Can Desire Influence What You and Your Occupant See?

This interesting experiment might just give you, as an architect, some understanding of how you and your occupants perceive “distance” — and why this aspect of spatial reasoning might vary from person to person; thus, influencing how people perceive your built work:

Here is a Sneak Peak at What the Experiment Revealed

In an interesting experiment, researchers engaged in a series of investigations to see if they could tell whether desire has a consequential effect over a person’s ability to perceive distance. In one of a series of experiments, the researchers put a coupon on the floor and asked participants to throw a beanbag that should land on top of the coupon on the floor in front of them.

Prior to throwing their beanbag, half of the participants were told that the voucher was worth $25, while the other half of the participants were told that it was worthless. Amazingly, the half of the participants that believed the coupon was worth $25 didn’t throw their beanbag far enough. Their throws always came up short.

The resulting explanation for this, as the researchers explained, is that the participants who thought the coupon was valuable actually believed that it was closer to them than it actually was. (The participants who thought the coupon was worthless estimated that it was further away.)

To see the original article, click [here].

Is Distance in the Eye of the Beholder?

As you design a building, you are constantly thinking in terms of distance. It factors into a multitude of the design decisions you make everyday. And once your design is built, your occupants must also think in terms of distance as they travel around and through your building, from feature to feature, from space to space and from experience to experience.

So, how do you incorporate distance as you design? And how do you make sure that what you envisioned when designing, translates well for your occupants once …[Read Full Article]…

Right-handers Influence Group Behavior Simply By Choosing a Seat

When designing audience seating within theaters or auditoriums, have you ever given specific thought to which seats will be used the most, and by whom? At first, it may seem strange to ponder such details when most of what you will need to do involves selecting the style of seats, specifying how many total seats you will need, designating which ones will be accessible, planning how they will meet egress requirements and making sure each seat position provides a clear view to the stage.

But, should everything be treated so generally? What about the differences in behavior exhibited by each person in the audience? Perhaps not everyone watches a performance in the same way.

Well, a researcher from Japan named Matia Okubo, published a psychology article describing and proving that right-handed persons, interested in paying attention to a film, will actually choose seats to the right side of the theater.

What do you think? Will such a seemingly miniscule characteristic make you think differently about how you design audience seating?

Individuals Make Up a Population, Design for Them.

There are almost innumerable times, as an architect, that you will need to make “small” decisions that affect a the entire collective group of your occupants at once. (Namely, I’m thinking of theater or auditorium seating arrangements, and school classroom student seating arrangements here.)

So, is it often that you think of your occupants in a “lump some” — rather than as individuals who happen to make up a collective?

Yes, negotiating that balance between a “population” and an “individual” can be a delicate thing to do. For instance, just like in the above theater example, school classroom design must also tailor to …[Read Full Article]…

Fine Tune How Your Design Communicates

Have you ever thought about the speed of human thought and how that might relate to your architectural design?

Timing is everything. Both in the brain and throughout your architectural features, timing plays a critical role between the stimuli that your building puts out and the stimuli that your occupant’s brain receives. Why is this important?

Well, as an architect, you are the one who designs what those occupants engage with as they travel through your space. As each person absorbs the “information” that you put out, you are having an affect upon them — stirring them to move, feel, behave and think.

The composition that your features take on have both individual and cumulative effects — and you can use timing as a variable to further fine tune what you communicate through your design.

The “Space” Between Your Design and Your Occupant’s Thought

Part of what makes human consciousness possible is our brain’s ability to control the speed of our thoughts; and hence, incoming stimuli. Because of this, we are able to perceive our environment at once (in real-time). For example, if someone throws your keys across the room, you will see where they fall and hear were they fall. However, signals sent out by your brain’s core region (called the thalamus) act as “pacemakers” which ensure that such stimuli coming in from your eyes and ears is perceived simultaneously. (1)

As an architect, this should help you understand how important it is to design for your occupant’s various senses. Your occupants literally form impressions of your building by gathering stimuli through all of their senses as they journey through it. And although they perceive your architectural features in a synchronized way, it still does take time for the stimuli that your building sends out to travel from their eyes and ears for processing in their brain.

Hence, those movements, feelings, behaviors and thoughts that you help to stir…take time.

What does this mean for your architecture?

You should think about how your occupants travel through your design. What will they see, hear, touch, smell or even taste? How will you orchestrate your design so that …[Read Full Article]…

You walk into a room. You notice a certain aroma. You smell fresh cookies baking in the kitchen. Immediately, you remember your childhood days when your mother brought you fresh chocolate chip cookies.

Ok, this may seem a bit idealistic but smell and memory are linked. The article entitled Smell and Memory explains that of all the human senses, the process of smelling takes the longest to reach the brain, and once you do smell, the smell lasts longer than other senses. This leads to the assumption that smell and memory are linked in different ways as compared to the other senses; and yes, this is an important differentiation.

If the latter is true, then when you design, you instantly trigger memory the moment someone walks into your building. You see, memory is intrinsically linked with learning. So, the minute someone actually smells within your space, they begin to learn, and the olfactory process can play a meaningful role.

So, how can you design better now that you know this knowledge?

