Essay

Introduction

Architectural features that are designed into your built forms can flow from one to the next — thus creating a journey for your building occupants. From beginning to end, your occupants travel through your building and this experience can be marked by memorable and sensorial experience. Don’t rely on signage to guide your occupants, instead use architectural features to prompt them, to inspire them, and to show them meaning as they travel through your built space. Design an architecture that pulls its occupants through a meaningful journey.

Transcript

00:01 Maria Lorena Lehman: I’m Maria Lorena Lehman. And in today’s micro-lecture, I’m going to talk about what it means to design architecture that pulls your occupant along through an experiential architectural journey. You see, when you’re designing architecture, it’s important not to make your architectural features and moments exist as standalone entities that don’t talk with one another. Instead, it might be best for your architecture to have architectural moments that flow. So that they pull your occupant along an experiential, architectural journey. In today’s micro-lecture, you’ll learn more about how to do this effectively within your architectural design work.

00:56 MLL: So did you know that architecture can pull its occupants? So as an architect, you want to be considering what architectural moments align and add up within your architecture to yield occupant experience. You see, as your occupants travel through your building, they’re actually pulled along by the architectural moment and features which you present. So for instance, if they’re turning a corner, you might present an architectural feature that shows itself just before the turn to pull them and let them know that they’ll be turning right along their journey. Similarly, you might have motion within your architecture… A motion feature, like a flashing light or nature that moves with the wind like water or trees. And people are pulled toward motion as well, they’re attracted to motion visually. So this can also pull them along. So as you’re designing, be thinking about what features draw occupants through your space. So what journey will you take your occupants on?

02:11 MLL: If you’d like to learn more, I invite you to join my Design Insight Newsletter, and you will also get my book, “Bringing Architecture to the Next Level” for free. Discover how you can shift your mindset to reach breakthrough ideas, meet and predict occupant need using sensory design, leverage your design process so you can get more with less, and rethink new technologies to unleash your innovative edge.