Design With Senses

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DESIGN WITH THE SENSES AND FOR THE SENSES:AN ALTERNATIVE TEACHING MODEL FOR DESIGN STUDIO

May al-Ibrashy and Tammy Gaber

Archnet-IJ AR, International J ournal of Architectural Research

Copyright 2010 Archnet-IJ AR, Volume 4 - Issues 2-3 - J uly and November 2010 - (359-375)

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AbstractIn the 1990s, J uhani Pallasmaa wrote a c ompact, yet,eye-opening book expressing his growing concernabout the architectural professions waning abilityto reference all the senses of the body in the designprocess. Bit by bit, the perceptive chasm betweenthe architect and architecture was widening both inthe design process and in the cognitive experience ofexisting architec ture. More than a decade later, theseconcerns have heightened as the rami cations of thisdesign divide a ppear in the form of architecture whosedivorced virtual quality has spilled over from the designprocess into built reality. The illusion of virtual reality as achieved by 3D simulation in all its glories haspulled the architect into a zone of false con dencewhere he/she feels that the design has come to lifebefore it is built and that every corner and detail canbe simulated and therefore understood. But can it betouched, smelt, tasted or heard? In fact, is even what

we see on the screen anywhere close to what we seeas we move bodily through its spaces?

This phenomenon is addressed in a design studiorun by the two authors of this paper. The purpose ofthe design studio, which is held in the Department ofArchitec tural Engineering, of the Fac ulty of Engineeringof the British University in Egypt, is to design a communitycentre linked to a place of worship within a residentialcompound currently under c onstruction on the outskirts

of Cairo. The gradua ting class of ten students is in the

nal and fourth year of a program that emphasizedthe engineering and project management aspec ts ofarchitec ture a t the expense of theory and history of artand architec ture. The university has no humanities orliberal arts program as yet, and students have minimalcontac t to arts within the university system. Contacthours in design studios are limited and design is mostlycomputer-aided. The need to re-emphasize thephysical, tactile, polemic and holistic aspects of thearchitectural design process is urgent, especially thatthis was the rst graduating class of a rchitec ture in thisyoung, privately owned university.

The design brief lent itself easily to the purpose ofreinstating the body and the senses both as designtool and design purpose because of the dual iconicintimate nature of the place of worship in particular.Spirituality, although a transcendental out-of-bodyexperience is stimulated and enhanced through

physical rituals of sound, taste, smell, touch, and vision,and the design process is only successful if it constantlyrefers to the senses as tool and purpose.

The design studio re-instates the role of the sensesin a number of ways. In addition to preparing astandard comparative report after eld visits tolocal case-studies, students are asked to conveythe effect of their case-study on one of the sensesthrough a series of ve conceptual installations each

addressing one building and one sense. Installation

Special Volume: Design Edu c ation: Exp lorations and Prospe c ts for a Better Buil t Environm ent Ashraf M. Sa lam a a nd M icha e l J. Crosb ie (ed i tors)

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Archnet-IJ AR, International J ournal of Architec tural Research - Volume 4 - Issues 2-3 - J uly and November 2010

Design wi th the Senses a nd for the Senses: An Al te rna t ive Tea c hing M od el for Design Stud io

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art in itself is a foreign concept to the students and inexpressing themselves through an art form that usesholistic sensory stimuli to convey its ideas, studentsfound themselves rethinking their own design process.Furthermore, the design is grounded in a real sitethat they were asked to visit and report on, and in aprogram that was arrived at democratically throughbrainstorming. Finally, designs are to be developedin a tactile physical manner through modeling andsketches. Traditional orthographic representation andcomputer aided design will be relegated from designtool to representational tool applied to the design afterit is almost fully developed. Evaluation throughout the

duration of the studio is not only transpa rent but focuseson the students ability to palpably grasp and expressideas beyond graphics. As this is a studio-in-progressit remains to be seen the developments, effect andimpact this approach will have on the graduating classand their nal product.

KeywordsDesign Studio, senses, installation, model-making.

Introduction

It may be that our unpoetic dwelling, its incapacityto take the measure, derives from a curiousexcess of frantic measuring and calculating.(Heidegger, 1997, p.118).

A good part of architectural education isconsumed in teaching students how to representa building; the concept behind it, its details, itsstructural system, its interiors, its exteriors. At thecore of these tools of representation is the abilityto convey through lines, in two dimensions whatis, of course, a three dimensional product. It is askill that is not easy to learn or to teach and it isan important component of almost all aspects ofthe architectural education process.

In the 1990s, J uhani Pallasmaa wrote a compact,

yet, eye-opening book expressing his growingconcern about the architectural professions

waning ability to reference all the senses of thebody in the design process. The problems arisefrom the isolation of the eye outside its naturalinteraction with other sense modalities, and fromthe elimination and suppression of other senses,which increasingly reduce and restrict theexperience of the world into the sphere of vision(Pallasmaa, 2005, p.14). Bit by bit, the perceptivechasm between the architect and architecturewas widening both in the design process and inthe cognitive experience of existing architecture.More than a dec ade later, these concerns haveheightened as the rami cations of this designdivide appear in the form of an architecturewhose divorced virtual quality has spilledover from the design proc ess into built rea lity.Pallasmaas book ostensibly champions theskin over the eye and called for an architecturethat designed for a superior tactile experience,but in the proc ess, it addresses all the senses.He, in fact, prefaces his book with quotes thatpoetically evoke how to experience life is to beconstantly bombarded by an undistinguishablemix of sensory stimuli;

The hands want to see, the eyes want to caress(Goethe qtd. In Pallasmaa , 2005, p. 14)

My perception is not a sum of visual, tac tile andaudible givens: I perceive in a total way with mywhole being, which speaks to all my senses atonce (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p.48).

The illusion of virtual reality , as achieved by 3Dsimulation in all its glories, has pulled the a rchitectinto a zone of false con dence where he/shefeels that the design has come to life before itis built and that every corner and detail can be

simulated and therefore understood. But can


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it be touched, smelt, tasted or heard? In fact,is even what we see on the screen anywhere

close to what we see a s we move bodily throughits spaces?

The idea that no representation of a rchitecture(whether orthographic, perspective, or evenvirtual) can truly represent the space that wetraverse, touch, feel, smell, is of c ourse, not a newidea. Neither is the idea that as we learn the skill ofarchitecture, our traditional ways of representingit can become a handicap. It is with these ideas

in mind that the writers of this paper approachedthe task of co-teaching a design studio course tograduating students of architecture of the BritishUniversity in Egypt. We were agreed on what wedid not want to do, but still had a long way to gobefore deciding on what to do. We both had anaversion to computer-aided design and to thekinds of designs the students tended to producewhen using it early in the design proc ess. We had

no objection to using it as a draughting tool, butwished to propose design processes that betteraddressed the sensory nature of architecture.We were also suspicious of the plan-section-elevation sequence of design (whether drawn byhand or the computer). While we were agreedthat the physical motion of hand-draughtingwas preferable to the punching of keys andthe miniscule movements of a mouse, we still

felt that starting the design with orthographicrepresentation limits spatial thinking, therebyhandicapping the design early on. We weredrawn to the idea of starting with scale models,then, after the concept is clear, progressing toorthographic drawings. The physical action ofmodelling emphasised the sensory over thevirtual and was a constant reminder of Lefebvres(1991) cry for texture not text. But at the back ofour minds was a lingering doubt that while these

ideas were a step in the right direction, theywere all within the same framework, the same

measure, of architectural practice that reducesthe bodily experience of architecture to a visualrepresentation to be seen not sensed. We feltthat there was another aspect to the designprocess that could get the students closer to thesensory understanding of their designs. This otheraspect was more than model-making.

In architectural education, ruled as it is by gures(both pictorial and numerical), conveying the ideaof the body and how it moves between the wallsand within the spaces of a building, is extremelydif cult to teach. The phenomenologicalapproach is complex, but it is our contention thatit or some approximation of it has to be part ofan architectural students education. The nextstep was to nd a way to introduce the studentsto a measure for architecture different from themeasure they employ in their representation

(and consequently) their understanding ofarchitecture through drawing and/or model-making. Along his poetically meandering yetextremely evocative path towards the answer tohis question about how Man can dwell poetically,Heidegger visits the meaning of measureand takes it beyond the limit of numbers. Hisre ections are on Hlderlins poem which startswith the verse, Full of merit, yet poetically, Man

dwells on this earth, and ends with the statementIs there a measure on this earth? There is none. ToHeidegger, there is a measure, and the measure,if we are to dwell the earth not simply build on itand farm it, is poetry.

