We perceive architecture through our senses. There are constant atmospheric interactions in space, between lighting intensity and thermal comfort, sound and maybe the perceived level of safety, and so on.
Interactions between different senses determine the effect architectural spaces have on our emotional and mental well-being. The perception of architecture works on different levels. Its view, the larger picture, and the preconceived image in our mind, all merge when we reflect while occupying a space. As they merge, distinct perceptions are created by different individuals experiencing the space in their own way. Similarly, when larger spaces are entered, their form and proportions may overwhelm our image of the space, but the smaller-scale elements are the ones that engage our senses. The small details are capable of creating an exhilarating architectural space.
Can architecture’s power to exhilarate be explored through a multisensory approach?
Architecture is primarily designed to cater to our visual senses. Spaces designed in the modern age are deprived of a sensory experience as a result of a technologized world. Not to undermine the value of image view, vision is a stimulus that starts acting at certain distances, so it is a bit detached from our body. To connect to space intimately, the other senses must be provoked. Architecture and art are intensely connected since both convey a complex set of ideas that a viewer receives. Like architecture, art is multi-layered and tactile in nature. All art evokes sensory stimulation that may trigger cognition, nostalgia, or a range of emotions. In a similar sense, architecture involves designing a space that evokes perception through a multisensory approach. While each sense has its own stimulus, the interaction among them also produces a variable response to a spatial design. So, this common thread between art and architecture can be reinforced with the engagement of multiple senses in design.
Brief: Design an outdoor art school that explores the intensity of architecture to direct experience through multi-sensory design interventions.
The place will be an informal institute that will offer to learn to aspiring artists. It will be a meeting hub for artists across the city, for networking and exhibition of their works. The center must consist of open or semi-open spaces for conducting outdoor classes. The ambiance of this center will be different from formal institutes and freedom to discover and learn at their own pace will be encouraged. Space should promote social, cognitive, and emotional development along with practical skills.
The aim of the design was to create a unique journey throughout the center for artists, audiences, and visitors. The senses of sight, sound, smell, and touch must be engaged in the design. Social spaces must be designed to support interaction among local artists and potential sponsors.
The jury for the competition consisted of esteemed designers, professionals, and academicians from around the world. The Lead Jurors for the competitions were as follows:
Tima Bell, Founding Principal, Relativity Architects, California, USA
Dan Wheeler, Founding Principal, Wheeler Kearns Architects, Chicago
Some of the Best competition projects are as follows:
Winner: Rural city
By: Jelena Arnautovic
Description: A project that rethinks the traditional view of cooking. Given that Chicago is a city known for a large number of foreign nationals and that food is a strong cultural Designation, the newly designed culinary art school has four kitchens of different states, from four different continents.
Jury Comment: Terrific presentation, clear in intent and addressing the senses often overlooked (smell, taste). I would venture to say that there is much more to explore here, with the ideas of garden/animals, water/sun entering more forcefully. I suggest looking at presenting the ideas in a more abstract way architecturally, less familiar vernacular? This would be strengthened by more ability to engage larger spaces/groups. A large, flexible factory/greenhouse with large/light, intimate heavy/dark spaces? But great start!
People’s Choice: colour bar
By: Tijana Pejic
Description: The project is based on the SMPTE color bar, because these are the colors of modern and new art. Every color has its own meaning, and by the meanings, the art zones have been scheduled. The effect that certain color makes on us is translated to the art and to the same effect. Horizontally and vertically exploded axonometric of the art geared. Each zone has its own color bar which describes the content that’s happening inside.
Jury Comment: I appreciate your interest in the emotive impact of color and your approach to coding the entire site. Adolf Loos’s Muller House was an unexpected revelation when visiting, windows yellow, most rooms tuned to colors to affect an emotion. This said, color is a visual sensation, and does not address the other senses. I would also argue your presentation was unclear as to color zones, (IE axo where colors flip), I would be more explicit, consistent. We have been given no indication of site, context, and to where 50% of the program, garden, is deployed. If you were blind and came to this project, would you still have a sensorially rich experience?
