Architect training in multifaceted environments. A new cognitive level approach.

This paper originates from the awareness that today we live in such a complex world that many of the assumptions on which, until a few decades ago, we based the activity of planning how to transform our environment for living have gone completely awry. On this basis, we will put forward an argument for a cognitive expansion of the training processes for new generations of architects, focusing on the use of mental images. Such an approach, useful for the increasingly indispensable continuous self-training of architects, can accustom them to more appropriate and flexible methods of planning spaces, in their perceptual and material-constructive aspects and could also be helpful – as some recent experiments show – for better tackling the digital transition, one of the most widespread and integrated aspects of contemporary complexity.