Multisensory Perception: Implications for Architecture and Interior Design

Architectsandinteriordesignersareincreasinglypayingattentiontothe role of multisensory perception in the design and appreciation of places and buildings. This trend represents a welcome and timely departure from traditional approaches focussing on vision (“oculocentrism”) to consider how auditory, somatosensory, and even olfactory components may constrain and enrich our experience of buildings. In these new approaches, however, theorists have mostly focussed on multimodal expe- rience rather than multisensory processing. This has led to the development of the ambiguous notion of “synaesthetic architecture” and to the neglect of multisensory mechanisms such as multisensory integration and natural cross-modal correspon- dences. Here I outline key concepts and terminology that provide the conceptual tools necessary to distinguish between perceptual modes vs. sensory mechanisms, multimodality vs. multisensory integration, and synaesthesia proper vs. cross-modal correspondences. I conclude by arguing that designing for integration and correspon- dences may represent an especially effective approach as these phenomena engage obligatory, automatic, and fast cognitive processes (i.e., “system 1” cognition) that are grounded in the biology of perception, attention, and memory as well as largely independent of cultural factors.