Multisensory experience of public interiors

ABSTRACT

We experience interiors with all of our senses, by seeing, touching, hearing and smelling as well as through our bodily interactions and orientation. Moreover, our experience is not static; it changes through moment-to-moment encounters according to changing sensations, our activities, our intentions, etc. This results in pleasant, neutral and/or unpleasant feelings. Interior design education and practice should, therefore, include an understanding and awareness of these embodied interactions, particularly how they occur in everyday life. This study provides a multisensory perspective of everyday public interiors through the lived experiences of participants. This is accomplished through the visual and verbal reflective essays of students who mindfully observed and documented their bodily postures and sensory perceptions during different activities within a variety of public interiors, such as cafés, bookstores and retail spaces. A thematic analysis of the essays reveals not only the specific features of interiors that influence particular senses, but also how these in turn affect an individual’s feelings and level of comfort. The findings point toward the temporality of experience and embodied total experience, which should be considered more focally in design education and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Multisensory experience
• embodied design
• interior design
• public spaces
• mindfulness

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank David Howes and two anonymous reviewers for their support and constructive comments. I would also like to thank all my (former) students for their diligent work, especially Serra Koz and Müge Sarıgöl for their image contributions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Burçak Altay

Burçak Altay is assistant professor of practice at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. She received her BArch from Middle East Technical University, MFA and PhD from Bilkent University. She previously worked as a programmer, designer, and technical coordinator at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architectural firm in New York, USA. She has published several articles on design education and practice in peer reviewed journals. Her research areas include: Architectural ethics and professional practice, inclusive and multisensory design, empathic design, creativity, and integrating mindfulness practices in design education.