In October and November 2021, I designed and led two workshops that allowed me to put principles developed in my PhD research into practice and test their validity and transferability. The outcome of these workshops will contribute further insights to the PhD. The first workshop took place on 26th and 27th of October in Pamplona, Spain, at the University of Navarra with students from the BA Service Design students. The second workshop took place online on 20^th of October and on 3^rd of November, a collaboration between students from the BA Interior Design at Politecnico di Milano and students from the BA (Hons) Design for Branded Spaces at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

I would like to thank the students at Navarra, PoliMI and LCC for their valued contribution and amazing designs. I would also like to thank Aitor Alicu and Alicia Fernandez Barranco at University of Navarra, as well as Alessandr Biemonti, Silvia Maria Gramegna and Lorenzo Fossi at Politecnico di Milana for their support and warm welcome.

In these workshops students were introduced to principles of sensory ecology exploring the correlation between sensing and emotions in the context of place attachment and wellbeing. The objective was to design experiences that enabled people to develop positive emotional connections towards their environment. The principles explored in these workshops are discussed in a paper published in 2020. The paper titled “Inhabiting the Public Interior. An Exploration into the Critical Role of Personalisation in Imparting Quality to Public Life” is discussed in a previous post titled ‘Inhabiting the Public Interior’.

Designing experiences – University of Navarra, BA Service Design.

The activity took place on the site of the University of Navarra Museum designed by architect Rafael Moneo. First, students were invited to re-consider the museum as a public interior and were provided with tools to document and map sensory phenomena (sight, touch, smell, hearing, kinaesthesia). They were then tasked to design interventions that would entice visitors on a journey through the interior and enrich their experience of Museum.

Designing experiences – Politecnico di Milano, BA Interior Design and London College of Communication, BA (Hons) Design for Branded Spaces.

The activity took place online using Miro as a platform for students to collaborate (a fantastic platform for individual and group work). First students learned about the primacy of sensing and the types of emotional qualities people may experience in the built environment. They were then tasked to design a temporary public space or pavilion where people could define personal and group territories while still maintaining positive sensory connections with the collective environment.

These activities draw on phenomenological and ecological theoretical principles. Here, phenomenology is presented as the study of experience from the first-person perspective to foreground the primacy of embodied perception. The ecological perspective explores the relationship between living organisms (people) and their environment (the build environment). Phenomenology and ecology bring the perceptual and the relational together to become phenomenological ecology, a principles coined by Mark Reigner (1993, p.181) and discussed by David Seamon (1993, p. 16) in the book ‘Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing. Toward a Phenomenological Ecology’.

References

Reigner, M. (1993) ‘Toward a Holistic Understanding of Place: Reading the Landscape through its Flora and Fauna’, in Seamon, D. (ed.) Dwelling, Seeing and Designing. Toward a Phenomenological Ecology. Albany, USA: State University of New York.

Seamon, D. (ed.) (1993) Dwelling, Seeing and Designing. Toward a Phenomenological Ecology. New York: State University of New York Press.