knit bricks

i try to re-blog as little as possible, but i just came across this installation and it brightened my day. according to the original blog post on supernaturale, the author/artist is unknown. read the full story here.

room residency montreal

i have been invited to participate in "room," a residency in montreal this august, organized by lin snelling. participants include dancers/choreographers/performers katie ewald, kathy kennedy, michael reinhart, nadine sures and sarah wendt. the residency is set to take place in a building under renovation, and will be a time to study and stage physical responses to the built context. this image, taken of katie ewald during rehearsals for "room," reminds me of the jan von holleben series "lass dich fallen," that i mentioned in this blog earlier this year. i look forward to the outcome of the residency and the spontaneous working approach of the performers.

image: l.snelling, room rehearsals, 2008.

designer intelligence at icff

check out the news feature, design intelligence at icff, in artinfo, may 29th!

photo: © wolfgang von gliszczynski, 2008

found space tiles

the work that i did during my architecture + ceramics residency at the ekwc (european ceramic work centre) is now on my website, with photos and descriptions of the fabrication processes.

the found space tile prototypes have just been selected to be shown in the designboom mart at the ny icff in may.

photo: © wolfgang von gliszczynski, 2008

cushion house

this is a glimpse into a project done by one of my first-year architecture students, vanessa martin. the project required the students to design an ein-raum-moebel, or one-room-furniture piece, specifically tailored to their body and needs. vanessa, through a daring and intensive design process, pushed her idea to have a soft place to rest during any and all activities in her moebel-raum. in the end, her presentation model was made completely with fabric, intricately sewn, with incredible detail. vanessa's project was awarded a "best of" mention in the class - in addition to having undergone many transformations in an intensive design process, and having been well-executed and presented in the end (with a series of architectural drawings - plans, sections and elevations), what i found most refreshing about vanessa's project was its sheer bravery - using unconventional materials and formal strategies to try to convey strongly a spatial idea. and an irresistable cushion-model as a result!

image: s.davidson, ein-raum-moebel final model by vanessa martin, 2007.

lass dich fallen

i first came across this photo series by jan von holleben in the january 3rd issue of zeit magazin. at the time, i was in the middle of my ekwc residency, looking at the relationship between bodies and architectural surfaces - floors and walls. these photos tease your perception of gravity and play with the positioning of bodies, floors and walls. the series is called ars melancholiae, and is worth a look.

image: www.janvonholleben.com

tactile wonderland

this past weekend, i had the chance to check-out berlin's premium fashion trade fair. as an architect, i've never had a particular in to an event like a fashion trade fair, the chance to experience this particular kind of hyped-up clothing-context. coincidentally, at the end of the day, i came across a review of the book by mark wigley, white walls, designer dresses - the fashioning of modern architecture - and the connection was too perfect not to quickly record in a blog post:
in a daring revisionist history of modern architecture, mark wigley opens up a new understanding of the historical avant-garde. he explores the most obvious, but least discussed, feature of modern architecture: white walls. although the white wall exemplifies the stripping away of the decorative masquerade costumes worn by nineteenth-century buildings, wigley argues that modern buildings are not naked. The white wall is itself a form of clothing -- the newly athletic body of the building, like that of its occupants, wears a new kind of garment and these garments are meant to match. not only did almost all modern architects literally design dresses, wigley points out, their arguments for a modern architecture were taken from the logic of clothing reform. architecture was understood as a form of dress design.
i took the deeply tactile indulgence of the day as a lesson, a kind of workshop - it gave me an even stronger conviction in my hunch, my belief, that architecture can and should give more, in terms of physical, sensory experience. why can't architecture stimulate, tickle, tease, like the endless folds, feathers and pleats of the fashion trade show's tactile wonderland?

image: s.davidson, premium fashion trade show, berlin, 2008.

footprint souvenirs

working for 3 months in the ekwc workshop was like being in a treasure chest. not only were the artists, architects and designers there in a non-stop process of making, the building itself was full of inconspicuously installed objects - little tokens made at the centre and planted there for good. every week, i would find new things - dangling from the trusses, sitting precariously on the beams, nailed or double-taped to the walls, or most commonly, just sitting in a not-often noticed corner or niche. it took me a couple of months to see the object pictured here. at first glance, it seemed like an unassuming clump of fired, unglazed clay. but when i picked it up, the textures pressed in on the sides immediately struck me as familiar - they are shoe-sole textures pressed in a handful of clay. i love the simple strategy used with this object - texture transposition. something familiar, taken-for-granted, becomes fascinating in a new context, giving a new physical experience.

