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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
