Spiritual ambiance in interactive temple

Abstract

This paper introduces a new dimension of spiritual ambiance design using a real-world interactive temple design project. The research focus has shifted from users' basic demands for physical design artifacts to the spiritual demands through embodied interaction. Thus, this study aims at enhancing the spiritual reflection in temple design through ambient media in interactive space. The objective of designing spiritual ambiance in temple is to develop a medium for taking the believers into religious contemplation and enhancing understanding of spirit of Bodhisattva Guan Yin. This research develops the design process of interactive space design with spiritual ambiance. Through the three design levels of emotional design principles, the design conceptual model of spiritual ambiance triggers resonances through metaphor association. To verify the conceptual model, the design concept is implemented in the physical space via human-centered embodied interaction. The on-site project not only introduces advanced sensing technology embedded into the temple but also verifies the applicability of human-computer interaction to a new dimension of spiritual ambiance design. ©2010, Association for Research in Computer-Aided Architectural Research in Asia (CAADRIA).