president of the Frank Lloyd Wright school of architecture board of governors. She is adjunct professor in Architecture, Design and Media Technology at Aalborg University, Denmark, teaches and is a member of the scientific board of NAAD, Neuroscience Applied to Architectural Design at IUAV, Venice, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture.
