Chapter 7

Global Designs

Abstract

Although there is negligible genetic disparity between the different people that inhabit the planet, the expression of design varies wildly. From the understated elegance of Japanese architecture to overwrought European Gothic structures, design is as much an expression of culture as it is of time and place. But, for all of its explosive variety, is there an actual universal sense of design? Do humans use essentially the same rules, only with different purposes and sensibilities? Our cognition and intellectual prowess is remarkably similar across cultures, so why are there so many variations on such disparate themes? The essential mechanisms of our mind that make us closer to each other are also the ones that make ...

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