Scenarios of behavior

©Anny Michel Martinez Villar

There is a deficiency in architecture when it comes to understanding spatial interpretations and cognitive response to its direct surrounding, and implementing the nature of the design.

Architecture operates with many different backgrounds, activities, and behaviors intersecting at the same time with its own perspective in what, how, and why that space should work. To measure these interpretations with all their variables is impossible to follow through a design that fits all, particularly, when we stop considering the informative nature of function in architecture and its surrounding. The result is a design that becomes stale, and the key element to change it may not even be architecture at all.

The results of buildings lacking sensitivity and spatial awareness, ultimately exasperated by anti-human designs that recreate a constant need for renovations, increasing costs and leading to an open cycle of short-term design, waste, and disposable buildings. This lack of sensitivity oftentimes only focuses on moments of comfort instead of fostering experiences intended to persuade human comfort and behavior. These faulty building parameters deviate from the creation of successful architecture and deeply affect innovative design initiatives.

Architectural success cannot only follow optimization of resources, behavior, functionality, and aesthetics: FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION, but should also enhance the spatial experience, trailing a sensitivity that is biologically imprinted in every living-being, making something feel good or bad.

We are imperiling present and future generations to live, work and play in environments less connected to the underpinnings of our own nature and more biased to the machines and technologies we surround ourselves to mimic nature itself. More concisely, the modern idea of sustainability will forever fall short of its goals unless we begin to replace the false foundations and premises embedded in the zeitgeist of modern architectural design.

You may notice we escape from cities, our homes, workplaces, to places of natural environmental nourishment recharging our senses with that energy. So why can’t the built environment produce the same feeling with the same satisfaction? And here is where architectural design is failing. Space not only should be explored but should be sensed – it should be intuitive, gently guiding the users towards healthier and environmentally connected habits regardless of the circumstances where they are located.

Form follows function, but function follows energy. Architecture for the senses.

Energy patterns can be repurposed through movement, creating modes of configurations in nature resulting in scenarios of behavior, showing that buildings can give back. The same way that energy is manipulated by structures to transform it into electrical power, buildings can work with this stream to regenerate the built environment and give room for spatial experimentation. A boost additive that promotes diversity and dynamics, taking passive design into the active design. Buildings that actively interact with the stakeholders and generates familiarity for the senses creating nodes of behavior that factors into our daily mood and triggers mental wellbeing, and consequently activate environmental restoration.

Architecture is an instrument, leading the way to connected solutions in how we create our environment and interact with others. The invisible elements of energy manifested by wind, sun, water, wildlife, and vegetation, as the lead characters in architectural design, can reclaim the feeling of the natural environment, in complicity with interior climate behavior and in-full natural integration. When generating intuitive design, mental flexibility is provided, this will allow buildings to readapt and become flexible to the diverse social integration that urban developments are experiencing, working together in a symphony that transforms energy into spatial responsiveness. The manifestation and correlation between these two elements respond to a necessity that transforms conditions into opportunity, thus collaborating towards progressive sustainability.

As creators of our environment, we are fond of the idea of spatial interpretation and territoriality, but we tend to forget the inkling that founded architectural experience. Human behavior is intimately connected to the senses, they bring awareness that enhances connections through attributes and triggers memory.

The forces that activate our senses in architecture is the way design manifests energy. A holistic approach that opens furthermore the actions and strategies in design that use behavior – patterns – movement – sensations – connections, in order to learn the dynamics of architecture in relation to the natural environment from different perspectives and fields of study, analyzing the interventions and manipulation in the design of the common denominator in nature, energy, to improve the future of design health and challenge new ways of implementing architecture and dynamic systems. Letting the form of energy talk power lines in a built environment.

As climate change progresses and urban development grows, buildings and cities are being deprived of the experience that architecture should have in their natural context. Our coping mechanism is to reenact what our senses lack the most by imitating nature in artificial lighting, materials, plastic nature without a success in completion.

But what makes nature so unique? The correlation of energy forms. Everything is energy, and it’s constantly transforming into sensations and arrangements, helping create spaces that work for all and deliver opportunities to foster and co-create buildings and public spaces that project integration into solutions of efficiency, comfort, and climate prosperity englobing what makes up sensory architecture.

---

AUTHOR

ANNY MICHEL MARTINEZ VILLAR

Anny is an architect from the Dominican Republic, specialized in sustainability and energy efficient design, has a Master’s Degree in Renewable Energy, is a Bioclimatic Strategist, LEED Green Associate, and Climate Leader.

Anny is eager to help grow the reach of sustainable practices in Latin America. She has been involved in high profile renewable energy projects in the Dominican Republic. With over 10 years of experience in environmental design, her work has been highlighted by focusing on the concept of perception and human behaviour influenced by architecture, environmental rescue systems, and Green Building for the Caribbean Region. She is currently working on renewable energy forms in architecture to promote passive circular energy systems and regenerative active design; and stimulation sustainable living practices into an inclusive standard.