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 help them with their “aging” brains — thus, assisting them with certain aspects of their lifestyle, like suddden confusion, a missplacing of the keys, or other distracted behaviors?

You have often heard me speak about narrative, and this is because it is an important tool for you as a designer to use in order to pick up on the nuances that make up the daily lives of your building occupants. By better understanding your occupant’s “story”, you are better able to design appropriate solutions that will make for maximum positive benefit in their lives.

And for the aging, an environment can make a positive difference when it is better organized, uses appropriate colors and materials, and provides for easy accessibility as aging building occupants move about to function within their space. But appropriate design for the aging should not stop there.

You see, as the brain ages, working memory begins to decline — that is, incidents of forgetfulness, confusion, or distracted attention become more prevalent. So, how can you as a designer create environments to combat this decline?

If you are designing environments in which the aging will live and function by engaging in their daily activities, you should take a close look at the narrative of their lifestyle. Take “snapshots” of a typical day, to better understand where their strengths and weaknesses are. Then, solve for the obstacles and constaints that show up. For instance, if they are involved with any type of medical regiment (or diet/exercise regiments for that matter), make sure to design a space not only within which such care can be practiced, but with which it is practiced.

Use your design to make their lives not only easier because of what they struggle to do, but also more enriched because of what they do well. Also, pay attention to the things they want to do, but have not been able to do for a while. Find ways to use the design of their environment to make possible what may not have been possible in their “other” space. You aren’t just designing a building, you are designing architecture that makes a positive difference.

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© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

Image: ragnar1984 | Flickr

Buildings often rely upon wayfinding design to give their occupants a sense of building orientation, and to perhaps spark that mental map that tells them where they have been as well as pointing them in the direction of where they need to go. And while wayfinding signage and other directional elements found within buildings can be helpful, I do think that a good architectural design should not be dependent upon such signage. That is, the design should inherently convey to its occupants a sense of where they are when within it, and a sense of direction subtly instructing them on how to get to where they want to go.

For instance, an implied axial alignment of a well-positioned window which lets in a certain quality of light can pull an occupant in that direction if they sense it from another room. Another example is one of an exterior building element which wraps around the corner of a building in a way that pulls pedestrians toward the entrance as they are subtly cued to turn the corner.

Thus, within your designs there are ways to gently pull your occupants through, as they experience a harmonization of building orientation elements, where one leads to the next. And as such, designed building elements (as opposed to wayfinding signage) can be used as milestones to be experienced along your occupants’ journey. Additionally, such architectural milestones serve to not only pull your occupants through your building, but to also create a mental map created in your occupants’ minds about the experience of your building as it will be stored within their memory.

In designs where it is important for an occupant to get from point A to point B, without getting lost and within the shortest time frame — such mental maps and experiential architectural milestones should be considered. As such, there are times were it is just simply not enough to only use color or material texture to imply a change in location within a building. For instance, this may not work well for your occupants, as can be seen within many hospitals or office buildings today, where corridors and rooms become redundant and repetitive in their layout and are only distinguished based on color change throughout the design.

To help with a more memorable and intuitively easy to navigate building design, think about the milestones that your occupant will experience along their journey when within your building. Use wayfinding signage as needed, but as an architect do not become overly dependent in your reliance upon such signage because you will be missing out on great opportunities with which to engage your occupants by taking them on a unique and memorable journey that “fits” your building, its occupants, and its intended functions.

Think of building orientation as a design challenge — where its solution can lead to more comprehensive, customized and intuitive building designs.

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I would really like to get your feedback on my post today, so please leave me a comment in the form below. And if you enjoyed it, make sure you share it with your Twitter and Facebook followers by clicking on the “re-tweet” and “like” button at the beginning of this page.

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

Image: D'Arcy Norman | Flickr

Architects often look at where their occupants travel within their building, what makes them decide to go wherever they are going, and what behaviors they engage in once they arrive. But what actually happens to building occupants as they move through your building? Does the speed at which they move through your building have impact on their experiences while they are there? And upon how those experiences are remembered?

In a recent research article published by Science Daily, it was cited that the Society for Neuroscience studied and found evidence that “activity in rats’ memory-related brain areas varies with how quickly they move to explore their environments”. (1) So, for our purposes, we can begin to deduce that the speed at which a subject moves, can alter their memory of the setting within which they moved. (1)

Here is a slightly more detailed description of why this happens in the first place:

“They found that the pathway associated with storing and consolidating memories was most active when the animals moved slowly. At faster speeds, the balance shifted from these circuits to circuits bringing in info from the outside world.” (1)

Speeding Your Occupants Up Versus Slowing Them Down

So, within your own building projects, how might you go about designing for the way in which your occupants move? And what about your design solutions might benefit them as they engage in their real-time activities within your building?

