Designing for Stillness: Architectural Methods for Urban Sensory Recovery – Alexandra Polyavoka
Alexandra Polyavoka
Contemporary cities are characterised by increasing sensory complexity. Noise, movement, climatic conditions, visual density, and continuous flows of information shape everyday spatial experience and influence how urban places are perceived and inhabited. While atmosphere has become an important subject within architectural discourse, there remains limited research on how architectural design can intentionally shape conditions that support sensory recovery within dense urban environments.
This research investigates the relationship between atmosphere, perception, and architectural design through the examination of urban places that foster sensory recovery. Rather than understanding stillness as the absence of activity or sound, the research considers it an architectural condition emerging through the interaction of light, materiality, sound, air, microclimate, and spatial organisation. It asks how these atmospheric qualities can be observed, analysed, and translated into architectural strategies that enable moments of perceptual restoration within everyday urban life.
The study adopts a practice-based methodology combining theoretical inquiry, atmospheric fieldwork, case study analysis, and design experimentation. Photography, sound recordings, video, drawing, and sensory mapping are used to investigate the environmental and perceptual qualities of selected urban places. These observations are complemented by full-scale architectural prototypes that function as research instruments for examining and reflecting on specific atmospheric conditions. In this way, architectural design is understood not only as the outcome of research but also as a method of inquiry and knowledge production.
Developed through comparative fieldwork and design experimentation across Southeast Asia and Europe, the research seeks to establish a transferable architectural methodology for observing, analysing, and designing restorative urban places. By integrating atmosphere theory, environmental observation, and design-based research, it contributes to current discussions on architecture, perception, and urban well-being while advancing methodological approaches to atmosphere within architectural research.
Designing for Stillness: Architectural Methods for Urban Sensory Recovery
Alexandra Polyavoka
Contemporary cities are characterised by increasing sensory complexity. Noise, movement, climatic conditions, visual density, and continuous flows of information shape everyday spatial experience and influence how urban places are perceived and inhabited. While atmosphere has become an important subject within architectural discourse, there remains limited research on how architectural design can intentionally shape conditions that support sensory recovery within dense urban environments.
This research investigates the relationship between atmosphere, perception, and architectural design through the examination of urban places that foster sensory recovery. Rather than understanding stillness as the absence of activity or sound, the research considers it an architectural condition emerging through the interaction of light, materiality, sound, air, microclimate, and spatial organisation. It asks how these atmospheric qualities can be observed, analysed, and translated into architectural strategies that enable moments of perceptual restoration within everyday urban life.
The study adopts a practice-based methodology combining theoretical inquiry, atmospheric fieldwork, case study analysis, and design experimentation. Photography, sound recordings, video, drawing, and sensory mapping are used to investigate the environmental and perceptual qualities of selected urban places. These observations are complemented by full-scale architectural prototypes that function as research instruments for examining and reflecting on specific atmospheric conditions. In this way, architectural design is understood not only as the outcome of research but also as a method of inquiry and knowledge production.
Developed through comparative fieldwork and design experimentation across Southeast Asia and Europe, the research seeks to establish a transferable architectural methodology for observing, analysing, and designing restorative urban places. By integrating atmosphere theory, environmental observation, and design-based research, it contributes to current discussions on architecture, perception, and urban well-being while advancing methodological approaches to atmosphere within architectural research.