Yet it strikes us as strange that Hlderlin thinksof poetry as a measuring. And rightly so, aslong as we understand measuring only in thesense current for us. In this sense, by the use of


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something known measuring rods and theirnumber- something unknown is stepped off andmade known, and so con ned within a quantityand order which can always be determined a t aglance. Such measuring can vary with the typeof apparatus employed. But who will guaranteethat this customary kind of measuring, merelybecause it is common, touches the nature ofmeasuring? When we hear of measure, weimmediately think of number and imagine thetwo, measure and number, as quantitative. Butthe nature of measure is no more quantum thanis the nature of number. True, we can rec kon withnumbers but not with the nature of numbers(Heidegger, 1997, p.116).

So, even though we measure architecture byour images of it (drawings photographs), howcan we measure the nature of architecture? Wehave to, otherwise, we will produce spaces ofunpoetic dwelling. Could it be that, as Heidegger

(1997) asserts, that our unpoetic dwelling, itsincapacity to take the measure, derives froma curious excess of frantic measuring andcalculating?

Again, the quest to represent the un-representable, to measure the un-measurable hasbeen a concern of the discipline of a rchitecturefor years. In a book of documents and manifestosprovocatively entitled The End of Architecture?,Eric Owen Moss urges us to nd the measurethe measure c ant measure (Moss, 1993, p.62),while Coop Himmelblau describes their processof design and collaboration as a mix of drawing,model-making, verbal description and bodylanguage. They observe that the more forcefullythe designer experiences his design, the morevital the completed space (Himmelblau, 1993,p. 18). The question still remains, how does one

forcefully experience a design?

Frank and Lepori (2007), on the other hand,premise their book Architecture from theInside Out, on the legitimate concern that thearchitectural profession is producing abstract,objective, un-engaged buildings that alienateand distance their user. They exhort us tocreate users spaces not spaces conceived asrepresentations. According to Lefebvre, a usersspace is lived not represented (or conceived).When compared with the abstrac t space of theexperts (architects, urbanists, planners), the spaceof the everyday activities of users is a concreteone. Frank and Lepori refer to a number ofarchitects and theorists who have expressed theseconcerns in a variety of ways. From psychologistRobert J . Sardellos advocating the use of thelanguage of adjectives rather than nouns forself-presentation, to Eileen Grays admonitionto fellow architec ts not to c onceive a house forthe pleasure of the eye, rather for the comfortof its habitation, Frank and Lepori continue to

guide their readers back to the human body asthe original reference of a rchitecture, its point ofdeparture, as subject not object.

Would you like to live there?

Frank and Lepori (2007) also refer to a numberof experiments in architectural education thataim at sidestepping the limitations of traditionalrepresentational methods in order to coerce thestudents into producing designs for users, for thebody, designs made up of nouns not adjectives.From simply asking a student if they would liketo live in their own design, to making studentswalk ba refoot up a nd down many types of stairsand describe the sensation, to asking students tocritique buildings and landscapes as receptac lesof sound, smell and other sensations, these

teaching methods are all attempts to free the





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students of the necessary yet restraining tools oftraditional representation that as their stock in

trade, will be ever-present in their professional lifeas both boon and bane.

But how will students describe these sensations?What tools will they use if they are asked to forgodrawings and models? Will they say them? Writethem? The question is, as Alice, of Wonderlandfame, has previously asked Humpty Dumpty,

whether you can make words mean so manythings (Lewis Carroll qtd. in Forty, 2000, p.9) .

How c an one use one skill that impacts one sense(talking hearing / drawing - seeing) to conveythe polyphony of the senses (Bachelard qtd. inPallasmaa, 2005, p.41) of traversing through anyspace, let alone great architecture? It might bethat the process needs to be inverted. Ratherthan target one sense to convey a myriad ofsenses, we needed to ask the students to isolate

Figure 1: Appropriation of the Design Studio. (Source: Authors).




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one sense and convey it in a manner that impacts

all the senses of the person on the receiving end.In other words, we arrived at the idea of askingstudents to describe how a building impactsone of the ve senses and to do that through agenre of art that addresses a number of sensessimultaneously, installation art. We hoped thatthis additional method of expression, installationart, would prove to be what we were looking forin addition to the model making in the designprocess.

Installation art has been used as a teaching

tool in architecture design before, but not thatwe know of in Egypt, and certainly not withinthe curriculum of our department, a curriculumthat gave far more weight to the engineeringaspect (with emphasis on structure and projectmanagement) than the conceptual dimensionof architecture. We felt that combined withthe use of modeling as a design tool, thisstudio structure would be a perfect conduit forimparting with tacit knowledge or learning by

Figure 2: Learning through Making. (Source: Authors).





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doing rather than acquiring rules for doing Wewould use exemplars (case studies) and models

(both analytic and poetic, but with the emphasison the poetic) to learn how the subject acts bytrea ting the model a s if it were the subjec t itself(Zeisel, 2006, p.81).

