Monday, October 13, 2008

Concept/Program


Brief

One of the major issues I want to focus on is that our society regards vision as the highest sense; it dominates over our other senses. Aesthetic problems of architecture are automatically treated as visual problems. As a result, “architecture has adopted the psychological strategy and instant persuasion; buildings have into image products.” However, architecture should be a full-fledge multi-sensory experience utilizing all the senses.

The diagram above depicts some concepts I picked up in the readings by Bloomer, Pallasmaa, and Gibson. Pallasmaa believes that the five senses are broken down into two groups: (1) vision and hearing are the “sociable senses” and (2) touch, taste, and smell are the “senses of private function” managed by a culture code. In addition to the five senses, Gibson believes there are two more senses: the basic-orienting and haptic sense. Pallasmaa goes into detail of what these senses might represent (vision-fire, touch-earth, taste-water, etc. –refer to diagram) and how the qualities/characteristics of the senses manifest different spatial qualities (vision-sense of separation and distance, touch-sense of doing, taste-material texture and weight, etc.)

Before, I had the program organized designating one sense to a specific room/area. I think it would be interesting if all the senses are utilized in an area, but certain senses would be extenuated and the others suppressed (see “program sample” in diagram).

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