Why Designing for Occupant Choice is Important in Architectural Design
Within architecture, there are many places where occupant choice surfaces. Every time an occupant makes a decision on where to go, what to focus on, or what to feel --- they are interacting with your architecture, and making decisions based off of it. So, why is occupant choice so important?
Why Architecture Can Make a Positive Difference in an Occupant’s Life
Architecture surrounds occupants, it engages them, and it guides them. A well designed work can make an experience brighter, livelier, happier, and more meaningful. So, why are so many buildings today designed at the status quo, where they are there to meet the bare essentials? Perhaps it is because many architects today do not think in terms of holistic design thinking.
A Formula to Make Your Occupant’s Architectural Memories Last
As you design, you should ask yourself how your occupants are likely to remember your building and their experiences there after they have left. Are there places within your building where it is fun? Positive? Or engaging?
Communicating Building Value Early-On May Boost Occupant Enjoyment
What if upon entering a building, someone told you that it was designed by a very famous and prestigious architect? Do you think you would enjoy your experience within that building more than if you didn’t know this fact?
Can Occupant Skin Push Important Information Through to Optimize Building Performance?
I am beginning to see now that the sensing of occupant activities and functions can go well beyond clothing. You see, in the future, skin will be “upgraded”: embedded with sensors, health tattoos, or temporary skin tattoos.
Why Designing for Occupant Choice is Important in Architectural Design
Within architecture, there are many places where occupant choice surfaces. Every time an occupant makes a decision on where to go, what to focus on, or what to feel — they are interacting with your architecture, and making decisions [...]
...[Read More]
Why Architecture Can Make a Positive Difference in an Occupant’s Life
Architecture surrounds occupants, it engages them, and it guides them. A well designed work can make an experience brighter, livelier, happier, and more meaningful. So, why are so many buildings today designed at the status quo, where they are [...]
...[Read More]
Strategy: Have Your Design Answer to Scale
When you design architecture, how do you think about scale? Is it something that you simply understand intuitively, where you design for it on the fly? Or do you try to make statements with your architecture about scale?
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A Formula to Make Your Occupant’s Architectural Memories Last
Did you know that there is memory bias? That is, memory can be changed, boosted, or impaired. So, if this is the case: What makes building occupants form stronger architectural memories than others? Well, according to a Memory Bias [...]
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Communicating Building Value Early-On May Boost Occupant Enjoyment
A recent study was done, mentioned in The Economist article entitled Pricing and the Brain: Hitting the Spot, where actual changes within the brain occur that substantiate this: If told something is more valuable, then a person actually enjoys [...]
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Strategy: Use Transparency with Form to Play with Light in New Ways
Within most buildings, transparency manifests through typical windows and skylights that occur throughout the building. Yes, they let in light — but are they really a “sculptural” part of the architecture? You might ask: How much do these fenestrations contribute to the interior space…
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Strategy: Give Attention to the Way You Transition Between Architectural Elements
The transition that exists between your different architectural elements can really help to guide your occupant’s gaze (visual attention) as they scope out your work. You see, perception is really an act of exploring — and when you guide your occupants to explore within your work…
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Future Outlook for 2012 + Happy New Year!
The year 2011 has proven to be a great year for Sensing Architecture. Traffic has grown by approximately 30% in 2011, and there are now approximately 4,600 subscribers who have joined the Sensing Architecture community!
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Can Occupant Skin Push Important Information Through to Optimize Building Performance?
Until now, I’ve written much about how clothing worn by occupants can act as sensors which collect data about their activities and functions in real time. Such data can be transmitted through to the building to further optimize its [...]
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Using Sensory Design with Tracking Technologies to Promote Health
Lately, many technologies are surfacing that help with the tracking of a person’s physiological signals for health. Such a technology is sleep tracking technology which monitors heart rate, movement, and breathing. So, when a person lies in bed sleeping, [...]
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Invoked Computing Objects Help Architecture Improve Its Nervous System
“Invoked computing” is a term being used to describe how everyday objects can gain mega-functionality by having computer functions applied to them. These developments predict a world where there are no location-specific computers like we have today, but where [...]
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Strategy: Find Creative Ways to Detail within Your Building
For your building, it may help for you to develop an architectural language that relates to your building’s scale, material, and location. And as part of this language are the all-important details. Use sensory design to make your details come alive, just as the Ronchamp image above uses its details to bring poetics through its form.
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The Advent of Digital Environments that Pull from Sensory Design
Seth Godin recently wrote an article on “pre-digital environments” which I encourage you to read here. Now that you have read it, I ask you…how can you as an architect push advancement from this pre-digital age? While it seems [...]
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How Computerized Contact Lenses Can Make You Think Differently About Architectural Design
As technologies continue to advance, building occupants are becoming capable of more and more. It began with the introduction of the computer, then went onto the smart phones, and now on the forefront are augmented reality technologies — one [...]
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7 Ways Ubiquitous Technology Can Be Used Within Smart Environments
Technology is embedding itself everywhere. Within environments, it is becoming smaller and can be found in more and more everyday objects as well as in the fabric that makes up the environment itself. So, the main question becomes: what [...]
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Why Semi- Invisible Technonlogy Within Architecture Is Best For Occupants
Advancements involving architecture are most always a great thing. But what happens when such advancements like technology detract from an architectural design? I think the answer to this lies in the hands of the individual architect for that given [...]
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Strategy: Find New Ways To Sculpt A Ceiling
When your occupants look upward, what do they feel? A sense of awe? Amazement? A yearning to continue on their journey through your building? Designing a ceiling is of critical importance — and not just because this is from where much of the lighting comes.
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7 Ways to Re-Think Shape-Shifting Architecture — Beyond the Moving Skyscraper
Today I am pleased to share with you a Dynamic Shapeshifting Helix Bridge which won the recent Design By Many Competition. As you can see from its design in the video below, the bridge actually morphs its shape as [...]
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How the Emotiv Epoc Headset May Lead to Environment Mind Control
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to control your house or other environment with your mind? Well, advances in brain computer interfaces are beginning to make much of this a reality. You see, certain brain computer [...]
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How 3D Interactive Vision Can Impact Architectural Design — From an Augmented Reality Museum to Virtual Objects
3-D viewing of objects is something that many designers (particularly architects) are always in search of doing better — for, building design models that take the form of physical prototypes or even virtual prototypes (as is built within the [...]
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How CAVE-CAD Can Improve Your Architectural Design for Your Occupants
Researchers at the UCSD division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) have developed innovative CAD (computer-aided design) software called CAVE-CAD that, when integrated with novel hardware to monitor human neurological and physiological responses, makes architectural [...]
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Strategy: Explore Your Material’s Static and Transient Qualities
The image above of The Palais Des Congres De Montreal shows how the selection of an architectural material (colored glass exterior panels) can have numerous effects that reach well into the realm of providing for a unique and positive occupant experience.
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Professional Office Design that Can Boost Creativity By Targeting Occupant Working Memory
Working memory is a part of everyone’s life. That is, it is the combination of the processes that go on during focused attention. Until now, it has been thought that such working memory is really limited to only one [...]
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Making a Positive Difference with Environments for the Aging Building Occupant
Today’s article targets getting you to think about environment and memory, particularly for the aging population. As you design buildings within which the aging live, do you take time within your design process to think about solutions that will [...]
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Strategy: Building that Broadcasts Real-Time Information
Have you ever thought about a building skin being used to broadcast real-time information? Perhaps it doesn’t have to be a direct broadcast, but rather an interpretation of information — a sort of architectural information visualization.
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