We currently inhabit a visually dominant world where the impact of technology is evident in every sphere of life. Such technologies have provided architects with highly sophisticated computer tools that are utilised in the design, process and communication of their work.
Has this resulted in a move away from principles that we once deeply valued; regionality, craft, and longevity and been replaced with speed, homogeny, expediency and globalisation? Could this reliance on technology be desensitising us, resulting in visual dominance at the expense of a multi-sensory outcome, where architecture is viewed as a visual art and not one that is body-centred?
This paper explores this phenomenon and reports on a teaching methodology that attempts to address this through a series of multi-sensory design projects and workshops, where the physical nature of space is explored through hands on experiments. Students are challenged to move out of their comfort zone and seek different modes of research and methods of exploration. The pedagogic aims are to embed a physical way of working that will create embodied experiences, enriching the student’s process into one that combines the poetics and pragmatics as the physical and digital complement each other.