ORG - Aesthetics & Empathy

In contemporary design culture, abstraction often shapes how objects and spaces are conceived. While it can offer clarity and distance, it may also weaken emotional connection, leaving the physical world, its textures, forms, and spatial cues, less present in everyday experience.

In this Lab Lecture, ORG explores the relationship between aesthetics and empathy in architecture and design, drawing on Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy. The session reflects on how abstraction and emotional distance have influenced design practices, and how objects and environments might once again support recognition, orientation, and trust.

Through architectural thinking and material awareness, the lecture presents approaches for reintroducing traces of the self into the built environment, creating spaces that allow people to situate themselves, feel connected, and belong, even in an age shaped by digital mediation.

A lecture for architects, designers, and professionals interested in the emotional and material dimensions of the built environment.

About ORG

ORG is an architecture and urban design practice working across the scales of building, city, and region. With a team of 80 practitioners, the studio leads projects from planning to implementation, addressing complex spatial challenges through what they define as diplomatic design, a methodology that combines advanced data analysis with active stakeholder engagement. By balancing technical precision and collaboration, ORG develops solutions designed to endure, adapt, and respond to real-world conditions.