A Building’s Impact: How We Experience Architecture Through the Senses
When assessing a building’s impact, the key lies in the architectural experience—how a building is perceived through form, function, materials, light, sound, and its relationship with its surroundings.
By Dansk Arkitektur Center
Your overall experience of a building is essential when describing its impact. When conducting an architectural analysis and summarizing how you experience a building and the effect it has on you, you should include your observations about form, function, materials, sound, light, ornamentation, its relationship to the surroundings, and the spatial experience. This means you should move around the building, both outside and inside, so that you can gain a complete impression.
When analyzing a building’s impact, you should consider:
- Form
- Function
- Materials
- Light
- Sound
- Ornamentation
- Space
- Surroundings
In your analysis of a building’s impact and your architectural experience, you can also consider the following questions:
- How do you experience the building?
- Is the building, for example, dominant or recessive in relation to its surroundings?
- Open or enclosed?
- Balanced or unbalanced?
- Welcoming or imposing?
- Overwhelming or intimate?
- How is the building’s impact connected to its materials, forms, and placement?
- How might the building have been experienced at the time it was built?
- Why does it have this particular effect?
More from DAC Magazine
DAC Magazine
