Pantheon of Wonder

Essay

Abstraction of Colorful Light

How Your Design Can Amplify the Benefits of Nature

by Maria Lorena Lehman

Lectures

Architecture Drawing

Micro-Lecture Introduction

How can your design amplify the benefits of nature? In this Micro-Lecture you will learn important paths to begin your journey of learning from nature at deeper levels…to then inject what you find into your architectural designs.

Lecture Transcript

00:01 Maria Lorena Lehman: How can your architectural design amplify the benefits of nature? I’m Maria Lorena Lehman, Founder of Sensing Architecture, and in this micro lecture we’re going to explore how you can learn from nature to integrate what you learned back into your architectural designs to uplift quality of life for your building occupants. It may help you to learn from healing gardens or gardens that have been designed for multi-sensory perception. You see, gardens target the five classical senses: The sense of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and even taste. By learning from healing gardens, you can learn to create architectural illusions or create architectural effects that help occupants when and how they need help most, whether that means helping to solve for an immediate need or helping to prompt progress toward reaching a desired goal.

01:13 MLL: Also, with new technologies being integrated into architecture today, you can use technologies like augmented reality or virtual reality to simulate nature or to extract what nature reveals. Using neuro-aesthetic principles you can begin to extract from nature, to pull those beautiful patterns that we universally, neuro-scientifically find to be most satisfactory and fulfilling as people that perceive them. So we can pull from nature in these ways to incorporate this into our architecture.

02:01 MLL: So, how can you amplify the benefits that nature brings? Begin by studying the benefits of nature. Bring that back into your architectural designs so that your architecture extends beyond the visual sense, so that it too can become multi-sensory. This will ensure that it uplifts quality of life for occupants, because it will engage with them in new and innovative ways.

RETURN TO JOURNAL
NEXT ARTICLE

Your invitation:


Dear reader,


I believe life is a continual process of awakening. As the journey of my own life continues, I always find myself connecting my experiences, studies, and ideas to new creative projects that bring beauty, inspiration, and hope for our world. For over 30 years, since starting at age 17, I have immersed myself in architectural design; and early on, I earned a Master of Design with Distinction from Harvard University, setting the foundation for decades of deep immersion in the field. Yet even before this, I held music close to my heart. At the age of 5, I began my first piano lessons; and since then, I began to see the world through a musical lens — even while designing architecture.


Over the decades, I grew closer and closer to music with a deep love for the design of instruments, their unique timbres, and for all the immersive ways their sounds could be interwoven into beautiful orchestrated compositions. I even began to develop a musical composition methodology, Spatial Symphonics, as I found my architectural design work becoming more and more emotive, soul-stirring, and yes: musical.


In recent years, I finally turned my focus to music composition. I hold a Graduate Diploma from the Film Scoring Academy of Europe where my works have been recorded by the acclaimed European Recording Orchestra (ERO), and I am founder of MLL ATELIER® — an award-winning studio now dedicated to my work as an orchestral composer, recording artist, and spatial symphonist — where I advance architectural design through music, and innovate music through an architectural design lens.


It is my hope that I can share my ongoing musical-design journey with you, directly from my studio through my video-newsletter entitled 'Orchestral Notes'. Expect video updates filled with first-access studio news announcing: album/book releases, concert premiers, sheet music publications, creative process sneak-peeks, and my own compositional philosophies as they develop to fuel my ongoing body of musical and architectural authorial works.


I would love for you to join me for this exciting adventure.


Simply click the button below to join my Orchestral Notes video-newsletter delivered every two weeks directly to your email inbox. Plus, get access to the full publication archives.

JOIN THE ORCHESTRAL NOTES NEWSLETTER

Let’s enjoy the beauty, inspiration, and hope that music brings.


Thank you for joining me on this wondrous journey.


Warmly,

Maria Lorena Lehman


Founder of MLL ATELIER® | Orchestral Notes

Your invitation:


Dear reader,


I believe life is a continual process of awakening. As the journey of my own life continues, I always find myself connecting my experiences, studies, and ideas to new creative projects that bring beauty, inspiration, and hope for our world. For over 30 years, since starting at age 17, I have immersed myself in architectural design; and early on, I earned a Master of Design with Distinction from Harvard University, setting the foundation for decades of deep immersion in the field. Yet even before this, I held music close to my heart. At the age of 5, I began my first piano lessons; and since then, I began to see the world through a musical lens — even while designing architecture.


Over the decades, I grew closer and closer to music with a deep love for the design of instruments, their unique timbres, and for all the immersive ways their sounds could be interwoven into beautiful orchestrated compositions. I even began to develop a musical composition methodology, Spatial Symphonics, as I found my architectural design work becoming more and more emotive, soul-stirring, and yes: musical.


In recent years, I finally turned my focus to music composition. I hold a Graduate Diploma from the Film Scoring Academy of Europe where my works have been recorded by the acclaimed European Recording Orchestra (ERO), and I am founder of MLL ATELIER® — an award-winning studio now dedicated to my work as an orchestral composer, recording artist, and spatial symphonist — where I advance architectural design through music, and innovate music through an architectural design lens.


It is my hope that I can share my ongoing musical-design journey with you, directly from my studio through my video-newsletter entitled 'Orchestral Notes'. Expect video updates filled with first-access studio news announcing: album/book releases, concert premiers, sheet music publications, creative process sneak-peeks, and my own compositional philosophies as they develop to fuel my ongoing body of musical and architectural authorial works.


I would love for you to join me for this exciting adventure.


Simply click the button below to join my Orchestral Notes video-newsletter delivered every two weeks directly to your email inbox. Plus, get access to the full publication archives.

JOIN ORCHESTRAL NOTES

Limited availability each month.


Warmly,

Maria Lorena Lehman


Founder of MLL ATELIER

Author of PANTHEON OF WONDER

Maria Lorena Lehman has received the following awards and has been seen in the following publications: