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Touch It, Smell It, Feel It: Architecture for the Senses

Touch It, Smell It, Feel It: Architecture for the Senses - Featured Image
Arakawa + Gins' Bioscleave House in East Hampton, New York used non-orthogonal geometries, undulating floors, and even isolation pods in their experiments to create architecture's that would "stop ageing." Image via Metropolis Magazine. Image Courtesy of Dimitris Yeros, © 2008 Estate of Madeline Gins, Reproduced with permission of the estate of Madeline Gins

This article was originally published on Metropolis Magazine as "Architecture You Can Smell? A Brief History of Multisensory Design."

What comes to mind when you encounter the term “sensory design”? Chances are it is an image: a rain room, a funky eating utensil, a conspicuously textured chair. But the way things actually feel, smell, even taste, is much harder to capture. This difficulty points to how deeply ingrained the tyranny of vision is. Might the other senses be the keys to unlocking broader empirical truths? Does the ocular-centric bias of art, architecture, and design actually preclude a deeper collective experience?