image: s.davidson, shoe-sole textured ceramic object (author unknown), 2008.

touchy-feely @ ekwc

doors will open to the public for my end presentation at the ekwc. documentation of my research and fabrication processes, as well as the final ceramic tile prototypes, will be on display.
my ekwc residency has resulted in a series of ceramic tile prototypes - tiles to be touched. much like found objects, my work has used the found spaces between bodies and architectural surfaces, and made them into positive form. the design process is incidental; the forms happen, they aren't sculpted or orchestrated. the resulting tiles are a formal hybrid between two very necessary and basic architectural elements, the body and the wall. part body and part wall, they echo the presence of a person, a posture, and literally reach-out to touch and be touched.
when: tuesday, january 29th, from 5-7pm
where: european ceramic work centre, zuid-willemsvaart 215, 2511 's-hertogenbosch, the netherlands.
the work will be posted on my website in february.

image: s.davidson, detail from tile prototypes, 2008.

shell palace

when i was in greece earlier this month, i was struck again by the incredible number of little shrines on the sides of the roads. i was told that these shrines, each very unique and hand-crafted-looking, marked sites of car accident mortalities. reading about them a little, i found that these special markers or kandylakia, as they're called in greek, can also signify sites of accidents where a life or lives were spared. the scaled-down churches, in these cases, become tributes to saints.
on the road which lead to our holiday spot, in lefkanti, was a kandylakia well-known in the area. it was constructed by a woman whose husband had been hit by a car on the site, and killed. what made this kandylakia remarkable, was how it had extended, from a very pin-pointed site marking sorrow and loss, to a complete constructed landscape. all surfaces were painted with abstract forms, concrete and plaster had been etched with relief patterns and decorated densely with sea shells. walking on the curb of the road (no sidewalk), even though the main body of the house was not immediately visible, settled down on a lower level, i had a distinct sense of walking through a special zone, difficult to put into words. mary papoutsy has described the meaning harboured by the kandylakia: "...the kandylaki represents the world of the greeks in miniature: their religious outlook, their attitudes toward relatives and ancestors, their understanding of the unpredictability of fate, and their knowledge of the danger and occasional inhospitality of their surroundings. for the greeks, remembrance is a cornerstone of society, remembrance of family, history, religion and culture. but above all, the kandylaki reminds every greek traveler of the need to appreciate life, for just as it marks a life lost, so, too, does it mark a life saved".

image: s.davidson, detail from lefkanti kandylakia, 2007.

janfamily

i like this work so much, i get tonguetied. i've wanted to blog about it for some time, but i just couldn't put my strong response into words. janfamily is a london-based artist collective. their work is published in a relatively new book called janfamily - plans for other days. the statement in their book describes their work and orientation simply and eloquently:
how to read this book / this book suggests, it doesn't dictate. it is a list of proposals on how to relate to our surroundings. a manual of moments. it is a life we are living. being at home, going out, feeling on our own and being together. we look at the simple things that don't get much attention and seek alternatives to routines. we alter and take over what we can touch and feel. from there on we move out as far as certainty will take us. with everyday interventions and intuition we try to reclaim our lives. we try to come closer, closer to our own lives and to others. from janfamily - plans for other days
basically, my fantasy is that architects would work like janfamily. i try to imagine the built environment that would be created if processes of architectural design and building involved more responsiveness and physical interaction. it sets my imagination on fire with possibilities. their work is full of a sense of intense curiosity about the built environment, and looks for new ways to respond to it, using what is readily available - their bodies, clothing, household appliances, furniture. it's worth checking out, and the portfolio of nina jan beier and marie jan lund is downloadable on their website.

image: nina jan beier and marie jan lund, 'look in the window until someone looks back at you', lambda print, 50x50cm, 2006

touchy-feely @ ekwc

i am thrilled to be starting a residency at the ekwc (european ceramic work centre) on monday. the "combined residency" program is one developed for architects to work with artists toward new applications for ceramics in architecture. i will be working with dancers from canada and belgium, pursuing my interest in the relationship between bodies and built surfaces. the ekwc also has a blog where you can check-in regularly to see photos of the projects in process.

image: plaster moulds, taken from onno-poiesz.nl

material samples

the upside of working as an architect: endless material samples.
the downside: not having any time to blog.

