Visualising the Sensory Journey into ‘Mind Maps’: An Alternative Design Experience to Spatialise Sensations

Abstract

Within the context of a visual-dominated world and regarding the conventional way of approaching spatial design, spatial designers predominate sight to generate and express ideas and concepts. This research aims to challenge the role of ‘visuals’ in spatial design processes and shift the focus to ‘senses’ and ‘sensation design’. The study [1] reverses the prioritisation of ‘visualisation’ in spatial design processes, and [2] focuses on an alternative spatial design experience that stresses the awareness of all senses except sight. Hence, [3] to question how sensations can be spatialised as ‘conceptual representations’ in the minds, and [4] how these ‘conceptual representations’ can be expressed into new forms of representation. Employing the findings from a design experiment that invited master architecture students to participate in a blind journey and to draw ‘mind maps’ that spatialise their sensory experience, the paper proposes a new perspective to understand and design spaces as [a] a space-time relation and [b] as a series of sensory-stimulating moments that establishes new assemblages of sensory experiences. This paper concludes how participants spatialised sensations and visualised their perception of spaces in three main approaches, arguing about the use of sensory cues other than ocular-centric ones in architectural practice. Suggestions are given on utilising and visualising sensory cues in the spatial design process, which emphasises the awareness and detailing of sensory experiences. Moreover, future research opportunities are discussed, including the potential for the visually impaired to actively engage in the spatial design processes.