Of the Senses – Glen Santayana – Harvard GSD

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When you woke up this morning did you text somebody before you spoke with somebody?  Maybe chat with a friend on Facebook before saying good morning to your co-worker or even view your tweets for today’s news instead of listening to the new anchor?  The fact of the matter is with today’s technology we are plugged in and tuned out our surroundings.  As a culture our social networks have exploded, but physical interaction is shrinking.  It is this notion that Glen Santayana’s architectural dialogue for ‘Of the Senses’ brings forth.  The project is an investigation of behavior and operation at the sensorial level in our relationship to our built space.  Check it out after the jump!

SCHOOL: Harvard GSD
STUDENT: Glen Santayana
CRITICS: Mariana Ibanez + Simon Kim : www.ikstudio.com
YEAR: 2012

“In imagining the architecture of the future, I thought about the current trend that technology plays in our lives today, mainly referring to the heavy consumption of social media networks, status updates, and monitoring the latest trends. We are constantly plugged in; developing a relationship between ourselves, the viewing apparatus, and the virtual world. This perpetual fix to our device has generated a culture in which human qualities and interaction between one another have subsided and declined.

As a result, I am interested in human qualities and its role in the architecture of the future through methods of emotional and sensorial inquiries. The investigation began with the study of emotion not in its expression of happiness or sadness, but in its behavior and operation, and it is in the sensorial aspect that I am interested in how we perceive a space and how that space can change based on our sensory levels. The architecture of the future looks to challenge how our senses can begin to define, change, and create space, physically and cognitively. “

                                                                                    -Glen Santayana

F+ Original Submission by Glen Santayana

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