Image: imag ine that | Flickr

Studies are being carried out that suggest that the brain uses vibration (touch) and frequency (sound waves), in a manner that unites these two senses. This means that if a person is good at sensing touch vibrations, then they are also good at hearing sound frequencies — and vice versa. Thus, the senses of touch and sound in architecture are linked, and you as an architect can use this information to make your building designs even better.

I would like to think that architects today are factoring human senses, so that at various points within their design, occupants are invited to use their senses — in a holistic and harmonic way, making architecture greater than the sum of its parts. This is an advantage to designing with the senses in mind, where your architecture can speak to its occupants through different languages and on many levels. And the amazing finding here is that those sensory languages are related to one another in unexpected ways, where your occupants can “feel sound”. (1)

Image: Mataparda | Flickr

Of course, this immediately highlights the importance of paying attention during design phases to the sound and touch senses (and not solely relying on the visual sense to realize your design vision). Additionally, these findings also illustrate how you should not Read more

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

Image: geraintandkim | Flickr

In a recent Boston Globe article entitled Researchers Say Sense of Touch Guides Impressions, it was found that the sense of touch really is an important factor when it comes to perception. As you may already infer, we all seem to use an initial impression of something to form a judgment — which, when needed, helps us make a decision. (1) But what factors do we all rely on when we are in the midst of making that decision, and forming a judgment?

Not surprisingly, this is one of the important questions that was asked by the team of researchers headed by Joshua Ackerman of the Sloan School of Management, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where together, his team was trying to find the connection between our bodies and our minds. They did this by using objects with different “weights, textures and harnesses” as they questioned and observed their subjects…”people passing on the street near MIT or Yale”. (1)

Here is a brief review describing three of their studies:

While holding clipboards (where some are heavy and some are light), subjects where asked to review a resumé (resting on the clipboard) and make decisions about whether that particular job applicant was serious about the given position. — Subjects associated heavy clipboards with more serious job applicants. (1)

While witnessing a “back-and-forth” between two people, subjects were asked whether it was friendly or problematic. — Subjects who had just been working on a puzzle with rough edges saw it as problematic. (1)

Subjects sitting in hard chairs (versus soft cushioned comfortable chairs) where more rigid in their negotiations over the price of a car. (1)

I think Ackerman said it best as he noted Read more

Image: woodleywonderworks | Flickr

One of the most profound and informative senses that we have is our sense of touch. This sense informs so much of the way we “see” the world around us. Some have even said that touch is the greatest of all the senses.

It is interesting to think that in some way all of our other senses engage in some form of “touch” as we experience the things which make up our environments. Thus, as we move through architectural spaces, we touch what we perceive and we perceive what we touch — we extract it, interpret it and make meaning of it in our memory and through learning. You can say that “touch” helps us to understand.

Again, touch can involve all of the senses in some way. When you touch something it has been said that you can “feel” it. One could suppose that this means that you completely take it in through the senses — to cognitively and emotionally form a perception and then an impression.

Interactivity Fosters a “Touch” Mindset

With the advancement of interactive design, architecture is becoming more responsive and ultimately adaptive. Your occupants will be paying a different kind of attention to your designs as it begins to Read more