Altes, neu erleben – wie Architektur Emotionen steuert

The results of perception experiments show how facade design creates different emotional effects and why the past can therefore block our future – or not!

On 14 May 2026 from 10:00

Open-air event in the ‘New Old Town’. Meeting point: at the old St. Nicholas Church at Römerberg 11. Head towards the market square.

Multiple crises are challenging our society and democracy. Information about emotional design qualities that can potentially promote both health and resilience can certainly do no harm.

The internationally published TRACE (Transmission in Rhetoric, Arts and Cultural Evolution) architectural perception experiments, presented via a ‘visitor school’ in Frankfurt's New Old Town, use EEG measurement data integrated into a cultural-evolutionary context to explore how cultural transmission unconsciously influences our perception. Both positively and negatively!

Cultural inclusion effects have crept into our perception through the cultural rules that have been influencing us for thousands of years. Frankfurt is a good example of both the positive and negative effects of this circumstance.

On the one hand, classic façade design actively contributes to the health of the observer, while on the other hand, the unconsciously triggered cultural inclusion effects can simultaneously generate unconscious exclusion effects.

Frankfurt's New Old Town is a prime example of how design can be used to reduce stress and thus increase resilience and health in the viewer. Applied to other locations, this also shows why building in existing contexts and minimally invasive interventions make sense, and how culturally influenced design can unconsciously promote or sabotage social cohesion.

Opinions on the design of Frankfurt's New Old Town clearly reveal the discrepancy in perception between experts (architects) and the general public. The evidence-based open-air visitor school aims to reconcile both opinions so that future design can have a lasting positive impact on a broad basis by raising awareness of unconscious design elements.