First, you must ask yourself how you would go about slowing them down versus speeding them up as they travel to and fro within your built environment. For instance, might putting in a sloping floor impact their travel speed and behavior? Might there also be impact if you changed the material composition, color or pattern with which the floor is made? And by juxtaposing the rising and declining slopes, while also transitioning between flooring materials, might that serve as a “friction” or “smoothing” process that would yield different occupant travel speeds?

On the other hand, you could take a more generalized approach, where perhaps, a change in lighting color, strategically positioned architectural features, or a certain amount of contemplation or learning space might serve to give building occupants more to sensorially take in, and thus, causing them to linger. Whereas having a more subdued design fabric that is more goal-oriented and efficiency-based might make occupants move about more quickly.

Of course, this all could be taken to an uncomfortable extreme — if perhaps an architectural space has a superfluous amount of design activity that becomes too busy, and in fact, overwhelms occupants.

The Journey Your Occupants Take and The Memories That Form

In the end, speed of occupant travel really impacts the behaviors that they engage in once within a space, thus impacting the benefits they get from those behaviors. Subsequently, memories are formed, and as the Society of Neuroscience study implies, the way in which they are stored is now thought to be determined significantly by their motion and speed.

So, how can you as an architect begin to apply all of this to your work?

Perhaps within your designs you can re-assess the overall intended function that you are planning to hone in upon within your designs. Then, you can assess what role memory will play both while your occupants are engaging in their behaviors and once they have left the space. For instance, will learning be a key component while within your space? If so, at what spatial and experiential points within your design do you want your occupants to learn? How will you get them there? What will they do while they are learning to help them with memory formation (which is linked with learning)? And how will you design for the way in which they leave?

As a preliminary step, I would recommend assessing whether it be beneficial for your occupants to engage in a more exploratory travel experience within your building, or a more targeted goal-driven one. Think about how much they might need to absorb while they are there, and what they should remember once they have left. Then think of ways that you might design for all of this — floor slope, feature materials, lighting colors, goal-driven versus contemplation space, and so on.

In short, think about what your occupants actually engage in while within your building, then think about their “motion” while engaging in those behaviors — both of these will impact what they remember, and that may very well push your architecture from being simply good, toward being great.

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© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

Image: erix! | Flickr

An interesting finding involving one of the ways in which people decide to take action, can be traced back to how long a person spends looking at each of the choices. As was reported in an article by Scientific American, called Buying Odds Increase for Products That Are Looked at Longer, shoppers within a store that are trying to decide between two items will ultimately choose the item which they looked at longest. By tracking their subject’s eye movements, researchers determined that items were chosen when the subject gazed upon the item they chose even just half a second longer. And this was the case 70 percent of the time.

Which Architectural Elements in Your Design are Time Sensitive?

If you think about this premise that what a subject gazes upon longest, ultimately plays a large role in how they make decisions and take action, then architecture has many places within which such a finding can provide great insight into how to leverage not only architectural design aesthetic, but also its ability to bring great value for its occupants. But one must ask…At what point does design for perception become design toward persuasion? And how can you as a designer use each to bring value to your occupants?

Think about this for such buildings as hospitals or schools, where so many decisions and choices are made everyday by people that work there, heal there or learn their. Then think for a minute about where within your designs you give occupants a design choice — like between taking an elevator, escalator or stairs. Might it be healthier for certain occupants to choose one over the other? And when?

In the end, this may be a primary purpose of an architectural feature that enhances a space, while at the same time being somewhat of a focal point. And when strung together, such architectural features make up the narrative of moments that lead to the choices that occupants make throughout their architectural journey — and hence, their decisions that make up their daily lives.

How might you incorporate such studies that give insight to your occupant’s possible eye tracking based behaviors, and the time they take to gaze at different architectural moments within your building? How might you use such findings to bring greater value to your occupants? Would you emphasize certain architectural features over others? And why?…To help them make healthier choices? To help them teach and learn better? Or to help meet your client’s overarching needs in more meaningful ways?

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I would really like to get your feedback on my post today, so please leave me a comment in the form below. And if you enjoyed it, make sure you share it with your Twitter and Facebook followers by clicking on the “re-tweet” and “like” button at the beginning of this page.

