In the past decades, many studies have proposed urban greening as a method to mitigate the rising temperatures in cities and urban heat islands. The cooling effect of urban green spaces can be divided into two components; cooling intensity and cooling extension. These two components are affected by different factors. This paper provides a review of research on the impact of urban greening on temperature and on the parameters that have an effect on that. Based on this review, two categories that have an effect on cooling intensity and
cooling extension were identified: internal factors and external factors. These play an important role in the effectiveness of urban green spaces. As internal factors or indexes, the following were extracted; Size index, Shape index, Vegetation species and Tree canopy coverage are the most common indexes in most of the studies. The external factors can be divided into climate and surrounding properties. A discussion of the reviewed studies reflects the impact of each index on the cooling intensity and cooling extension. The existing methods and techniques for determining these indexes have also been considered in this paper. As such, this study is helpful for designers and planners for decision-making during the design phase.

Perceptions of different environments are different for different people. An abstract designed environment, with a degree of freedom from any visual reference in the physical world requests a completely different perception than a fully or semi-designed environment that has some correlation with the physical world. Maximal evidence on the manner in which the human brain is involved/operates in dealing with such novel perception comes from neuropsychology. Harnessing the tools and techniques involved in the domain of neuropsychology, the paper presents nee evidence on the role of pre-central gyrus in the perception of abstract spatial environments. In order to do so, the research team developed three different categories of designed environment with different characteristics: (1) Abstract environment, (2) Semi-designed environment, (3) Fully designed environment, as experimental sample environments. Perception of Fully-designed and semi-designed environments is almost the same, [maybe] since the brain can find a correlation between designed environments and already experienced physical world. In addition to this, the response to questionnaires accompanied with a list of buzzwords that have been provided after the experiments, also describe the characteristics of the chosen sample environments. Additionally, these results confirm the suitability of continuous electroencephalography (EEG) for studying Perception from the perspective of architectural environments.

Human civilization can be ameliorated by human creativity. Innovation and progress of human civilization result from a change in our thinking patterns, thus, potentially transforming the present into a creative future. Accentuating the role of creativity in design even more than other disciplines pushes one to underpin the understanding of creativity as a key role player in architecture. Furthermore, by identifying the basic principles of our ingenuity/creativity, researchers might be able to enhance this ability in the future. The digital era allows for a new domain of architectural experience. It is assumed that new designs in virtual environments can be created that go beyond the mere accommodation of literal functions, and affect human experiences. This paper presents the role of a method developed by the authors: ‘Proto-Fuse’, experimented with, as an artwork for the survey of cognitive perception of humans, specifically targeting enhancement of spatial creativity. The logic behind this method is based on two psychological concepts: 1 – conceptual blending, 2 – tolerance of ambiguity. Two experimental projects were conducted for exploring the Proto Fuse method: (a) “unconventional virtual environments (UVEs)” to improve conceptual blending and (b) “Extracting local distance” to enhance tolerance of ambiguity. The paper concludes with an implementation scenario of the Proto-Fuse method in the pedagogy of architecture and elaborates on the results of the projects and analysis of the feedbacks received during the project session.