Sense and Sensibilities – designs should marry the two

Pre-school teachers are encouraged to include all five senses when teaching new concepts to little ones. Most youngsters, in turn, react with enthusiasm: Did you also taste the play clay when you were little? There we were, squishing, moulding, smelling, tasting and shaping the clay into whatever took our fancy. Back in the day, we did not know the jargon “live in the moment”. We just did it anyway.



Getting stuck into life with all our “sense and sensibilities” is what it’s all about, not so? When Jane Austen wrote her famous novel with the same name, she created two vibrant characters to showcase practicality versus romanticism.

Those are the two aspects that come into play when we design and decorate buildings. Practicality because the space must be functional, but also emotionality because we grow and bloom in milieus that speak to our inner selves and make us feel grounded. When our five senses are happy, we are happy.



However, that does not necessarily hold true for neuro-divergent people. If a space is designed with excessive multi-sensorial ambiance, it will crowd in on their sensibilities and can become extreme. Too much light, noise, movement. Overstimulation harms people on the autism spectrum.

So what’s to be done? Seek a happy medium.

One does not want bland designs, but one does not want overkill either. This is such a personal matter, anyway. For instance, some folks just love Asia’s reds and golds, others find them crushing.

According to Aditya Shukla from India, psychologist and founder of Cognition Today, human senses are dedicated pathways that send important information to the brain. He says we in fact have ten senses and not five. Dedicated receptors pick up all information and send it to the spinal cord and/or the brain. He mentions: “You touch something hot or cold, you feel a certain amount of pain. You know where your legs are right now. You know where your back is. You know when you are moving, when you are stationary, and sometimes, when falling. You know if you are sitting or sleeping in a pitch black room.”

Hence he names the other five senses, balance (vestibular sense), movement (kinaesthesia), pain (nociception), knowledge of body parts (proprioception) and temperature (thermoception).

What determines our perception and evaluation of a design? All ten those senses working in cohorts. When our neuro receptors sense that we are comfortable in a space, with nothing jarring the experience like too much light, heat, sound or visual overkill, the message to the brain is one of satisfaction. It’s a feel-good moment. And we can do with those.

Christine Stoman