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

With the redefinition of flexible space into what is now being called kinetic architecture, you as an architect need to go beyond movement to really think about what growth, expansion and contraction has the power to do. Furthermore, we can begin to bring forward what it might mean for architectural design when we think about a folding space — space transiently reconfigured through variation.

It is time to revisit walls, by really looking at them in section, and understanding how easily walls can turn into the ceilings, floors and transient windows. For this reason, I love the following image which shows you very clearly one way in which an architectural product called Metamorphosis Shimmer (by Philips Design) can make a simple, elegant and multifaceted design for kinetic architecture.

Image: centralasian | Flickr

Here is what Philips Design says when describing their Metamorphosis Shimmer product: 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