Wunderkammer: Explorations into Re-presenting the Multisensory Architectural Experience

Visiting architectural spaces has long been an architect’s best classroom and experiencing the atmosphere within these spaces their best teacher. Architecture seems as accessible as ever in 2021 due to the ability to view reproduced images and even tour buildings using technology such as VR. This accessibility, however, seems to favour, and in some cases, completely rely on using the visual sense to experience the architecture and spaces represented. With this reliance and importance placed on the visual sense, a “hegemony of the eye,” as Pallasmaa writes, is beginning to take hold within the architectural community. 

If one is only experiencing architecture through these visual reproductions, they are not able to understand and fully experience the multisensory atmosphere of the space. This problem is identified through the research undertaken within this thesis and seeks to find an alternative way in which these sensory spaces can be recorded, interpreted, and re-presented.

2020 saw the world, in effect, ‘lockdown’. Travel out of New Zealand, let alone out of our homes, became out of the question. It was due to these nationwide and worldwide lockdowns that travelling to and physically experiencing architecture has become infinitely more inaccessible, and a reliance on 2D architectural reproductions has become increasingly more prominent. This poses the questions of, ‘Is a 2D reproduced image enough?’ and if not, ‘What is the solution?’

Rooted within architectural education, this thesis is focused on providing accessibility to these multisensory architectural spaces without having to physically inhabit them. From this starting point, research into architectural theories and precedents has informed various methodologies of recording the physical and emotional sensory experience. Following this, these methodologies have been tested and refined into a ‘Guidebook’ for how to record the sensory experience, ultimately leading on to inform the re-presentation of the collected recordings. They are implemented through a hypothetical design brief for a travelling multisensory exhibition, taking influence from the historical precedent that is - Wunderkammer.