When You Think of “Skin”…What’s the First Thing You Think Of?

Have you ever compared building skin to human skin? Well, with new developments like nanotechnology, smart materials and ubiquitous computing the time is ripe to revisit the inner-workings of the human body’s largest organ. After all, there is much to learn by taking a closer look at what lies beneath its surface — particularly as it relates to architecture.

What do you typically think of when you think of “building skin”? Does it primarily function to keep the exterior outside and the interior inside? Or do you use it to bring the outside in within certain parts like windows, ducts and doors? Perhaps you have a more avant-garde way of working with “skin” — using it as part of your architectural language that allows your building to communicate with both its interior and exterior at the same time.

Wherever you may be in your ideas and way of designing building skin, I’m sure that the human skin can help to reinforce and spark new ideas for your architectural designs. You might be surprised to discover that there are many similarities between these two “skins”, and in essence, they are both there to protect and to communicate.

Can Human Skin Inspire Your Designs?

For starters, I want to show you this simple video that clearly shows how the human skin operates physiologically. Now is a good time to watch this sneak peek:

Notice any similarities between what human skin needs to do and Read more

Image: lissalou66 | Flickr

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 more

Image: Yukon White Light | Flickr

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 more

Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie
Image: wallyg | Flickr

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

News Update

Sensing Architecture is Featured in ARCHITECT Magazine, Nov. 2009

You can access the Feature Article here.

Image Credit: Tracy Powell

Here is an introductory excerpt written by Braulio Agnese, Sr. Editor:

SensingArchitecture.com, at the Nexus of Building Technology and Neuroscience

“How does memory play a role in the way we experience buildings? Or sound? Or optical illusions? What do advances in computing, power generation, lighting, materials, etc., mean for building design? How can “smart” environments affect our behavior or our mood for the better? And what about biomimicry? These are the kinds of issues Maria Lorena Lehman blogs about at Sensing Architecture…”

— ARCHITECT Magazine

[Click here to read the rest of this article.]

About Sensing Architecture

If you are new to Sensing Architecture, I invite you to visit (click here to visit), particularly if you are interested in architectural design, science and new technologies.

At Sensing Architecture you will find:

• A repository of useful articles for architecture professionals and scholars. These articles aim to give you forward-looking ideas to drive architectural progress.
• Fresh content is added regularly to help you learn about innovative design concepts and solutions.
• Unique perspectives expand the way you think about architecture and design.
• By exploring the science of how occupants perceive space, Sensing Architecture will teach you how to bridge the gap between new technology and architectural design — helping you to design more effective and humane state-of the-art environments.

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

Image: © Dianka | Dreamstime.com

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

Image: drp | Flickr

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 more

Your design process has as much to do with inhibiting action as it does with actually taking action. The process you go through as you design and communicate that design to yourself and others can be linked to certain findings about the brain.

Dr. Samuel Wang from Princeton University says that the human brain has a large pre-frontal cortex as compared to other species. This brain region is full of inhibitory circuits that control…well, control itself. It’s all about inhibiting action. It’s the place where you plan for the future and exert will to make a good impression.

STRENGTHENING YOUR DESIGN ABILITIES

You’ve probably heard before that your brain can be strengthened, kind of like a muscle. As you engage in the design process, your brain actually gets better, strengthening your design talents with each problem you solve. As your design solutions improve, the greater your rewards for those solutions. It all becomes a positive feedback loop.

So, how does this work?

Designing is greatly about problem solving; thus, inhibiting your final design action. During this inhibitory phase you engage in Read more

Image: Dom Dada | Flickr

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