Home or Habitat
Sensory stimuli—what we hear, see, taste, smell and feel—give shape to a room’s energy or atmosphere. Purely functional spaces, as offices are sometimes considered to be, often lack qualities beyond the basic human comforts. Consider walking into a restaurant, a concert hall, or even a retail shop, where all the layers of materiality come together to produce an almost emotive affect. Such spaces can be described as experiential and therefore more likely to move beyond pure function and beyond comfort to the level of pleasure.[1] However, it is one thing to design and build an environment rich in sensuous quality, and another to incorporate our experiential relationship to those sounds, textures, or smells.
As more and more designers tap into the power within these qualities, it is interesting to think about how they are received. For many years, Judith Heerwagen has explored our evolutionary predisposition to natural environments, suggesting that “our ties to nature are deep and enduring; [so much so that] when we sever these ties we create conditions that are contrary to basic human needs”.[2] While it has become common knowledge that access to natural environments is beneficial to our wellbeing, Heerwagen goes beyond nature-prescriptions to advocate for buildings as habitats for people.
These living spaces benefit from mimicking qualities of the natural environment such as sensory variability, which “enables people to actively select conditions that fit their current needs and desires”.[3] When outside, people can access the shade of a tree if they are too hot, or find a sunny spot to warm up, however “building interiors seldom offer such personal adaptive possibilities”.[4] Rather than simply adding plants to your desk, reflecting on how bodies react, adjust and move through the natural environment offers a different wisdom about office space. Buildings with naturalistic features bring aspects of “patterned complexity and sensory variability”[5] indoors, which can elevate the space by allowing users to interact and engage according to their own needs and preferences. In these types of spaces our material relationships become more involved and varied.
Recently, while walking through the Montreal airport, I was pleasantly surprised to see the addition of plants, trees, and living walls. The usually drab space was converted into something more organic and adaptable. Coupled with a recorded sound of birds projected from the intercom, the traditional frenzied airport atmosphere, while not completely transformed, managed to shift into something a little more soothing and pleasant.
[1] Trevor Keeling et al., “How the Sensory Experience of Buildings can Contribute to Wellbeing and Productivity,” In Proceedings of the 7th Windsor Conference: The changing context of comfort in an unpredictable world. (London: Network for Comfort and Energy Use in Buildings, 2012)
[2-5] Judith Heerwagen, “Design, Productivity and Wellbeing: What are the Links?,” In AIA Conference on Highly Effective Facilities (Cincinnati, OH, 1998), 4-5.
