The sign on the door doesn't look good, pushing heavy doors doesn't feel good, and both can leave a negative impression upon your building occupants.
Image: gruntzooki | Flickr

The other night as I was approaching (to enter) a restaurant, a group of people happened to be exiting. And as they were making their way through the main doors, one of them exclaimed (with a lot of passion in her voice), “we had to eat a lot of food to be able to push these doors open” — the doors were just “so heavy“.

As it became my turn to enter, it also became my turn to hold the door and I quickly discovered just how right she was in her observation.

While this was a good restaurant…There were some lessons to be learned here.

As an architect you must make a concerted effort to go beyond the visual and aural senses — for, in the restaurant design that I recently experienced, it would have helped immensely if the designers had made their entrance/exit “gateway” feature more than just look good…because despite their best efforts to do this, once occupants interacted with the doors, their negative perceptions reflected badly upon the restaurant and their dining experience.

So much of architecture is a touch-based and tactile experience. Just think of how many times your occupants “touch” something (architectural details) while experiencing your building design.

It may help to actually walk yourself through their journey, while paying particular attention to what their sensorial journey will be like. For instance, what do they Read more

In this video you will see an innovation called SuperCilla skin. This is an interactive and haptic building skin that serves as an energy source due to the movement of its small members. As you watch, imagine how the uses of this skin could vary greatly depending on the scale of the object around which this skin is wrapped. A small object with SuperCilla skin could move itself across the floor, while an object like a building could use this skin for an array of aesthetic, functional and sustainable needs. Also, it is interesting to imagine how our haptic interactions might affect such a design installation.

VIDEO REVIEW

SuperCilla Skin is described as an “array of magnetically actuated transducers that can record and playback physical motion”. This type of skin can be wrapped around any shaped object. It can be applied to many scales such as to a large building. In addition, SuperCilla skin is also a Read more