In summary, the design studio, the purpose ofwhich was to design a community centre annexedto a place of worship, was to re-instate the roleof the senses in a number of ways. In addition topreparing a standard comparative report aftereld visits to local case-studies, students wereto be asked to convey the effect of their case-study on one of the senses through a series of veconceptual installations each addressing onebuilding and one sense. Furthermore, the designwas to be grounded in a real site that they wereasked to visit and report on, and in a programthat was arrived at democratically throughbrainstorming. Finally, designs were developed in

a tac tile physical manner through modelling andsketches. Traditional orthographic representationand computer aided design was relegated fromdesign tool to representational tool to be appliedto the design after it was almost fully developed.Evaluation throughout the duration of the studiowould be transparent and would focus on thestudents ability to palpably grasp and expressideas beyond graphics.

The Students We are the rst group The British University in Egypt is a university withouta humanities department and the depa rtment ofArchitecture is part of the Faculty of Engineering.

The curriculum of the pilot cohort has shiftedfrom project management and civil/structuralemphasis towards a more design orientedfocus but it is still lacking in sound conceptual

grounding. This group is the rst graduating classwith ten students.

Project and Site Sacred and the Suburb This last design studio before their graduationproject was a challenge in and of itself; it wasan important opportunity to reinforce lessons ofthe design process with the added dimension ofconceptualization and sensory understandingthey had not been previously exposed to. Thedesign brief wa s to design a religious space (witha choice of the denomination) with a community

Figure 3: Graduating C lass 2010. (Source: A uthors).

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center. The site was a new ga ted compoundon the edge of Cairo in the design phase

(residential community mainly comprised ofneo-Mediterranean villas) with a large formationof petri ed wood (Stone Park, the name sake)as the focal point of the site. This type of carteblanche site was deliberately chosen so thatthe students could be freed from the historicpreconceptions, particularly prevalent in Egypt,assoc iated with the design of places of worship.

Syllabus Sensory Based ProcessIn designing a design studio to address the sideof architecture these students had never beenexposed to, we decided to begin with studentanalysis of local and international case studies(of similar types of buildings to their design brief),the selection of which we guided. Followingthis students were asked to visit the site andanalyze it. Thus, fully immersed in the context andrequirements of the design brief, we presented

to them argument for architecture as sensoryexperience as proposed in The Eyes of theSkin. We a lso introduced to them the ideas andexamples of installation art as applied to theexpression and understanding of architecture.Pivotal texts like Butterworths taste analysis ofthe Barcelona Pavilion (Butterworth, p.18-25)pushed the students comfort zone and helpedto re-orient them to a seemingly drastic new way

of understanding buildings. With this, each groupwas asked to rethink their local example fromthe perspective of how it interacted with oneof the ve senses. Over six weeks, each grouppresented their installations allowing for ampletime for development and discussion. Studentswere simultaneously asked to model the site at1:400, which had some topographic variation.Students then developed model schema for

their program using variety of materials and were

guided to relate ordinance systems to structuretheir layout based on their conceptual and

individual approach to the site. Thenal stageof the design studio was the documentation of

their ideas and designs in drawing form. Studentsworked on translating their model ideas intoplans, sections and elevations.

Although all aspects of the studio could bedescribed in detail, it is the installation aspect thatwe felt was both unique and provocative in thedesign process. Upon completion of the studio,

we re ec ted with the students about the proc essand this speci c facet of installation design andfound that although there were many particularbene ts, there were also aspects that we asinstructors could learn from and ne tune - forsubsequent inclusion of installation making insubsequent design studios.

Installations

In DetailStudents found the task daunting and c onfusingas they were used to expressing buildingsthrough drawings, photos and words. This is howthey knew how to analyse and design. We askedthem to translate the ideas and understandingof one of their case study buildings into a bodilyexperience and to refer to conceptual and

installation art as a genre. We found that we hadto explain what this was, so we chose examplesthat addressed architecture and space includingthe work of Gordon Matta-Clarke and Christo.While we asked them to use their experienceof the local example as a spring board, somegroups chose to speci cally do this and otherwere more general.

Therst group had the sense of smell and the

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group created a prayer box out of cardboard.It was barely the dimensions of a single personpraying and was oriented towards Mecca. Theprayer box was completely dark with perfumedwhite powder and rocks inscribing a prayer nicheon the oor. After entering the box a small purpleorescent light was turned on.

