Designs are increasingly inspired by nature in novel and unique ways — inspiring not only architectural buildings, but also the objects within them. “Science inspired designs” are sparking some very innovative and practical solutions. Mathieu Lehanneur is just such a designer who, in the video at the bottom of this post, discusses some of his intriguing design ideas and projects.

Deeply inspired by science and investigations about human beings, including both the way they work and feel, Mathieu Lehanneur looks at issues like noise, living objects for medical treatments, air quality and healthy living.

Lehanneur’s Take on “Living Objects”

For example, in his “living objects” project, Lehanneur uses inspiration from an onion, utilizing its layer structure to help patients visualize their treatment, its duration, and what motivates them. Such “living object” projects are great for individuals, and especially children because they increase the relationship and dependency between the patient and their treatment. Thus, ensuring that they will complete their treatment and have longer-term healing and health benefits.

A “Brain-Stimulating” Office

The brain stimulating office is an interesting approach to the mind-body problem. This common “problem” is a place where architects and designers strive to create balanced environments that are good for occupants by tapping into many of their senses. Although not everything in his design may be the most obvious now, it is still nice to see Read more

An amazing artist is Piet Mondrian, who is known for painting Broadway Boogie Woogie. This painting is quite remarkable and one of its defining qualities is its ability to convey motion to its viewers. As if to deconstruct music, this painting makes use of color, pattern, geometry and sizing.

Consequently, Piet Mondrian has made an excellent and tangible example for us to better understand why we perceive motion when looking at his work. Much can be explained by delving into neuroscience.

Why We Perceive Motion in the Painting

In her book, Vision and Art (affiliate link), Harvard neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone explains why this painting appears to “move or jitter”. She explains that the yellow and gray squares are “close to equiluminant” and they are set against an off-white background.” (1)

You see, the luminance in color plays a special role in Read more

Name: Sensory Design by Joy Monice Malnar and Frank Vodvarka

URL: Sensory Design (affiliate link)

Purpose: to explain in-depth and clearly how humans interact and perceive architectural design

THIS BOOK IS MUCH NEEDED IN OUR DISCIPLINE

Sensory Design is a book to really make you, as an architect, more aware of how your designs impact people. Taking and in-depth look at how humans perceive space and built form, Sensory Design is really quite a remarkable publication.

Written by Joy Monice Malnar and Frank Vodvarka, every page is filled with insight that will help you to become a better designer. Their unique way of presenting diagrams, illustrations and photographs really help to make an otherwise complex topic easy to understand.

Many of you, my readers, email me looking for a good resource on the topic of human perception and architectural design. Very often, I find myself recommending this book. In fact, there are very few books that seriously delve into the topic of sensory perception and design in such a detailed fashion. It brings modern day practice together with historical trends and then it ties theories together with findings about the brain to really help designers understand why certain design decision might work and why some might not.

Again, Sensory Design is a great find as it is much needed in the architectural discipline.

WRITTEN FOR A DESIGNER — ABOUT THE HUMAN PERCEPTUAL PROCESS

As you’ve probably heard me say before, the topic which this book covers is very important for architects and other designers to understand. Plus, I like that the authors go an extra step further by explaining human perception from a designer’s stand-point.

I think it best to show you what I’m talking about. Here is an excerpt that I particularly like: Read more

We all have similar urban spaces that we don’t like to hang around. Train stations, bus stations and just outside retail stores after hours. I’m sure when you have to pass through these places, you like to move quickly. And why is this? This is probably because it isn’t so safe.

So, what does this have to do with architectural design?

THE AFTER-HOURS BUILDING “PULSE”

The next time you are involved in a design for these types of places, you really should consider what goes on there after hours. You should design for what you would like to encourage during those off peak times. Your lighting, acoustics, material selection, window placements and site design all play a part.

As you design, don’t forget that your building occupant’s needs may be different at night compared to the day. Often, built environments need a pulse after hours and you, as the architect, play a role in making sure that whatever that “pulse” is yields an architecture that is pleasant and safe.

