explored how we experience city spaces through our bodies and senses, what we see, hear, smell, touch, how we move, how we feel. This project focused on More London, a business development on the south bank of the Thames in London Bridge, and asked: what does it feel like to be in its public spaces, and how do their design shape our experience?
Inspired by Suzie Attiwill’s (2011) idea of spatial inversion where outdoor areas between buildings can feel like indoor spaces, I explored how the environment of the More London estate blurs the boundaries between inside and outside, public and private, open and enclosed. These qualities made it an enticing setting to investigate how urban design can speak to our senses, and how space can feel both like a street and an interior.
London Bridge is one of London’s oldest and busiest areas, a fast-moving, high-energy place where people weave past one another on crowded pavements. Finding a quiet moment or personal space can be a challenge. But just a short walk east along Tooley Street brings you to the More London development, a contemporary site designed with open public areas between sleek office buildings. Here, the space opens up and the buildings create a sense of shelter even though you’re still outdoors.
However, something didn’t quite connect. While the setting looked inviting and well-planned, it felt emotionally distant. The sharp edges, shiny glass, and hard surfaces seemed to create a barrier between the body and its environment. This sparked my interest and a question: how do layout, materials, shapes, sounds, etc, affect our senses and our ability to feel truly in a space?
With limited resources and time to investigate, I drew on the work of architects and designers such as Peter Zumthor (2006), Juhani Pallasmaa (2005), Joy Monice Malnar and Frank Vodvarka (2004), to explore how this environment resonated with my senses. I also developed creative ways to document and reflect on the atmosphere of the place, using sketches, sound recordings, short films and sensory maps (Figures 1 to 3). One key tool was the Sensory Flow diagram (Figure 4), which I created specially for this study to help make sense of this invisible, felt experience, and later adapted and reused in other personal projects and studies with students.
What emerged was a clearer picture of how this urban environment could affect emotions and behaviour. The investigation also opened up possibilities for experimentation into a speculative world-building activity where the intimacy of interior design practices merged with the macro-scale of the urban environment (Figures 5 to 7). This was a playful reflection and exploration into sensory urbanism in response to the question: how might we address the separation of rational and emotional experiences in contemporary urban settings?
Related articles
Mace, Valérie (2014) Sensing the Urban Interior - [in]arch conference proceedings, Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta.
Mace, Valérie (2016) Mapping the atmospheric experience - Rencontre Annuelle d'Ethnographie, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France.
Presentation
Mace, Valérie (2016) La programmation de l’atmosphère dans l’espace urbain - Rencontre Annuelle d'Ethnographie, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France.
References
Attiwill, S. (2011). Urban and Interior: techniques for an urban interiorist. In R. U. Hinkel, (Ed.), Urban Interior - informal explorations, interventions and occupations (pp. 12-24). School of Architecture and Desing, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Baunach: Spurbuchverlag.
Malnar, J. M. & Vodvarka, F. (2004). Sensory Design. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Pallasmaa, J. (2005) The Eyes of the Skin. Architecture and the Senses. Chichester: Wiley.
Zumthor’ P. (2006). Atmospheres. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhauser.