Sensory Design

Sensory Design is an excellent book, although I have to admit to being slightly confused by its title. Initially, I expected a rather prosaic discussion of why designers should concentrate as much on, for example, smell and soundscapes as vision and form. True, the book does exactly this….But there is so much more besides. In fact, it’s as much ‘Poetics of Space’ and ‘Phenomenology of Perception’ as ‘Sensory Design.’ Bachelard and Merleau-Ponty have been merged with Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Freud and Jung to create a literary, poetic and scientific analysis of how and why we experience spaces and places in the way we do….This is a serious body of work, and a rewarding object of study….Sensory Design is an important and thoroughly considered design polemic. – Bobby Open, The Architectural Review, January 2005.