Organised by Yael Reisner with Semir Zeki, Hanif Kara and Tateo Nakajima

This event celebrates two new complementary publications: the AD issue Beauty Matters and the book about the Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB) 2019, on the same topic. Both take an interdisciplinary approach to the re-emerging interest in beauty across neuroscience, neuroesthetics, mathematics, philosophy and architecture. Each publication contains a different content by a different set of contributors.

The evening will start with a screening of the Mies.TV documentary film about TAB 2019 - Why does beauty matter? - followed by a conversation with an emphasis on the experience of beauty from the neuroesthetic point of view, highlighting why architecture and beauty need each other, and an opportunity to experience, individually, Paula Strunden‘s VR-MR installation The Talking Trees of Tallinn.

Participants include:

Semir Zeki is a British Neurobiologist who has specialised in studying the primate visual brain and more recently the neural correlates of affective states, such as the experience of love, desire and beauty that are generated by sensory inputs within the field of neuroesthetics. Fellow of the Royal Society and Foreign Fellow of the American Philosophical Society.

Hanif Kara is a structural engineer, design director and co-founder of AKT II, Professor in Practice - Harvard GSD . A fellow member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institution of Structural Engineers and the Royal Society of Arts. In 2014, Kara was made a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Tateo Nakajima is an Arup Fellow. Building on formal training and an early career in violin performance and conducting, Nakajima is an internationally recognised leader in the design and planning of cultural venues and developments, with projects around the world, working with many of the highest profile architecture and design practices.

Yael Reisner is an architect, researcher, educator and curator. She was the Head Curator of the 5^th Tallinn Architecture Biennale, TAB 2019, entitled: Beauty Matters. Simultaneously, she was the guest editor of a complementary issue of AD magazine - published in September 2019 by Wiley, UK - that shares the interdisciplinary interest in beauty and its symbiotic relationship with architecture.

The following two titles will be available at the event:
- Beauty Matters; Human Judgement and the Pursuit of New Beauties in Post-Digital Architecture. AD magazine, Sep.2019, Wiley, UK.
- Beauty Matters; Civilisation Could Not Exist Without the Experience of Beauty. TAB 2019’s catalogue / book, Estonian Center of Architecture.

Image credit:
AD front cover: design by CHK Design:Christian Küsters, and Barbara Nassisi, based on the image of brain activity that correlates with the experience of beauty. Copyrights Haydenbird/Getty Images.
The TAB 2019 book designed by the Estonian Graphic designers Studio Studio.

TAB is produced by ECA, the Estonian Centre of Architecture, see www.tab.ee

TAB 2019

Catering sponsored by ABB, the headline partner of TAB 2019 and this event.