SENSE OF SMELL CAN OPTIMIZE YOUR DESIGNS

Perhaps you can be more proactive as you design. Instead of letting the scent within your space just sort of happen as a by-product of all your other design decisions, you can instead think about what …[Read Full Article]…

Smells can make or break a space.

Odor is actually a major reason why people complain about an indoor environment, yet nobody likes to talk about it much when it comes to building design. Smells within a building can either be good, bad or simply neutral. Plus, after being in a space for a longer time, you may actually stop smelling a particular odor which was pungent when you first came in.

So, what’s all the hype about? How can you design for someone’s sense of smell — particularly when everyone interprets smells differently?

I think attention needs to be paid to the institution-type of your building and what functions go on there. Yes, you will have to design appropriately in terms of choosing the right building materials, (after all, these have individual smells themselves) but what about the functions that go on within a particular space?

We all know that a gym smells different from an office which can smell different from a classroom.

THE OLFACTORY SENSE

The key is to think about the olfactory sense (smell) while you design. Think of …[Read Full Article]…

HUMAN LEARNING IS MORE THAN YOU “THINK”

When inside your building, how do occupants actually make choices? They are continuously making decisions, and the orchestration of your design elements has a lot to do with the decisions they make.

To make decisions, your occupant must learn; and to learn, your occupants engage in “conscious reasoning”. (1)

But — did you know that “subconscious learning” also plays a role? Hence, their “gut reaction”…

In an article written by Alexis Madrigal entitled Humans Can Learn from Subliminal Cues Alone, the author explains how humans can have an intuition-based learning. In the study, participants were shown a visual cue for less than five hundredths of a second — so fast that these participants didn’t have time to consciously “see” these cues. (1)

Using money as a reward, the participants used their “intuition” to respond to a question. The participants were right about two-thirds of the time. Of course, conscious reasoning still plays a very important role in decision making, (1) but isn’t it amazing to understand that there is a role for intuition as well?

OCCUPANT INTUITION

As occupants travel into, through and out of your building design, a great deal of learning takes place. Both through reasoning and intuition, your design intention manifests.

In fact, there are so many elements within a building, that occupants cannot possibly …[Read Full Article]…

MOVING INFLUENCES “SEEING”

As an occupant travels toward, around and through a building, their perception of that building deepens. Each view challenges and adds to the next, as a complex montage comes together to influence that occupant as they perceive architecture.

Human movement is important for you, as an architect, to understand — not just because of how a person’s body might relate to a design, but also because of how that body influences the rest of that person’s perception. This includes physiological, intellectual and emotional elements.

PIECE IT ALL TOGETHER

Movement by an occupant allows for a type of sequence, where they can capture architectural stillness through a series. (1) As sight, sound, smell, touch and taste senses are activated, movement helps occupants piece together that stimuli.

Even the height and position of an occupant’s head, eyes and ears impact how they …[Read Full Article]…

YES, IT CAN…

As we travel around all different kinds of spaces within cities and buildings, we come to rely on how our senses perceive. But what if our senses could be expanded or enhanced?

The human senses basically collect data from stimuli (like light and sound) and feed it into our brain for assembly and interpretation. But did you know that it is possible to “feel” more so we can develop a heightened awareness to certain things?

We humans get just the five. But why? Can our senses be modified? Expanded? Given the right prosthetics, could we feel electromagnetic fields or hear ultrasound? The answers to these questions, according to researchers at a handful of labs around the world, appear to be yes. (1)

THE “FeelSPACE BELT”

The inventor of the FeelSpace Belt is Peter Konig, and the purpose of this belt is to send vibrations to your waist on whatever side of your body is facing north. This may sound simple, but the results are quite …[Read Full Article]…

DISCOVER DESIGN CONNECTIONS

Some buildings are a pleasure to be in, while others feel terrible. So, why do some spaces feel better than others?

Down to the neuro level, building design affects occupants. Research in the neuroscience field is uncovering not just how building design works, but also why, when and where it works. This helps architects to better understand how certain features, like light for instance, might impact occupant physiology, thought, behavior — and mood.

Such findings can help you form connections to improve your designs for your occupants.

EXAMINE OCCUPANT RESPONSE

“Because of advances in neuroscience, we can begin measuring the effects of the environment at a finer level of detail than we have before,” U.C.S.D.’s Edelstein says. “We can understand the environment better, we can understand our responses better, and we can correlate them to the outcomes. I just get chills when I think about it.” (1)

Characteristics like nature, light, carpeting and ceiling height all have qualities that can be fine tuned within a design — to arouse certain …[Read Full Article]…

WHEN THE HUMAN EYE BLINKS…

Did you know that the second most complex organ in your body after your brain is your eye? (1) The human eye contains many processes all working together to help you perceive visual queues in a continuous way. However, when foreign matter or heightened stimuli (like loud sounds or bright lights) occur, a blinking reflex is activated — and usually when one eye blinks the other follows.

GEOFF MANAUGH ON “BLINKSPOTS”

In a thought-provoking post entitled Architecture of the Blink, some interesting questions surface regarding how blinking might affect our perception of architectural design. In this article, Geoff Manaugh explores “blinkspots” — moments or spaces where blinking shuts down our awareness of less important details.

This got me thinking…

DO YOU WANT A “SECOND LOOK”?

When architecture is more “interactive”, with more moving and/or flashing elements, does that mean occupants will …[Read Full Article]…