Feeling at Home: Atmospheres and Social Psychology
Mónica Alcindor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Feeling at Home: Atmospheres and Social Psychology brings together architectural design practices and insights from social and environmental psychology to rethink how culture shapes the built environment beyond purely technical performance. Rather than focusing exclusively on material efficiency, structural robustness, or environmental control, this Special Issue foregrounds the experiential, cultural, and emotional dimensions through which people relate to spaces and construct a sense of belonging, stability, and continuity over time.
Home habitats are understood here as environments capable of sustaining not only physical life but also social cohesion, psychological well-being, and collective identity. Central to this perspective is the role of atmosphere, multisensory experience, and culturally mediated perception in shaping how spaces are lived, felt, and appropriated. Architecture and urban environments act as frameworks in which emotions, memories, behaviours, and social relations are produced and negotiated, directly influencing adaptive capacities and long-term habitability.
This Special Issue explores how design thinking, cultural embeddedness, and sensory engagement intersect with material and technological strategies to generate environments that “feel like home.” Contributions may address contexts ranging from extreme or hostile habitats to everyday urban and domestic settings.
We welcome a diversity of articles—such as conceptual and empirical studies, reviews, critical commentaries, and meta-analyses—for submission to this Special Issue. Manuscripts from different disciplines are encouraged, addressing topics related to the scope, including (but not limited to):
Resilient habitats and the notion of “feeling at home”
Social and environmental psychology of the built environment
Atmosphere, sensory perception, and multisensory design
Cultural identity, memory, and emotional bonds to place
Design thinking and conceptual frameworks for social resilience
Well-being, collective behaviour, and adaptive capacities in built environments
Prof. Dr. Mónica Alcindor
Guest Editor