Pantheon of Wonder
Essay
Communicate Meaning By Designing Material Textures
by Maria Lorena Lehman
Design Leverage
When your occupant touches a material within your building they are immediately given more information to compile into their mental image about your space. And this perception, influenced by their haptic senses, contributes to how successful their experience is within your building. Given this, I invite you to design texture in such a way that complements and deepens the meaning which your architecture aims to convey. For example, would a coarse and heavily textured wall signal an occupant to keep their distance? And would a smooth, finely textured wall invite them to come closer? The idea here is to go beyond the visual sense within your designs. Use other characteristics, like texture, to guide your occupants experience as they travel through your building. Because just as the visual sense can accomplish a lot — because of the tremendous amount of information that communicates — other environmental stimuli like texture also have the power to communicate. So be aware of what the textures in your design are communicating and guiding your occupants to do.
Maria Lorena Lehman has received the following awards and has been seen in the following publications: