By Aybars Aşçı

Designing for Empathy: The Architecture of Connections in Learning Environments explores the deep, inextricable relationship between developmental psychology and our physical environment. By connecting perspective taking in psychology to perspectival space in architecture, the book defines the geometry of empathy, and it postulates that the forces that operate in our spatial cognition can also shift perspectives, thereby helping us develop empathy. The critical question guiding the book is: how can architecture influence human development, and by extension, how can concepts of empathy in development be influenced and catalysed by architecture? Planners, architects, and designers are responsible for shaping our physical environment-from our homes, schools, and cultural and religious centres to the wider neighbourhoods and cities within which human development takes place. However, architecture is conspicuously absent in most development theories, even though the environment is omnipresent.