Guardami: Looking through the Window-Shopping Window, the (Neuro)Science of Desire

It was only recently when our urban sidewalks in front of Department stores were inlaid with terrazzo and the urban space was a site to capture the fantasy of an onlooker who is mesmerized into another world. Spaces like these were part of the social fabric that brought a sense of "health" to our city. This was a space of desire, looking into the glass vitrine as an urban agency that created vibrant stage sets for narratives, fantasies, dreams and curiosities. Our paper presents the Window-Shopping Window as an opportunity to bring back an empathic exchange of our urban space. Exploiting mirrors (architecturally) and mirror-neurons (neurologically) to understand a system a perception, our project argues that bodies and environment are always in an inter-active dialog and as such urban agencies can generate emotive responses through interactive means to heighten experience and reinvigorate the health of urbanscapes.