image: parqwall sample from the abet group

lin snelling

i was fortunate to be able to work with lin snelling during full time at the belgo, a project that she initiated in montreal in the fall of 2005. what interests me in snelling's performances are the back-and-forth, give-and-take dialogues that she develops with her sites, the spaces within which she dances. her work could be seen as studies, reading spaces and making spontaneous translation into movement. here, lin describes her recent piece, repeating distance, which involved bringing to life, bringing into movement, past times, energies, that have accumulated in a dance hall on an island off of canada's west coast:
it was a fabulous experience dancing in a 1930's dance pavillion on newcastle island. the island itself is a provincial park owned by a native band and rented to the government as a park. only one person lives on the island, but there are campsites with lots of campers...there are lots of deer...and lots of spirits of past cpr picnics and benny goodman concerts.
i found the dress in a consignment shop and choose it because it matched the
photo collage wallpaper at the end of the room that is actually a photo from a
cpr picnic. it was soft and furry and warm...which was helpful because of the
cool climate and the way wood absorbs temperature. guy and I also felt the need
to wrap our chair in blankets!
the conversational nature of snellings work allows her to be in a constant back-and-forth with her environment - the spaces in which she dances/performs/studies, in the belgo project and in repeating distance, are not conventional, specially designed performance spaces. rather, they are characters, spurring on, and contributing to the pieces - they are integral. her work, to me, expresses a shift in the perception of the built environment, one in which she is conscious of how the built environment affects the body, its movements, senses - and allows this affectation to develop into a fuller experience, set of movements, performance.
repeating distance, lin snelling & guy cools, may 2007, newcastle island pavilion, nanaimo bc canada.
image: michael reinhart, photograph from repeating distance, 2007.





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boxes and bodies

i recently went to a small exhibition of installations and photographs by artist thorsten brinkman at kunstagenten here in berlin. what intrigued me about what little i'd seen of brinkman's work, was how it seemed to be time after time, an earnest attempt to reconcile the/his body with the built surroundings. many of his photographs of installations are actually just incredibly elaborate and proportionally striking re-arrangements. like re-arranging the furniture in your living room and suddenly seeing the space differently, brinkman's work reveals and points to how much can be expressed through juxtapositioning. not all of his work involves his body, but the pieces that do often show him partly concealed, trying, it seems, to blend or merge with domestic interiors, through building furniture around himself. work that doesn't involve his body as a scaffold takes found objects, a couch for example, and asks it to become a wall. this particular photograph of brinkman in berlin reminded me of the japanese novel the box man, by kobo abe, a story in which,
a man decides to give up the self that he has been all his life to attain a state of blissful anonymity. he leaves his world behind and moves onto the streets of tokyo. he puts a large box over his head, cuts a hole for his eyes.
in both cases, what i'm interested in is how, in the merging of body with object, the person has to ask the object to do more that what it usually does - perform in new ways, take on a new character. both cases point to how objects, perceived as inert and taken for granted, can offer us more.

handicraft mountain

dropped unwittingly somewhere in the italian alps is a giant knitted pink bunny. the bunny has been there since september 2005, and is scheduled to remain for the next twenty years. over 200 feet in length, and twenty feet in height, the bunny is a completely surreal outgrowth, a bizarre merging of intimate-domestic-handicraft language and the monumental topography of the mountainscape. viewers are encouraged to climb all over it. according to gelatin, the austrian artist collective responsible for this alice-in-wonderlandesque subversion of scales and senses, the rabbit is a labour of love 5-years in the making:
the things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent; and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy. the toilet-paper-pink creature lies on its back: a rabbit-mountain like gulliver in lilliput. happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbitÌs body, a country dropped from the sky; ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and intestines. happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel. happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside. such is the happiness which made this rabbit. i love the rabbit the rabbit loves me.
what really struck me about the project was reading gelatin's statement, and being utterly convinced at the joy that was experienced in the making of the rabbit, and the giving over of it to the world - to laugh at, to love, to trek over, to nap on, to play with, and to watch decay. there is a kind of perverse, bodily beauty in making a toy into a mountain, conjuring grandmothers' knitting baskets and security blankets. and it is stuffed with straw, so at least biodegradable in-part. the photo documentation of this installation/process art is worth watching.

