Objects-to-sense-with: Making tools for embodied spatial learning

Researcher: Athina Papadopoulou

This research focuses on the making of computational tools that increase our sensory interactions with spaces and objects. I consider tools as perceptual extensions of our bodies and minds and explore their role as objects-to-sense-with in the learning and making process. I am interested in objects-to-sense-with as analytical devices that provide greater awareness of our sensory interactions with material environments, and as creative devices that provide sensory augmented making processes.  

Architecture education, by being enclosed in studios and by focusing formal qualities of spaces and objects, has prioritized vision at the expense of the other senses and has detached design education from an active, sensory-based learning. Considering the role of all the senses in the design of spaces and objects is crucial as it is only through the awareness of the effects of different materials and environmental qualities in our sensory experience that we can design spaces and objects that engage all the senses, and also account for alternate modes of sensory interactions. Exploration for this research includes the development of sensing wearable devices for active spatial exploration, the development sensory-active material objects, and the development of making machines that promote cross-modal sensory interactions. Through experimental methods that evaluate the role of such tools in the learning and creative process, I seek to develop new methodologies for a sensory-based design education and practice.