Engaging the senses

For Rodolphe el-Khoury, architecture and new media go hand-in-hand

Talk to Rodolphe el-Khoury and you’ll soon realize that architecture isn’t just about the look of a building. It is about everything that has to do with a place and, ultimately, how that place is interwoven with your experience. And new media technology is a tool that can enhance that experience, often in remarkable ways.

Imagine this,he says:you are in the hospital,confined to bed. Your discomfort is heightened because you are not at home, you are in unfamiliar surroundings. These negative feelings will likely hamper your recovery.

Now imagine this: you look at the window, and instead of there being a window,there is a large LCD television. On the screen is a live feed from your living room at home.You see and hear your family.Or you could choose another live feed,from,say,a favourite beach. You choose the view—and your senses are emboldened and your stay in the hospital doesn’t seem so bad. Subconsciously,you start to get better,a little faster.

This is just one example of how new media technology can comfort us by way of our senses from the fertile imagination of el-Khoury,Canada Research Chair in Architecture and Urban Theory and Design and professor in UofT’s John H.Daniels Faculty of Architecture,Landscape and Design.

“The hospital scenario is an example of how new media can supplement or overlay the architecture with virtual reality which,in this case,collapses the distance between the patient and his or her home.In cases like health care,these enhancements become important because they have been demonstrated to actually help with recovery and rehabilitation.”

There are several other applications and possibilities for embedded digital media and technology in architecture.He points to a student in one of his courses who designed vertical blinds “controlled by video-trackers so they can constantly react to the person in the room. Wherever you are moving,they are constantly shifting.You have an unobstructed view of the scene outside the window,but the blinds are also keeping the sun out of the room.”

It is important to address all the senses,says el-Khoury.He notes that in late 18th-century Paris,citizens suddenly complained about the smell of the city.“For no evident reason,it became intolerable to them. But the point here is that it was their senses communicating differently .It was not the city but the way people smelled it—sensation itself—that changed. Architects and planners had to transform the city to appease the discontented nose.”

Could this happen again? He suggests that our threshold of tolerance for noise may be similarly lowered,to the point where the city would become intolerably loud and we would need to deal with noise pollution. While we continue to build condos in greater density and quantity,“can we also develop media technologies to dampen the noise we are creating and make cities more livable?”

Can digital noise dampeners and vertical blinds with sensors be new media? “Of course. They are technology addressing your senses. When I say new media,I don’t think of gadgets or gimmicks. I think of how we use information technology to enhance our experience with our surroundings.”