The second installation was one person whowas addressing the sense of sound and choseto simply play a recording of the commerciallyavailable Ameno by Era, and asked the class to

sit and shut their eyes and imagine a church. The third group presented their interpretationof taste of a local church from the early 20thcentury. They used a double structure, wherethe interior was made of Styrofoam sheetsand the exterior was composed of cardboardsheets at a persons height and was held up byan arrangement of drawing tables and chairs.People entered the space via a bent unlitcorridor that shifted direction and emphasis torevea l a small white soft space. On entering onefound oneself ankle deep in cotton wool andenclosed within walls covered in cotton wooland a casca ding ceiling of what one comes torealise is white c otton c andy.

The fourth installation was based on vision andwas made by one student. The student magni ed

the visual aspect of the Muslim rosary by makingit at a large scale out of plastic jars with stencilspray of religious words. This was lit from inside(highlighting the stencilled text) echoing thelocal traditional lantern (fanus) used during holymonth of Ramadan.

The fth installation also addressed vision andwas a model of the ovoid form of the mosquethat they had chosen as case study. They used

hundreds of Dixie cups stapled together togenerate the shape and created the minaretbases out of water cooler containers; one lledwith dark uid and the other with red uid. Theseuids alluded to the main activities held in themosque which were not prayers but gatheringsfor condolence (black coffee is served) and forweddings (red sherbet is served). The rest of theminarets were then formed out of Dixie cups.

The sixth and nal installation was meant toaddress the sense of touch but evoked a mix ofall of the senses. As well, this installation includedmaterials and elements of the earlier installationsin an attempt to both summarize the senses/installations and to evoke touch with any actualtouching. We were asked to enter the room inline with our eyes closed, with each personshand on the previous persons shoulder. Incensewas burned, alluding to the smell installation. Wewere then seated in front of two screens made

of the Styrofoam (from the taste installation) andserved water in the Dixie cups of the previousinstallation. A video montage of various imagesmeant to evoke the history of Islam as recountedin the religious lessons held in the case-studymosque were shown synchronized on the twoscreens.

As we mentioned previously, the inclusion ofinstallation design was a unique addition tothe architecture design process, especially inthis university. The students response in generalwas beyond our expectations, with momentsof revelation for all of us regarding the sensesand architecture. Our students bene ted frommany aspects of the installation design processincluding: process of making and materials,understanding the physical qualities of space,and engaging a larger forum of response and

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criticism beyond their small circle of class andprofessors.

Lessons of Making and of Materials

Our most sacred convictions, the unchangingelements in our supreme values, are judgmentsof our muscles (Nietzche , 1967, p.173).

The rst lesson of installation making involvedbringing the student back to primal actions ofmaking with their hands. The real properties ofmaterials, their textures, ability to stretc h, stand,support, transmit light and so forth became partof the design proc ess for the students. While eachstudent had a preliminary idea of what theywanted in their installation, modi cations weremade while making, often with improvisationsand unexpected solutions. In recognizing theinherent physical properties of materials andmanipulating these materials for the desiredeffect the students learned many unspokenlessons. The students choice of material itself wasalso surprising. It was expected by the instructorsthat the students would search and nd largescale architectural materials like plywood, oraluminum but all of the students created theirinstallations from large scale material sourcessimilar to their model making materials includingcardboard, Styrofoam, cloth etc.

The skin reads the texture, weight, densityand temperature of matter The tactile senseconnects us with time and tradition: throughimpressions of touch we shake the hands ofcountless generations (Pallassmaa, 2005,p.56).

Of the six installations, three used packagingcardboard to create their installations, although

very differently, successively expa nding frombox enclosure to larger space occupation.

The rst installation, Sound, used the packingcardboard literally as a box similar to its originalshape. The Taste, installation used cardboardto create an inner sanctum within a largerframework of haphazardly placed Styrofoamwhich had formed a transitional space. The nalinstallation, Touch, took over the whole studio,using cardboard to cover the windows, andalong with Styrofoam, to form the display panelsfor the video projection.

The Smell installation also used perfumedstones and powder to inscribe the prayer niche(mihrab) on the oor within the box. Criticism ofthe project pointed out that the installation mayhave been more engaging had the user beenasked to remove their shoes and if the place hadbeen dark, so that the act of prostration maymake the user see the mihrab through smelling

the rocks and powder on the ground. The Taste installation learned from the lessonsof the Smell installation, by attaching a bententrance (majaz) of Styrofoam to the cardboardsanctum. The only criticism was that theconstruction of the Styrofoam and cardboardneed a designed structural system of support,rather than just being held up by c lass furniture.

