Eco-Psychological Architecture: A Multi-Sensory Approach to Promoting Environmental Mindfulness
The human body is a mediator between the self and its surrounding environment. Urban and natural ecosystems consist of coherent perceptual entities that allow human perception of the physical world to be experienced with a number of senses, including sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. These multisensory experiences allow for information of the physical environment to be encoded into multiple areas of the brain which creates more brain connections, allowing for heightened awareness, a sense of cause and effect, cognitive development, and opportunities for choice and self-determination. In addition, humans' co-evolutionary relationship with nature enables us to experience spatial stimuli in the environment for sensory based learning, while creating a multivariate sense of well-being, stability, and togetherness.
Architecture has the ability to integrate and inspire these multisensory approaches and rekindle the natural balance between humans and the earth. While this profession exists to create the physical environment in which people live, it especially stands as a representation of how we see ourselves, as well as how we see the world. Multisensory Architecture could be used to feel and understand the natural world and suggest how different sensory modalities interact with one another to influence adaptive behavior and perception towards environmental consciousness.
To view the entire thesis booklet, click here.
To view the entire thesis booklet, click here.
