Exploring Sensory Design in Therapeutic Architecture

Abstract

Exploring Sensory DesignThis thesis aims to explore how architecture optimize the healing process through the senses, making it imperative that vision only reinforce the other senses.With only sight, people become detached from a relationship with the environment through the suppression of the other senses. However by taking advantage of the other senses, is it possible to create a design for the body as opposed to it being visually and conceptually dominated? This will be applied in a clinical setting,to create a therapeutic environment. Following the concept that a healing space can be space which is not just experienced visually but through all the senses. i Contents Exploring Sensory Design Abstract i Exploring Sensory Design Architecture and its Potential to Heal AN INTRODUCTION TO SENSORY DESIGN We experience our everyday lives without realizing how heavily we rely on our senses. So much of our consciousness is through our senses, and how we perceive our world is based on this. In the case where someone was born without senses, would they experience memories and emotions in the same way we do? we obtain information, and experiences from the world around us. Without our senses of vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell, life would be tasteless, odourless, communication between our bodies and our world. Simply put, without our senses, our world would not exist for us. In 450 B.C, the Greek philosopher Protagoras noted this when he stated " Man is nothing but a bundle of sensations." Your world senses were taken into account as critical design factors. What if sound, touch, taste and smell were as equally emphasized as sight? What would our built environment look, smell and feel like, and how would that effect us? ing our attitudes, behaviours and wellbeing. It is an approach which focuses on the occupant, and how the composition of sensory stimuli in built environments are arranged to lift the quality of life and experience for occupants. With this approach, the effect of architecture on occupants can be better attuned through sensory design for healthier mind and body. Exploring Sensory Design Architecture and its Potential to HealSensory data is rarely central to design decisions, and as opposed to formal design concepts, designing for the senses seems like an unreliable design parameter in the architectural community. 2 In the book Body, Memory and Architecture, Kent Bloomer and Charles Moore, state that "architecture is a highly specialized system with a set of prescribed goals rather than a sensual social art responsive to real human desires and feelings." 3 There is an emphasis on the formal aesthetic of architecture, and it is favoured at the expense of the sensory and experiential concepts. Many believe that the primary purpose of a building is to keep the distraction from the task at hand therefore, most often all the senses aren't taken in to account in design. The senses, hearing, touching, taste and smell require closer contact and actual physical engagement, and what seems to happen is that most ...

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