Institutional Excess: The Digital Anthropocene
By: Jovana Stakic
Description: This project develops a way for a discourse that investigates the possibilities of integrating machine Intelligence and human coordination to produce a multiverse hybrid vertical community of artists and communal spaces. The goal is to create a digital archive of Chicago’s biodiversity in order to preserve what little it has left.
Jury Comment: Super clear ambition, and well presented. This accepts the notion that what man touches is no longer “nature” while offering it in different packaging and a place of constant change. A new version of a “Watts Tower”, accumulating pieces and parts over time, a construction site of parts akin to Archigram…The ground plan is helpful, though I would question the need for such idiosyncratic form. I would encourage more directly how all the senses are activated. Thought-provoking.
Editor’s Choice: TEMPUS MUTATIO
By: FSC ShiningFast
Description: Tempus Mutatio, or Art Garden, is a sensory and informal art school in Chicago. in concept “Art in the Air” to be a learning space or ambiance find inspiration of art. In which the architecture will be very inspired by local architecture. and the University of Chicago, matched with the different seasons to explain the concept of Art in the air.
Jury Comment: I appreciate the consideration of context, physically (UofC) and seasonally, and your drawings at eye level, with materiality and landscape well depicted make me interested in experiencing the project. This said, it is a challenge to “recreate” history, and I suggest learning from it but transforming it. What I take from this project is the potential of a kind of ruin, with heavy masonry interacting with enclosures/covering of varied transparencies. If you put this project “through the wash” again, I would hold onto the interactions between built form and garden, though becoming more abstract, less referential to “architectures”. Heighten consideration of smell, sun, wind. Potentially reinforce the idea of seasons by illustrating only one space through the seasons, even day to day to dusk tonight. That’s an infinite number of experiences just there!
Editor’s Choice: THE ART WIND
By: Betul Tuncer & Zeynep Dinktepe
Description: Your mind will blow with art on a windy day. Appealing to different senses/Bringing together the artist and the art lover/ to encourage people to make art/ to be inviting, to create a landmark/ calling the people of the city to art by using the power of colors/ creating exhibition areas with open, semi-open and closed workshops/ it was to attract all people who are interested in art to the field without separating people by removing the borders.
Jury Comment: Delightful presentation, a wonderfully illustrated narrative. This takes on the qualities of swan boats, bumper cars, and with it, some skepticism on logistics one can’t argue that the experience of floating, paddling, docking, and redocking would be a fun activity. The nature of interiors suggested here is digital, which is limiting, maybe show a variety to illustrate the excitement of exploring… ( IE one soft and squishy, one thick/scratchy with hay bails, etc…). The aspect of boarding at the edge, traversing, connecting to others, traveling between comes late, could be described in a comic book form. Thanks, memorable.
Editor’s Choice: The Dancing Cubes in the Water
By: Ali Baghizadeh & Aramdokht Jabbari
Description: Art Garden in Chicago City: this project breaks the boundary between inside and outside, and the user, both inside and outside, will see artwork or in other words a live gallery that is changing every moment and will delight the user.
Editor’s Choice: rollingHUB
By: Olivera Sadzakovic
Description: As the project is designed and revolves around the sense of touch, its unique form gives a new experience on each of its floors.
Jury Comment: Tremendous images in themselves. This said if the project’s ambition is to promote the sense of touch, how does this proposal do this? What does the hand, body touch, is sun/wind a player? What/where is the “garden”? This appears to be prolific form-making, versus thoughtful form-finding. Why two corkscrew stairs? Ascending/descending in similar ways without interaction with floors. could the floors be more a single surface, like ribbon candy, heightening the contrast of cool shadow to warm daylight? Unclear what is enclosed, what is not… where is the program?
Editor’s Choice: A path to subconscious
By: Vasilije Vojvodic
Description: subconscious_” concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one’s actions and feelings”. An art institute designed to stimulate subconscious thoughts and emotions.
Jury Comment: While graphic skills clearly evident here, what is left unaddressed in my mind is the experiential (sensorial) ambitions. How, where are we to find the unconscious? It appears to be a reversed Guggenheim, with the circulation abruptly cut, and we end at the base with a tree, dimly lit. I’m afraid I don’t get it. Maybe look at Boulee, Ledoux, etc?? IE intimacy and vastness, to heighten contrast?
To learn more about the competition click here.
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