AN EXAMPLE: CLASSICAL MUSIC WARDS OFF CRIME

In many subway stations and bus stations there are often loiterers that disrupt the public, bring down the social climate of a place, vandalize the built structures or even engage in crime. In one project, decision-makers came up with a win-win solution that drove away delinquent behavior and improved passenger comfort and mood. This is what they did… Read more

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 more

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 more

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 more

HOW ARCHITECTURE INFLUENCES YOUR BEHAVIOR

The architecture which surrounds you influences your thought, and subsequently your behavior. Understanding this relationship between the environment and your mind is important – particularly if you are a designer of such environments. Your brain is not only hard-wired to interpret certain spatial characteristics in certain ways, but your mind also plays a role in how you make decisions based on those interpretations. All in all, architecture is a type of “food for thought” where your designed surroundings impact not only how you perceive that world, but also how you interact within it.

In Scientific American Mind’s most recent issue, an article by Emily Athens called “Building Around the Mind” highlights various architectural factors that influence the human mind. As described in the article Read more

When traveling through space you use certain cues to help you navigate. Your senses help determine things like orientation, distance and direction. During navigation, many moments arise for decision-making and your brain is a key player during this process. Within a building, architectural features send signals during the navigation process. The brain uses sensorial cues to help you travel within an environment – providing you with enough information to find your way.

In the interesting article entitled Getting Lost for Better Architecture, occupants are said to navigate, interact and then form “cognitive maps” in order to understand location within space. This article describes how researchers tested human subjects by having them travel through a virtual building while recording their brain function. Ties were made between what the subject saw and their brain response to those signals.(1)

Such research is fascinating because findings reveal how humans experience space. For instance, this research uncovered that humans use the “angle of incoming sunlight” as a primary cue for navigation. Of course, within architecture this cue is often eliminated.(1)

You might wonder how occupants interact within their environment to find such navigational cues. For this, it is important to understand what goes into the mental mapping of an architectural space – forming a mental image of that space as it is experienced. Of course, a mental map is also a consequence of occupant decision-making during that experience. For this, we can also use virtual reality – to uncover how the decision-making process works within architecture in real-time.

Although the applications may seem endless, such research will definitely give architects greater understanding into how the human perceives architectural features. Findings are sure to be quite enlightening.

(1) Nelson, Bryn. Getting Lost for Better Architecture. MSNBC Dec. 15. 2008.

Have you ever felt time speed up or slow down? Estimating the passage of time is not exactly a precise endeavor for us humans. Sitting through a long and boring film, for instance, can seem to take an eternity, while having fun at a party could make time fly. In the Discover article entitled How Your Brain Can Control Time, our brains are thought to manage time like a tool. Even down to split milliseconds, the brain utilizes time to understand things like distance. Timing is important for such functions as determining how far away someone is when speaking.(1)

The interesting factor explained in the Discover article is that humans become less precise in their estimate of time, the longer the time period. Thus, timing how to say the word “banana” is far more precise than estimating how long a lecture lasted — without using a watch, of course. Also, timing is something a human can, to some extent, be trained to do. A person can become quite good at determining how long 10 minutes actually is, if they repeatedly do the same thing in 10 minute intervals.(1)

Given all of this, it is fair to say that timing can be relative. Architecturally, timing within a space can be stretched or shortened. How is it that waiting for the doctor in the waiting room makes time go by slowly while sitting in you favorite café ambience makes time move quickly? Of course, a journey through architectural space can expand or contract time dependent upon the experiences encountered. Still, architects can and should use time as a tool to communicate and guide occupant journeys. Mental timing is an important factor to how architecture is perceived.

Certain focal points, alignments, materials and other features can all contribute to how occupants experience, and subsequently remember a built environment. Architecture can utilize time in many instances. Such instances are reverberation time, travel time, textural rhythm and visual timing. Buildings are largely experienced through mental time – and the senses are key.

Thinking of architecture as a timed composition may help to unleash its aesthetic and function. The architectural narrative weaves events toward more meaningful experiences and mental time can be said to be at its heart.

(1) How Your Brain Can Control Time.Discover Magazine. 2009.