ANA COUTO
I’m Ana Couto, Assistant Professor at the Lisbon School of Architecture, University of Lisbon, and New Products Development Adviser at Aicep Portugal Global.
I teach Design Management & Innovation, New Product Development, Fashion Theory, and Marketing in the PhD in Design, as well as the Masters and BA in Fashion Design and Design programs.
Neurodesign is the keyword of my research, the starting point for discovering the relationship and the emotional links we establish with objects. My focus is the "organism's point of view," the biological roots of feelings that bind us to objects, clothing in particular, and therefore what neuroscience tells us about the way we experience the world.
view on patterns
The idea of patter-ology encompasses multiple meanings for those seeking multidisciplinarity.
As neurodesign is the background of my research, pattern-ology makes me think of the study of the connectivity between pattern and the neurological process and neural patterns.
We can explore the idea of pattern as a representation of the primary stages of visual perception of clothes, and go deeper into the understanding of visual perception, and how an internal process is often illustrated as an output of our brain.
We can also study a pattern as an aesthetic object following some of the writings of Zeki, Ramachandran and the neuroaesthetics theories, thus exploiting the knowledge on how brain and body enclose a particular way of perceiving and experiencing the world.
Other intriguing question is if there is some relation between the design of a pattern and the meaning of the neurological activation of the area of movement in perceiving an object.
And this is only some of several themes that we can articulate between neurodesign and pattern design. A fruitful field of research.