ARCHITECTURAL PSYCHOLOGY AT THE TU BERLIN

If our environment, buildings and cities, even hospitals, cause stress that makes us ill, can architecture be used to prevent this stress and stay healthy? These and other questions are currently being investigated by visiting professor Tanja C. Vollmer at the TU Berlin. It is the first European professorship for architectural psychology and thus a psychologist at a an architectural design department. For Vollmer nothing new. In 2009 she founded the architectural office Kopvol architecture & psychology in Rotterdam together with Dutch architect Gemma Koppen. Now she has returned to Germany to pass on her knowledge to the next generation of young architects. For the first time, students in Germany have the opportunity to study architectural psychology and design with psychological support. Major German daily newspapers and cultural broadcasters devote special features to this innovative topic, including journalist Franziska Walser for rbb Kulturradio (Giving space to the soul, 2017) and Sophie Elmenthaler for Deutschlandfunk Kultur (Architecture psychology and Hospitaldesign, 2017).