sensitive seating

i came across this design by clerc bertrand, olivier gregoire and matthieu plantrou (france) when looking at the shortlisted entries to the designboom skin of corian competition, sponsored by dupont. the designers described their furniture entry, called the leonardo table:
is it a still life?
this object fossilizes a moment of intimacy in a couple. like a photo, leonardo freezes a moment of life that testifies of a story, a scene animated by souls the time of a meal, a keeper of the instant. one can still perceive the movements and the feelings in the immobility of this furniture. and so the form does not serve the function anymore, it serves the feelings. the emotional prevails on the functional.
what i find remarkable about this design is how, with minimal adjustment, common, inanimate objects take on a very animate character. rather than heavily manipulating form/shape to echo or provoke human behaviour, the leonardo table demonstrates a kind of anthropopathic approach to the objects, where human emotions are attributed to non-human things. the result is a simple, romantic moment between two chairs.

noriko yasuda

i clipped this photo and text about these ashi sandals from noriko yasuda's website:
ashi-sandals, activate your sole(s).
ashi means feet in japanese. there are acupuncture points on your soles. these points stimulate different parts of your body by applied pressure. in Japanese 'ashi' means feet and it also means 'reed.' as pascal said human beings are thinking reeds, we cannot neglect our feet. materials: ceramic pebbles, rubber,and plastic. dimensions: (l)27 x (w)11cm.
two things really struck me about this project/design experiment - first, the idea of 'activating' the body, turning the senses 'on,' through a design object that comes in contact with the body; and second, how pebbles, material found on the ground, the very things that shoes usually cushion us against feeling, are literally meshed into the soles of the sandals. i like the simple strategies that yasuda uses to try to bring us, or make us feel, closer to our physical environment and our own physicality.

visual proxemics

if you have a chance, rent the dvd of miranda july's me you and everyone we know. one of the special features is her short film, haysha royko, a simple, evokative and hilarious look at the invisible, non-verbal interaction between two strangers sitting in an anonymous waiting room. what july does in haysha royko, is make the invisible visible, in the form of animated bubbles that constantly shift around the two characters' bodies. the animation is full of humour because it's something familiar - dynamics that we've all experienced. the film illustrates visually what edward t. hall has termed proxemics:
proxemics or personal space is the region surrounding each person, or that area which a person considers his domain or territory. often if entered by another being without this being desired, it makes them feel uncomfortable. the amount of space a being (person, plant, animal) needs falls into two categories, immediate individual physical space (determined by imagined boundaries), and the space an individual considers theirs to live in (often called habitat). these are dependent on many things, such as growth needs, habits, courtships, etc. what distance is appropriate for a particular social situation depends on culture. it is also a matter of personal preference. people may feel uncomfortable if the distance is too large (cold) or too small (intrusive). it may be due to the limited available space, different cultural standards, physical intimacy, interpersonal relationships, or some form of rudeness. permission is often expected if the intrusion is unexpected. many customs are centered around just this particular issue.
what interested me about july's short film, from an architectural standpoint, is that she translated proxemics into a graphic. expressed graphically, the idea of proxemics comes across as more explicitly spatial. but are the people the only ones who emit proxemic-bubbles? are objects and architectural surfaces mute and neutral, or do they have proxemics too?

rural touchy-feely

having grown up on a farm in rural southern ontario canada, people often ask me how i developed my specific interests in architecture - interaction between the human body and built, mostly urban, environments.
i visited the farm last week. it is large and living. the fences, barn, sheds, and house, are planted in a landscape that is constantly shifting and changing with seasons. as a result, the built parts of the farm need constant up-keep. what i realized about the farm is that it anchors my interests in these elemental concerns about body+building. through their need for constant repair, the buildings on the farm demand very consistent, pragmatic physical interaction. not only that, the materiality of the buildings are directly tied to the surrounding landscape; the barn foundation is made with stones collected in the field, the fence is made with posts harvested from the forest. the built elements in the farm are tied, in the processes of making, to the human body and to the wider natural, material environment. as a result, there is a kind of body-understanding formed toward the buildings on the farm.
this kind of body-understanding is the common link between my rural background and experiences and the orientation in my research and design work now.





