Andréa de Paiva

 

MSc in Architecture and Design​

 

Andréa de Paiva is a Master of Arts (Middlesex University, London) and architect (University of São Paulo) from Brazil. In her work, she seeks to bridge research, education and design. Her research interests involve the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science, applied to architecture and urbanism in order to understand how the physical environment affects individuals and society. Her research included such topics as short- and long-term effects of the physical environment, environmental enrichment and brain plasticity, how space affects memorization of experience, cognitive restoration and multi-sensory experience of places.

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Andréa is the co-author of the book Triuno: Neuro-business and Quality of Life. She is the creator of NeuroAU (neuroau.com), which is an online space for discussion and dissemination of knowledge about links between cognitive science, architecture and design. NeuroAU has more than 29K followers on Instagram (@neuro_au) and it has numerous articles  published about intersections of cognitive science and architecture, in English and Portuguese. The site also hosts an online courses on these topics, with students coming from more than 26 different countries.

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Andréa works as a professor of neuroscience for architecture in two Brazilian universities: Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) and Faculdade Armando Álvares Penteado (FAAP). At FAAP, she has created a course Neuroscience Applied to Environments and Creation, which will have completed its ninth cohort by the end of 2021.

 

She is a member of ACE (ANFA Centre for Education ) and she was invited to speak at Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation; Varna Free University (Bulgaria), the Institute for Challenging Disorganization in the US, DP Architects London, SECOVI-SP and SESC-SP in Brazil.

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Andréa also serves as a consultant on neuroscience for architecture, having consulted at Athié Wohnrath (one of the most successful architecture offices in Brazil, according to Forbes, 2016), where she was involved in projects about schools and workplaces. She was a consultant at FGV (the best think tank in Latin America, according to the Global Go To Think Tanks Index, 2020).