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

Instinctively, do you this such connections exist? Have you ever listened to a song and instantly been transported back to a certain time and place in your memory that this song seems to be unexplainably linked to? Or have you ever walked into a room that has a certain smell which instantly reminds you of an experience you had a long time ago? Or what about seeing something that triggers your memory, reminding you of a conversation you once had or a place you once visited? And in each case, did an emotion surface as a result of the sensorial memory trigger? Well, such is the research by neuroscientist Benetto Sacchetti which focuses on those possible “links” which are like narrow bridge-like connections tying together emotional memory and the senses.

If there were such a neural “link”, what would this mean for you as an architect and your building design? Would you purposefully embed certain smells in a school to encourage comforting home-like emotional ease to help foster learning? Or might you play certain sounds (or songs) while at work to help boost productivity and/or creativity to yield more frequent and better quality results with less stress?

It is important for you to realize that such positive outcomes can result from the materials and other sensorial stimuli you put into your buildings — especially in the details. Thus, certain material properties, lighting displays and even geometric architectural arrangements are likely to serve as acute triggers for powerful emotions in occupants. Through their senses and into their emotional memory, you can think of the effect of an inspirational museum or a touching memorial where architectural moments lead visitors on a journey through their senses and into their emotional memory.

In other words, as an architect, you need to understand that what you put in, you will get out…and this will have either a positive or negative effect (with consequences) for your occupant.

Of course, designing to purposely trigger memory can be a tricky thing, and some may say that it is an art to be able to do this well — and at a high level. So, even if there is a definitive link between the senses and emotional memories which they may bring to the surface, I think it is your job as an architect to act as a surgeon at times, knowing how to extract and guide those memories within your designs, so they can resurface, form, be realized, felt and appreciated by your occupants.

As an architect, with the right ingredients, you can create such a vessel — delivering the right environmental stimuli to the senses, and thus, triggering not only memory, but also profound emotion.

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(1) Found: Possible Link Between Emotional Memories and Sensory Triggers. Discover.

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

Image: claude.attard.bezzina | Flickr

I came across an interesting article recently entitled Scent as Design. In it, the author discusses topics that were brought up during a recent symposium that was held to promote thought on the implications of using scent in design. To no surprise, it was shared that within today’s “modern lifestyle” we typically tend to “cover up” and “clean up” scent — without tapping into the vast potential which it holds. It seems that many of today’s cultures trend toward eliminating scent, without accentuating it — even though everything has a smell.

Just think about that for a moment, everything has a smell. Don’t you think that architects today should uncover what this widely underestimated sensorial stimuli can hold for their designs? But now that we know that the olfactory sense is significant, what should we begin to do as designers to make our creations even better?

When Scent Can Enhance the Visual

I was particularly struck by a particular thought from the above mentioned article that says that stimulating the olfactory sense in your design can help your occupants be more present. So, if your occupants were more present within your design — might your occupants function better and feel better when within it? Also, might the incorporation of scent help you as an architect attract your occupant’s attention at a certain moment during your occupant’s experience of your designed built environment?

In the article Scent as Design, it was noted that when experiencing scent, an occupant may inadvertently “tag” an object or make “associations” with it. Of course, you can see proof of this already by simply thinking about the branded scent of a particular perfume or the smell of a new car. In and of themselves, scents can actually become part of a brand, a style or even a culture. If you look hard enough, you can see many examples of this in today’s world, and certainly, I think there is much untapped potential when you really begin to delve into what designing for your occupant’s olfactory sense can do for your work.

As architects, it is time to think about smell as more than just being good or bad, associated with food, a new car or even perfume. Tapping into the power of the olfactory sense will mean a refinement of your own “palette”. As you go through each day, you should start to become consciously aware of the different scents you experience both while outdoors and indoors. Soon, you will begin to realize that there is an almost “invisible” dimension which you can integrate into your design work to make your architecture pop in all the right places.

Think of Traveling Through a Space With Only Your Nose

With this post, I will leave you with one last question for you to ask yourself:

If you were to travel through your architectural built project using only your sense of smell — would you be able to find your way? How would you distinguish transition between spaces? And how would you know what to do and when? Also, how would different scents make you feel, think or behave?

Already, you are probably thinking of some basic smells which you identify with certain spaces. For instance, what smell do you think of when you envision a bathroom? A bakery? A church? Or a school?

Now, push the boundaries of the “default” smells that come pre-attached with your building materials. You should use smell on purpose to create entire olfactory environments. Escape from the “cover-up” mentality. Go beyond simply making everything smell clean. Use your design talents to push the envelope — what might different scents do for a school for instance? Furthermore, what might different scents do for different classroom types within that school? Should the art room smell different from the math room or even the computer lab?

Then, start to think about how smell can impact not only emotional and intellectual associations, but then be processed through to occupant behavior. In short, it is time for you as an architect to get re-acquainted with your sense of smell — the often underestimated and untapped design resource with so much potential.

