Light has many faces, and many forms. As an architect, you can “paint” with light, “sculpt” with light and guide your occupant to “touch” it.

The following slideshow takes a look at how light can “set off” built form, and how built form can “set off” light. When the two fuse poetically, they can showcase your materials, an experiential path or even “warm” an otherwise “cold” space.

So, the real...

Architects are constantly defying gravity. We built into and with the sky, and the way in which we engage it says a lot about our work. Building upward involves more than just getting your occupants to look up.

The following is a 10 image slideshow presented with hopes to inspire you to think about the sky creatively. These captured moments, ranging in complexity, illustrate just how delicate the balance is between our built forms and the sky which surrounds us.

Here are ten ways to built...

It is fascinating to think about the “between-state” of nature and built form. Each can support, erode, filter or even sculpt the other. Both architecture and nature seem to continuously creep into each other’s territories, as if to propel the notion that they are really inseparable — as you will see in the following slideshow.

It is my hope that these simple “captured moments” will spark an idea for you regarding architecture’s...

Giving Occupants Room to Breathe

Within an architectural design narrative, it is wise to give occupants room to breathe — to absorb what they have experienced and to prepare for what is to come. If it is all “surprise, surprise, surprise”, a design can lose impact potential by not allowing occupants to process what those “surprises” mean to them for their needs, goals, and ultimate fulfillment. As you will learn later in this article, architecture that...

Strengthening the Relationship between Occupant and Environment

An architecturally designed environment, when newly built, stands ready to welcome occupants inside – to utilize its environments from which they can extract function, beauty and meaning. But have you considered that your occupant will actually develop a relationship with your designed architecture over time? And that this relationship will deepen with each occupant visit to the environment you create?

In some ways,...

Why Architecture Experience and Meaning Matter

When one extracts meaning from experience, value is given through a lesson learned, a memory formed, or even a new idea created. And since environments are catalysts for experience, it is wise for designers to give attention to what meaning is both conveyed and interpreted.

Architecture experience and meaning go hand-in-hand. Experience often leads to meaning, and meaning gives value to experience. So, what role does architecture play in all of...

The Link Between Emotion and “Sense of Place”

Architecture can trigger emotion. Just look at how designed memorials can trigger emotions like pride, sadness, or gratitude. Similarly, other building types can yield surprise or can even mellow one’s mood. It all becomes a matter of how a particular place is designed — to trigger for an emotional response in its occupants.

Emotion in architecture can often be linked to how well an architecture exudes a “sense of...

Greater than the Sum of its Parts

What should the term “sense of place” mean to you as an architect?

A “place” is a simple term at first glance; but when you delve deeper, various issues spring forward…

For starters, there are specific features that usually tend to come together to make up a “place”. One of these features might include a physical configuration like having a center with boundaries, neighboring sub-center clusters and a peripheral...

Within your building it is very important to meet basic human needs — whether they be your occupants’ needs for shelter, to work productively, learn alertly or even heal more quickly. Yet, that is not all that good and inspired architecture should do. As you may have noticed, within great works of architecture there is often a more spiritual side to those buildings which “moves” those occupants as they travel within them — and thus, is born spiritual design....

Many major companies and institutions (like Starbucks and some major airports) are now making sure to include free WiFi wireless connection to boost sales through major increases in customer traffic. And in doing so, they are using this incentive for customers to come in and buy their products and services.

But, as more and more people come to these venues with their mobile digitally connected technologies, what does that mean for the design of the buildings which house them? How do...