The creative use of cotton wool and cottoncandy within the nal space, along with theopening in the ceiling allowing in light, provedto be an enjoyable surprise for all of the class.

The students immediately wanted to touch, sit inand eat the installation. The creators wanted tosimulate the c omfortable feeling they had felt inthe space of the local church they had studied.For the instructors, the space seemed to triggerimages of the heavenly copula in renaissance


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based installation of Taste which not only grewto occupy more of the studio but also modi edthe space with the double structure and thecreated transition space from outside (studio) toinside (cotton inner sanctum). The majaz forcedthe users to change their posture (bend down,because it was lower than standing height) andallowed time for the eyes to adjust to the dimnessof space, and to feel around to move within thehaphazard corridor. This was an intuitive lessonas well about the architectural importance ofallowing for and creating transition spaces that

were integral to traditional places of worship. The Vision installation of the Muslim rosary wasrelocated several times around campus, rst inthe studio, then in the entrance atrium of themain building which is used mostly by the entireFaculty of Engineering. Many assumed it was aversion of the decorative lantern left over fromRamadan. Its effect on the space was minimalbut it did garner some attention and forced

people to look up to the upper oor of the atriumwhere they normally would not have. On thenext day it was moved to a south facing balconylooking onto the main student outdoor area. Inthe bright sunlight, and at a distance it began tolook like Christmas decorations on the building!On the third day (and where it remained until theend of the semester) it was hung on a c onnec tingbridge between two buildings.

The second Vision installation and the Touchinstallation modi ed the studio itself for completeeffect of their installations. The Dixie-cup domewas screened off from the rest of the room witha curtain structure hanging from the ceiling.

The Touch installation, modi ed the room bycovering the nine large windows with blackcardboard. Through modifying and occupyingthe space, the students took ownership of the

studio and other classes scheduled to use it weremoved to other locations.

Engaging a Larger Architecture Community

.. simulations can have heuristic valuestudents can simulate experiences of designwith the understanding that.. the experienceitself constitutes a worthwhile outcome. Full sizemock-ups of student designs are one example(Wang, 2002 , p.290).

Figure 4: The two Vision Installations. (Source: Authors).



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Engaging the larger architecture community ofthe university is mostly done by way of annualshows of (best) student work. Rarely do classesinteract, either with each other or with instructors

that do not directly teach them. Part of theissue is policy related. Each year does not havea studio dedicated to them. Rather, the samestudios are used as classrooms for students in

Figure 6: The Taste of Architec ture. (Source: Authors).Figure 5: The Casca ding Cotton-Candy Ce iling of theTaste Installation. (Source: Authors).

Figure 8: Inside the Dixie Cup Dome of the VisionInstallation. (Source: Authors).

Figure 7: Emerging from the Mihrab Box of the SmellInstallation. (Source: A uthors).



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they feel they own and the nuclei of habitationcommon in many architecture schools do notexist, and a s such, there is not a sense of physica lbelonging and community. One happy by-product of the students in-studio installationmaking and display was that the other classesscheduled to take place in this studio weretransferred to other rooms and the studio beganto belong to the students. This encouragedarchitecture students and instructors to come bythroughout the day and discuss the installations.

The students bene tted greatly from having theirwork exposed to a larger audience of peers andinstructors ga ining a variety of feedback to helpthem understand the problems and questionsthey had posed with their installations.

Two of the installations were very time based andonly occurred once, for the class, and thus didnot gain feedback beyond the c lass. The sound

installation with the recording playing as well asthe video display of the touch installation werevery temporal, and both garnered the attentionof only the class and faculty directly involved.

Three of the installations engaged the studio insome way or another and were on display for anumber of days were the Smell box installation,the Taste cotton installation and the VisionDixie-cup dome installation. Because they tookseveral days to construct and were on displayfor days afterward, it allowed for continuousvisits and help and feedback - from studentsand staff. The one installation that moved fromthe studio (Muslim rosary) and was locatedin different parts of the campus, garneredthe attention and commentary not only fromarchitecture students and instructors but from amuch larger audience of the university. Despitethe exposure, the installation itself was not c learly

architectural in nature, the way it affected thespaces and viewers was not entirely clear evento the author of the installation herself.

Lessons Learnt: Student Feedback

After the nal installation, a round table discussionwas held in which students were invited tocritique the process and re ect on what theylearned from it and how it applied to the designprocess. Most were agreed that it made themmore aware of the multi-sensory experienceof architecture and more careful in choice ofmaterial, design of light and acoustics. In theprocess, they came to experience buildings in amore conscious manner and to register how theirbodies reacted to them.

