Reusing Leftovers: corporeity and empathy of places

Massive urbanization and exploitation of nature have produced unprecedented historical and natural transformations; this puts interior design ahead of the need of reusing existing urban spaces, often characterized by relevant historical architectural features. Reusing urban leftovers can facilitate place attachment, intensified by awareness of the place history: as shown by research in environmental aesthetics, historical places allow people to feel a sense of continuity, arouse curiosity and increase motivation to discover the forgotten past of places. Interesting experiments carried out by cognitive neurosciences in the architectural field have shown that the relationship between senses and art/architecture turns out to ground primarily on an emotional and multisensory experience. More than other arts, architecture generates multisensory impressions, which greatly involves our corporeity. Starting from these assumptions, leftover reuse design should place at its centre the people who live in places, overcoming formal and purely visual principles on which interior projects have often been founded.