Buildings as macro-cognitive artefacts: Material engagement theory and the architecture of thinking-through-things—The case of Moriyama House
Frontiers of Architectural Research March 1, 2026 Büşra Dilaveroğlu
Architecture, rather than being a passive backdrop or symbolic object, actively participates in human cognition. Drawing on Lambros Malafouris's Material Engagement Theory, this analysis argues that buildings function as macro-cognitive artifacts that shape thought and behavior. The study examines Ryue Nishizawa's Moriyama House, a fragmented Tokyo residence, as a case study. It traces five cognitive processes at work: thinking through materials, performing meaning through bodily engagement, co-constituting action between humans and nonhumans, materializing shared goals among heterogeneous actors, and the long-term reciprocal reshaping of inhabitants' habits and the building itself. The analysis uses architectural analysis and frame-by-frame deconstruction of the ethnographic film Moriyama-San to show how these processes create a cognitive habitat.