ARCHITECTURAL PSYCHOLOGY AT TU BERLIN

When our environment, buildings and cities, even hospitals cause stress which makes us ill, can architecture then 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 designing chair. Nothing new for Vollmer. In 2009, she founded the architectural office Kopvol architecture & psychology in Rotterdam together with the 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 input. Major German daily newspapers and cultural broadcasters are devoting special features to this innovative topic (see the TALK section), including journalist Franziska Walser for rbb Kulturradio (Giving space to the soul/Der Seele Raum geben, 2017), Sophie Elmenthaler for Deutschlandfunk Kultur (architectural psychology and hospital design, 2017/ Architekturpsychologie und Krankenhausbau, 2017), Sabine Gundlach for Berliner Morgenpost (psychologist teaches healthy architecture at TU Berlin, 2016/Psychologin lehrt gesunde Architektur an der TU Berlin) and Felicitas Witte for Süddeutsche Zeitung (Creating thrustful environments/Vertraute Welten schaffen), 2017