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girli concrete

this is an exciting collaboration. girli concrete is a team of an architect and a textile designer, working on r+d in concrete:
girli concrete is a research and development project that aims to create innovative 'soft' interior product. it challenges the perception of textiles as the 'dressing' to structure and instead integrates textile technologies into the production of building products. girli concrete is a collaboration between trish belford and ruth morrow. girli concrete sets itself the unique conceptual challenge of mainstreaming tactility in the built environment.
their blogspot has a link to a terrific podcast in which belford and morrow are interviewed about their research aims and processes.

embedded bedding

i recently came across a book of photographs by dayanita singh called privacy. what caught my interest in the book was the shift that singh made, from taking portraits of people, to taking portraits of rooms. singh describes this shift in the preface:
one day, when mrs braganza, one of the goa residents i was photographing, left the room to answer the phone, i suddenly realized that the room was not empty. i could sense the many generations who had used this chair, and i realized that i could make a protrait without a person in it. i started to make photographs of spaces without human beings, yet peopled by the unseen generations who had lived there before. very soon i was consumed by this seeming emptiness: beds ot those who had passed away but that were still made every day, beds turned into shrines, with photos and sandals on them, and, of course, the beds of the living, but without their physical presence. chairs, too, in particular those that had been in the same place for decades, but whose sitters had moved onto other worlds in the meantime, but their presence was embedded in the chairs, or so it seemed to me.
can material - objects or architectural surfaces - retain the "presence" of the user or inhabitant? can materials be imbued with memory, without being physically deformed? both the text and the photographs in singh's book are highly suggestive, inquisitive, and unsentimental, and relate, i think, to my curiosities about how to animate architecture.
image: dayanita singh, temple built for anandamayee ma, morvi, silver-gelatine print,25 x 25 cm, limited edition 7, 2002.

urban cushions

urban cushions is now on my website.
this project involved material experiments, tests and prototype fabrication, toward
the design of a new line of urban furniture, urban cushions. it is the result of a
collaboration between artists and industry, supported by disonancias art for innovation.
the objective of the collaboration was to innovate new methodologies, in this case, with the fabrication of furniture objects in mind, rooted in the materials and technologies available in the existing industrial facilities.
with the industrial manufacturer, alfa, in eibar spain, processes and materials were investigated to find ways of integrating impressions made by human bodies into public furniture. material tests and documentation of experimental processes were exhibited in march 2007 at the centre for contemporary art, tabacalara, donostia-san sebastian spain. the exhibition coincided with a symposium on art and innovation.





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touch vs tough

caruso st john is a london-based architecture office well known for their subtle, materially sensitive work. their 2002 book, knitting weaving wrapping pressing, suggests strongly the importance of tactile-interaction in their working process. on their website, articles such as the feeling of things: towards an architecture of emotions (st john), enriched encounters with the everyday (caruso), and the emotional city (caruso) are available to read.
i recently came across a review of a lecture given by adam caruso, in which he is cited as saying,"i’m not into touchy feely architecture, i’m into tough architecture". i wonder what touchy feely architecture is? if it is not in the work of caruso st john, in their emphasis on materiality and tactility, then what and where is it?

michaela zimmer

here is one to watch. berlin artist michaela zimmer knows how to touch a nerve. working in a variety of media, it was her series of photographs documenting her performances that caught my attention. on her website, a text by michael simpson, curator of fine art at the walker art gallery in liverpool, describes zimmer's use of her body and performance in forging relationships with objects:
zimmer's outfits are objects in their own right; increasingly she is also using other objects in her work - a chair, a wheelbarrow, a table. she interacts with them, performs alongside them: the objects and myself become actors. we play roles without scripts. it's an experiment, an indefinite play. her body and the objects are becoming one, creating sculptures that are half-human, half-not. they touch and intertwine, become intimate almost - and yet the viewer is deprived of that intimacy. the viewer cannot touch the sculpture because by the time they see it, it no longer exists. or rather it exists only as a photographic record of the moment. the physical and emotional contact that zimmer made with that object will always remain a private one. we enjoy it as a voyeur would enjoy watching a clandestine kiss.
i see in michaela zimmer's work a suggestion that there is potential in the design of objects, or the built environment, to be responsive, to really be a kind of "live" participant in these intimage exchanges, and to give something back. i think her work can be seen as a kind of challenge to designers and architects, to design with bodies, and with the responses of bodies in mind.
image: michaela zimmer, cuddling II, silver-gelatine print, limited edition 10, 1999.

