The Film Sense (affiliate link)

What Neuroscience is Telling Us

When you design and integrate an architectural feature to engage your building occupant, how do you think it affects them? For example, suppose your occupant is walking toward your building and is just about to enter it — during their approach they can see a waterfall feature just on the other side of the glass which separates the exterior from the interior. How do they process your interior design before ever...

Name: Sensory Design by Joy Monice Malnar and Frank Vodvarka

URL: Sensory Design (affiliate link)

Purpose: to explain in-depth and clearly how humans interact and perceive architectural design

THIS BOOK IS MUCH NEEDED IN OUR DISCIPLINE

Sensory Design is a book to really make you, as an architect, more aware of how your designs impact people. Taking and in-depth look at how humans perceive space and built form, Sensory Design is really quite a remarkable publication.

THE PROMISE OF UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING

When discussing the topic of ubiquitous computing, there is a particular author that really stands out — his name is Adam Greenfield. In his book Everyware: The Dawinng Age of Ubiquitous Computing (my affiliate link), he takes a look at how ubiquitous computing works and how it will affect society, in most all realms. Here, he explains more…

Everyware is an attempt to describe the form computing will take in the next few...

Name: Color, Environment & Human Response by Frank H. Mahnke

URL: Color, Environment, & Human Response (my affiliate link)

Purpose: to explain the physiological and psychological effects of color in architectural environments

THIS BOOK WILL LAST A LONG, LONG TIME

Color, Environment & Human Response is filled with seventeen chapters of detailed insight about how color really impacts occupants within architectural designs. The author, Frank H. Mahnke explains...

Finding One’s Architectural Perspective

Not everyone that experiences your architectural design will perceive it in the exact same manner. This is because of past experiences, that differ from person to person. In fact, according to an article in The Brain periodical, it is stated that people “organize sensory information in a systematic fashion and then match it against [their] own experience and knowledge”. (1) In other words, a person is more inclined to...

More than Meets the Eye

Architecture has so much to offer occupants, particularly when designing for all the senses — going beyond the visual.

As explained in the Alan Saunders’ radio show, “Beyond Appearances – Architecture and the Senses”, the general public has come to know many architectural works by way of photography and other similar medias. People think of most architecture predominantly with their visual sense, excluding many of the wonderful...

Did you know that vision can be divided into central vision and peripheral vision? Well, according to the book 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, central vision is what you perceive when you look directly at something, while peripheral vision is everything else you perceive in your visual field. (1) In fact, here is what the author Susan Weinschenk has to say:

“Being able to see things out of the corner of your eye is certainly useful, but new research from...

Today’s article targets getting you to think about environment and memory, particularly for the aging population. As you design buildings within which the aging live, do you take time within your design process to think about solutions that will help them with their “aging” brains — thus, assisting them with certain aspects of their lifestyle, like suddden confusion, a missplacing of the keys, or other distracted behaviors?

You have often heard me speak about...

By simply looking at Japan’s subway system in the image above, would you imagine that a person living in this type of city would respond differently to stress as compared to a person living in the countryside? Well, research is indicating that there may just be differences between urban and city dwellers, involving how they handle stress. And furthermore, such differences may be most prominent when considering where a person grew up: whether in an urban or country area. (1)

Thus, when...

In recent lab tests, studies are showing that it is possible to replay memories within a rat’s brain to restore its memory. By using an implant, signals are sent to the hippocampus part of the brain by recording and replaying electrical activity of neurons. (1) Here is a brief excerpt describing this process a bit more:

This implant operates on the same principles as other neural prosthetics, communicating with the nervous system using electrical signals. Instead of sending signals from...