Please Tell Me What You Think

I would really like to get your feedback on my post today, so please leave me a comment in the form below. And if you enjoyed it, make sure you share it with your Twitter followers by “tweeting” it using the re-tweet button on this page.

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

What Neuroscience is Telling Us

When you design and integrate an architectural feature to engage your building occupant, how do you think it affects them? For example, suppose your occupant is walking toward your building and is just about to enter it — during their approach they can see a waterfall feature just on the other side of the glass which separates the exterior from the interior. How do they process your interior design before ever entering it? Do they actually hear that water feature on the other side of the glass which they can only see?

Such are the questions which leading neuroscientists are uncovering. In fact, findings are indicating that when people are presented with only a visual of something, they do actually hear it. So, even though that interior waterfall is acoustically cut off from the exterior, your occupants will still form a perception of it which is made up of processes beyond the visual.

In the article entitled The Brain Hears Just by Seeing in Scientific American, you can listen to a podcast which describes what is happening with the brain when visual cues stimulate auditory perceptions. You will learn that although people may just “see” something, like a rooster crowing, activity in the brain of the observer actually shows a “lighting up” in their audio cortex — similar to how it would light up if they were actually hearing it.

So as it turns out, the different human senses cross-relate and inform each other in some pretty sophisticated ways. This is something you should definitely understand as you design your built environments.

How to Take Findings about Synchronizing Senses a Step Further

A wonderful book which you should read is called The Film Sense (affiliate link) by Sergei Eisenstein. In it is discussed the notion of “montage” and what the merger between the senses (like sight and sound) means for an observer and director or designer.

I like this book because I think it is critical for you as an architect to understand how various senses relate to one another, and what happens when you play with the way they relate to each other by manipulating factors like time (and space). All that you do as a designer will be perceived by the person experiencing it — and the way you feed them sensorial cues makes a huge impact on how your design is received, ultimately affecting the overall quality of your design (and its ability to uplift your occupant’s lifestyle).

When you design your built environments you should know what message you are getting across to your occupant, how that message is received and how it gets processed through factors like occupant behavior, thought and emotion. Practically speaking, some of this may not be so obvious to you while you design, however, your occupants are sophisticated observers and will pick up on the sensorial nuances in your design — whether you intended them or not.

This book, The Film Sense (affiliate link), is a great way to point you toward the path of dissecting how your building occupant’s perceive through their senses, as written from the perspective of film design. I’m sure that by reading this book, you will gain interesting insight equipping you to reach architectural designs with maximum positive impact.

The Film Sense (affiliate link)

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

Image: fdecomite | Flickr

In a world where buildings today are primarily static, not very responsive and not very well optimized, it will be intriguing to see what algorithm design for architecture can do — particularly when coupled with other fields like nanotechnology, biomimicry and neuroscience.

As an occupant, I know I would want to have a building that can adapt to meet my needs as I need them. And while it does this, I would want it to look as beautiful as ever. As a building owner, I would want a building that could adapt to not only my business needs, but also be able to adapt to the changes that arise during my building’s lifespan.

Instead of reinventing the wheel by designing built forms that make their occupants adapt to them, it is my hope that algorithmic architecture combined nanotechnology, biomimicry and neuroscience can yield buildings that adapt to their occupants.

This new wave of building design can really make buildings more fluid, flexible and adaptively optimized to not only meet today’s rapidly evolving needs, but to also yield built space that is ultimately healthier, happier, less stressful and more resilient.

An algorithmic architecture will be a big part of the architecture field’s ability to open up new channels, unleashing new ways for buildings to flex with their occupants — and best of all, it will be able to do this at varying speeds, with great material variations and with an infinite array of stimuli during just about any stage of a building’s lifecycle.

Stimuli which can impact the many variations and rules applied to an algorithmic architecture and its computer language can range from triggers like environmental cues as well as occupant behavioral cues. It can also be beauty-oriented in its own right. Furthermore, algorithmic architecture doesn’t just have to stop at being goal-oriented.

In the video below you can see the algorithmic sculpting of a simple cube. I watched this little clip a few times and started to get some interesting ideas about what even this simple demonstration can mean for architectural design in the future. Take a look:

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I would really like to get your feedback on my post today, so please leave me a comment in the form below. And if you enjoyed it, make sure you share it with your Twitter followers by “tweeting” it using the re-tweet button on this page.

