Form follows feeling: The acquisition of design expertise and the function of aesthesis in the design process

Abstract

We inhabit, make sense of, and experience the world, our buildings, and built environments with our bodies. The first way a user experiences a building is with his body, seeing a facade in the distance, touching the door knob, climbing the steps, stepping into the lobby, working in an office, looking out a window in a school, sewing cloths in a factory, trying to sleep in a prison cell, giving birth in a hospital, seeking solace in a church, temple or mosque. Each has an atmosphere, for better or for worse, that was intentionally (or unintentionally) made by a designer. The experiential quality of these environments are the result of decisions made during the design and building process. The cognitive ability we use we assess a built environment/atmosphere is aesthesis. Aesthesis functions not only as a mean to assess an external built atmosphere, but also functions to assess the quality of an internal imagined atmosphere. The designer makes use of aesthesis to determine if the quality of the internal approximation of his design proposal correlates with the experience he intended. The designer also makes use of aesthesis to assess the experiential quality of externalized approximations of his design proposal against that which he intended. This use of aesthesis as a means to assess the quality of a design proposal against the that which is intended is called aesthetic resonance. Aesthetic resonance functions throughout the design process as both a motivating factor that establishes the goal to be achieved, and as a heuristic that influences design decisions. Both the deliberate development of a refined sense of aesthesis through connoisseur sometimes referred to a sense of design -and the ability to enter feelingly into the design world to assess the experiential quality of the emerging design solution against that which is intended -aesthetic resonance -are necessary to acquire design expertise.