On a more spec i c level, some of them expressedthe idea that parts of a rchitecture c ould take onthe qualities of installation art. They were inspired

by the empowerment they experienced wheninvited to modify their space and wanted toencourage the user of buildings they design todo the same. For example, one student wishedto include a wall for graf ti in her design. The wallwould double as a bac kdrop for a water fall thatwould wash the graf ti away to make room formore self expression from the user. They felt thatin including these types of spaces, architecture

would engage the user more, making him amore pro-active user a shaper rather than areceiver.

One nal comment was made by one of thedesigners of the c otton candy Taste installation.He was struck by the reactions and interpretationsof the users of his installation. He felt that, whilesome of the aspects of his concept and ideaswere grasped intuitively by the users, others



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A B E R were not. They were, however, replaced by

other ideas and interpretations that the usersprojected on his design. His bemusement soonturned into revelation when he realized that thesealternative readings added value to his originaldesign. His conc lusion was that while the user willnot necessarily grasp the conceptual intentionsof the designer, it is still the latters responsibility tomake the designed as nuanced and multi-valentas possible. In doing so, he/she creates a spacethat provokes the user into weaving his ownstories and interpretations. In re-conceptualizingthe building, the user takes ownership of it andperpetuates it through the layering of meaning.

Impact on Design Studio

The most frustrating part of the exercise was theimmediate impact on the architectural designsthey produced for project. Most of the insightsthe students said they gained, and the ideasthey expressed did not translate into inspireddesign. While both student and staff who hadtaught them before said that they had improvedas architects, the instructors were disappointedby the level of the nal designs.

This anti-climax was due to a number of factors. Thenature of these kinds of exercises is accumulativein the sense that it has to be repeated, ne-tuned

and built on for it to be effec tive. It was thereforeoptimistic to expect and immediate result withina 12 week semester.

Another problem was related to the dif cultyof reconciling time constraints with intendedlearning objectives. A community centre wasadded to the brief so that complexity of theproject better suited the expected the fourthyear design studio intended learning outcomes.

The result was a project that gave more weightto the spatial urban organization of the differentbuildings, limiting time for in-depth design of theplace of worship. This was counterproductivebecause by virtue of its spiritual character andthe sensory nature of the rites and rituals thattake place in the place of worship which wouldhave bene ted the most from the lessons ga inedfrom the sensory installations.

As well, the reality was that this was a pilotgroup that had been subjected to quite a few

curriculum changes, and that it was a smallgroup of varied talents and vocational skills.

They had not reac hed the level of pro ciencyin architectural representation and were stilldeveloping their skills to the extent that theycould adequately express the innovative designideas that had been inspired by the alternativeteaching method. On the other hand, thisnaivet was probably a contributing factor to

the ne results they produced in the hands-onexercises.

Conclusion: Lessons LearnedIn planning a design studio that addresses thesensory nature of a rchitecture one has to employalternative methods of instruction that break freefrom Cartesian geometry and deal with designin a more phenomenological manner. Thiscan be done through enhancing the physicalprocess of design and concentrating on thethree dimensional aspect of the building throughmodel-making. Another, more alternative andcomplementary process, is to forgo all forms ofarchitectural representation and use installationart as a form of expression that addresses theuser in a more bodily manner. This method wasemployed in fourth year architectural design



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M A Y A L - I B R A S H Y A N D T A M M Y G A B E R studio in the British University in Egypt. The impact

on general advancement and architecturalawareness was extremely gratifying, withstudents engaging in the process in a creativemanner, learning from each other, engagingstudents from other classes, and responding withinsightful and thoughtful feedback that. Studentsexpressed a more heightened awareness of theeffec t of architecture on the senses and felt morein tune with the user and his/her rights as futurephysical and conceptual owner of the buildingsthey design. Immediate impact on designstudio was more problematic, as these kinds ofexercises tend to be accumulative and theirresults more long-term. It was therefore felt thatthe level of sophistication needed to translateinsight gained into design application had beenunder-estimated by the instructors. The instructorsneeded to gage the varied levels of skills andtalents early on in the course so that the timeallotted for the design process was appropriate.

As well, the design brief needed to target onebuilding in a more in-depth manner rather thandeal with an ensemble on a macro level. Whilethe exercise was fruitful and will be repeatedby the instructors, it will involve more hands-ontraining for the students to help them translateinsight into design application, possibly makingthe process come full circle through asking themto include an installation c omponent in their nal

representations of their own designs.

