"Coming to your senses" or "There is more to environmental design than the eye"

Susan Drucker (Hofstra University)
Gary Gumpert (Urban Communication Foundation)
Peter Hecht (Philadelphia University)
Rich Wener (New York University)
Thom Gencarelli, (Manhattan College)

In “The Eyes if the Skin” architect Juhani Pallasmaa contends that “modernist design at large has housed the intellect and the eye, but it has left the body and the other senses, as well as our memories, imagination and dreams, homeless.” In the seminal work Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan asserted everything humans touch is both tool and extension, part of the techno-sensorium environment. Researchers from diverse disciplines have been concerned with sensory overload. Urbanization has certainly been a contributing factor in the increased awareness this phenomenon.

This EDRA workshop proposes taking a sensory approach to environmental design exploring the value of a multi-sensory approach to environment-behavior research. The aim of this session is to:

• Bring all the senses to bear in examining our relationship to the built and natural environments
• Reduce the new exclusive consideration of visual components in our person – environment interactions.
• Tie together contemporary neurology and neuroscience, biochemistry, multi- sensory cognition along with the functioning of proximal and distal sensory receptors.
• Consider how this may influence the behavior and choices of designers as well as the experience of users or settings.
  

In addition, this workshop will focus on the urban landscape and our multisensory approach to experiencing it. The urban environment is more that bricks and mortar, but a multisensory occurrence. This session seeks to articulate the complex nature of experiencing the city.