emotional material

designboom recently posted a great little article, still life with chair - installations and manipulations of the undemanding object. what interests me in this article is the discussion about material transformations and emotional associations with familiar objects. according to the article, which refers to well-known works of, among others, rauschenberg, beuys, and duchamp, the effectiveness of these transformed objects depends to some extent on our recognizing the originals within the transformation - knowing that they are, or were, authentic chairs (... for example) is often necessary to a just appreciation of their new effectiveness. the resulting visual metaphor is sufficiently powerful - even the most ubiquious artifact may be transformed into an object of emotional rather than practical utility (a work of art). this image shows loris cecchini's soft office with office chair, 2001.

seasonal senses

our physiological functions respond to seasonal change. human daily circadian rhythms are very similar to other animal natural seasonal cycles (hibernation, migration and estrous cycles) which require the adaptation to changing environmental cues in order to function properly. according to julia johnson, at the root of many of our seasonal and environmental responses is the presence/absence of sunlight, which has a direct impact on the amount of melatonin released into the blood by the body.
colour is emerging everywhere now in berlin, both in the natural and in the built environment. the sidewalks are full of cafe terraces with people, like phototropic plants, faces turned toward the sun.
light (in all its forms) is not only a resource and a vital sustenance, but can also create meaningful architectural experiences. the mood and quality of an architectural space can vary greatly depending on its lighting and colour conditions, transforming a sometimes dark, sober and oppressive place into a captivating, enthralling and stimulating one. in addition, scientific research has recently proven that a close relationship exists between lighting conditions, health, well-being, and our perception of the environment. daylight, for example, represents one of the most important means of maintaining our biological rhythm and connection to rhythms of nature, and is a key way of marking important daily events (dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening).
it seems curious to me that this sudden profusion of colour happens at a time when, in terms of biological rhythms, we are just regaining secure ground. why don't we pull out the multi-coloured vintage decor in the winter?





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memory of the body

it is a basic impulse for the human body, for people, to make a mark, an impression, in the physical world. in the built environment, marks are visible that people have made to mark their place, to say, i have been here, i am here, i exist, i am part of this place. these impressions constitute a physical language in the built environment, a three-dimensional, highly-personalized and body-specific grafitti. we can read the marks of others as a language, narratives enriching the textural and physical experiences of places.

i took this photograph of an impression made in a concrete sidewalk on lottumstrasse berlin, but it is not place-specific. the same photograph could have come from the barnyard of my parents' home in ontario canada. it is not a specifically urban impulse.

concrete is one material, often used in casting, that transforms from liquid to solid. this time-specific material transformation is readable in the impression left by a person, which expresses a momentary desire or impulse to mark a spot. these marks are the most basic example of how the body can be embedded into the built environment.





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tactile architectures

when i saw the cotton wall by pedestrian studio, i immediately thought of a puppy that i had seen in a pet store window in greece. it occurred to me that the pet store was using a simple architectural strategy to actually build the puppies into the store facade. a matrix of glass boxes containing different animals - puppies, kittens, hamsters and guinea pigs - result in a facade which is animated, alive, with the presence of the pets. the cotton wall evokes a set of similar sensory responses. the healing or therapeutic value of physical interaction with animals or pets has been accepted into mainstream belief and practice:
"in the past 15 years, scientists the world over have established beyond doubt the therapeutic value of animal companions. in cambridge, england, researchers discovered that, within a month of taking a cat or dog into their home, new owners reported a "highly significant" reduction in minor ailments.
the baker medical research institute in melbourne, australia, showed that the health benefits were more far-reaching still. a study of some 6000 patients revealed that those with pets had lower blood pressure, a lower cholesterol level and, as a result, a diminished risk of heart attack. and american researchers have established that, even after a heart attack, pet owners are more likely than other coronary patients to be alive a year later.
the reasons are simple, experts say. pets help us reduce our state of arousal, which reduces blood pressure. we are fulfilling our most primitive and basic need - the need to touch".
which leads me to the question - if an architecture can evoke sensory responses similar to those evoked by animals/pets, could architecture go one step further and actually offer therapeutic/physical benefits through deliberate sensory/interactive design?

touchy-feely-beauty

i came across an article by anandi pandit talking about the necessity and pleasures of physical touch. what's interesting to me about this article is that it describes touch between strangers - in the context of beauty parlours. anandi states that, "for most, the beauty salon fulfils an unconscious, unarticulated need. not only are facials, massages and other body treatments relaxing and contribute to good grooming, etc, a lot of women find it deeply comforting to be touched in a 'non-demanding' way and have someone else pamper them for a change".