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

Image: JoshuaDavisPhotography. COM | Flickr

The notion of having dispositions, or records, that your brain keeps as it experiences architecture is quite an interesting thought. If every time your occupant has an architecture experience that can later be rewritten, then your role as an architect is to design for more than a real-time experience. You must also design for your occupants by incorporating what your architecture will say to them — what they will store in their memory, and how that memory will influence their future experiences.

Here is a quote discussing such dispositions from an article entitled, Science Studies How Architecture Affects the Brain:

“Architectural experience is recorded in what Antonio Damasio calls “dispositions” — records in our brain of a combination of sensory inputs, memories, emotions and any related muscle memories. Just below the surface of consciousness these dispositions wait for the next experience with which they can be paired. For example, each time we enter the office in which we work we are recalling a dispositional record of our last visit — including any emotional experiences we may have had. When we leave our office at the end of the day, our brain creates a new dispositional record that updates the one we came with that morning.”

The key word here is “update”. Previous architecture experiences impact the current, and the current will influence those which have not yet happened. Does this mean that you should design spaces that are less predictable? Or spaces where repetition and routine abound?

As an architect, it might be difficult to make a blanket statement about such questions. For example, I cannot say that a classroom in an elementary school needs to be predictable, while a meeting room in an office building needs to be unpredictable. So much is linked to occupant and architectural context, objectives and need for evolution and change.

Do Your Occupants Judge Your Buildings Before Ever Going In?

Wouldn’t it be nice to know what your occupant “dispositions” say? How can you, as an architect, design for such occupant brain records?

The ultimate goal for you as an architect should be to design spaces that ultimately foster the experiences your occupant wants and needs. Sounds simple, right? Well, complexity enters the picture when you consider that key word “update”.

Your occupants collect experiences involving your design (sometimes many of your designs) into their perception. Their records get modified with each visit — whether it be physical, virtual or by simply hearing about another’s experience within your building. In some ways, yes, your occupant does “judge” what their experience will be like, but “judge” is such a strong word. It might be better to say that they form a perception (which can often lead to an opinion).

Of course, you may have the opportunity to prove false impressions wrong, even erasing what they once thought they experienced. You may ask yourself…”What tone should my architecture have?” Should it be an unexpected surprise? Comfortingly predictable? Inconspicuously silent? Well, you get the idea.

I challenge you to think about what message your building conveys, not only when occupants are within it, but also before they ever come in and long after they have left. Your building forms more than a real-time experience. It stamps an impression. Use that to your advantage.

Please Tell Me What You Think

I would really like to get your feedback on my post today, so please leave me a comment in the form below. And if you enjoyed it, make sure you share it with your Twitter followers by “tweeting” it using the re-tweet button on this page.

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman

So often, as a designer, you must think about how your design vision will impact your occupants — planning for a not-to-distant future where your vision will be realized and used. For this, you may rely heavily on your own experience of what you think works and what does not, and you may probe into your occupant’s life to understand their likes, dislikes and so on.

Still, there is so much left to simply “hoping” you made the right design decisions for your occupant; and it is time that will tell the success or failure of your built work. Yet, there are new and arising fields that can and will help your architectural design process, as you strive to make informed and talented decisions with your building designs — helping you to stand apart from the rest.

These fields include neuroscience, biomimicry and nanotechnology.

Image: Manky Maxblack | Flickr

Sharpen Your Innovative Edge

Eventually, new findings in neuroscience will meet head on with other rising fields like nanotechnology and biomimicry, and this meeting will certainly yield some new techniques for you, as an architect, to greatly expand upon (and in some cases completely revamp) what goes into your building design stages.

As it is, architects already must “predict” the future to some extent, but the best way to increase your probability of creating a successful design that works well is to learn more about those for whom you design. I know this sounds obvious, but on many levels architects can fall short of truly doing this — and then their designs suffer greatly.

So, get to know those that will experience your building, study how their communities and cultures work and what drives their collective and individual thoughts, behaviors, emotions and spirit. To connect with occupants on all of these levels and to best position yourself to use the breakthroughs that both biomimicry and nanotechnology bring, a solid and direct place to lay a foundation for understanding is with neuroscience.

Neuroscience will be evermore important for architects to grasp as new nano scales, material behaviors and nature-inspired systems integrate themselves into our built environments. With such new behavioral qualities, wouldn’t you want to understand how your “designed behaviors” will impact those “human behaviors” that experience your buildings?

I challenge you to get to know your occupants on a whole new level.

Please Tell Me What You Think

I would really like to get your feedback on my post today, so please leave me a comment in the form below. And if you enjoyed it, make sure you share it with your Twitter followers by “tweeting” it using the re-tweet button on this page.

© 2008-2011 Sensing Architecture by Maria Lorena Lehman