ReferencesButterworth, C., & Vardy, S. (da te). Site-seeing:Constructing the creative survey. Field J ournal, 2,125- 138. Retrieved on 9 November 2009 from http://www. eld-journal.org

Franck, K., & Lepori, B. (2007). Architec ture from theinside out. West Sussex: Wiley-Academy.

Forty, A. (2000). Words and buildings: A vocabulary ofmodern architec ture. New York: Thames and Hudson.

Himmelblau, C . (1993). The end of architec ture. In P.Noever (Ed.), The End of Architecture? Documentsand Manifestoes (17-24). Munich: Prestel-Verlag.

Heidegger, M. (1997). Poetica lly man dwells. In N.Leac h (Ed.), Rethinking Architec ture: A Reader inCultural History (109-119). London: Routledge.

Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford:Blackwell.

Levin, D. (1985). The bodys rec ollection of being.London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). Sense and non-sense.Evanston: North-western University Press.

Moss, E. (1993). Out of plac e is the one right place. InP. Noever (Ed.), The End of Architec ture? Documentsand Manifestoes (61-72). Munich: Prestel-Verlag.

Nietzsche, F. (1967). The will to power. New York:Vintage Books.

Pallasmaa , J . (2005). The eyes of the skin, architectureand the senses . London: J ohn Wiley and Sons.(originally published 1995)

Wang, D. (2002). Simulation and modelling research.In L. Groa t & D. Wang (Eds.), Architec tural ResearchMethods. Toronto: J ohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Zeisel, J . (2006). Inquiry by design: Environment,behavior, neuroscience in a rchitec ture, interiors,landscape and planning. New York: W.W. Norton &Company. (originally published 1981)

------------------------------------May al-IbrashyMa y a l-Ib rashy is a lec turer in the Architec turalDep a rtmen t, the Fa c ulty of Eng inee ring , the Brit ishUnive rsity in Egyp t. She is c urren tly a c ore resea rchmember of a Get ty-UCLA col labora t ive researchp rojec t on the historic a l c em ete ry of al-Suyuti in C a iro.She is a c on servation a rchitec t a nd from 2005 to 2009



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M A Y A L - I B R A S H Y A N D T A M M Y G A B E R wa s a p a rtner in Ham p ikia n-Ib rashy, an a rchitec tural

rm spe c ia l izing in her itag e ma nag em ent . Shehas des igned , fundra i sed for, and implemented

c on serva tion p rojec ts, m ostly in Histo ric C a iro, thela te st o f w hic h w as the C ai ro C em etery Sa lvag eProjec t . She ha s also wo rked in training c onserva tionp rofessiona ls, resea rch a nd c onsultat ions on h eritag ema nag em ent a nd she c op y-ed it s bo oks on Islam ica rt and a rc hitectu re. She h olds a PhD from SOA S, theUniversi ty of Lond on a nd her d issertat ion stud ied theurba n history of the l iving c em ete ries of C a iro fromthe four teen th c en tury to the presen t . She c an bec o n t a c t e d a t m a y. ib r a sh y a n d b u e . e d u .e g

------------------------------------Tammy Gaber

Tam my G ab er earned he r Bac he lor of Environm enta lStud ies and Ba c helor of A rc hitectu re from the Universityof Wate rloo in Cana da . During her undergrad ua teyea rs she spent a stud y ab road sem ester in Rom ea nd wa s invo lved in seve ral interna tiona l work-termsinc luding the a rch i tec tura l rec onst ruc t ion of a Rom anOd eo n in Ca rtha g e, Tunisia . Up on reloca ting to Egyp ta n u m b e r o f ye a r s a g o , sh e c o m p l e t e d h e r M Sc a n dPhD in A rchite c tura l De sign a t C a iro University. She ha sta ug ht art , d esig n stud io a nd a rchitec tural theo ries atd ifferent inst itut ions in C a iro an d c urrently tea c hes atb oth the Brit ish University in Egyp t a nd the Am eric a nUnive rsity in C a iro. Throug h he r writing fo r the loc a ld e sig n m a g a zin e , M a g a z a n d f o r t h e d e p a rt m e n t o fArch itec ture a t Ca iro University, she h a d interviewe dZa ha Had id a nd Ch a rles Jenc ks. She is c onsulta nt to aloc a l d esign rm w orking o n sm a ll sc a le p rojec ts. Shec a n b e c o n t a c t e d a t t a m m y.g a b e r a t b u e .e d u . e g

Design With Senses

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