As planners and designers try to create better and healthier spaces, emerges the need to understand how the built environment influences the production of the sensescapes in public urban space.
Urban environment aesthetics is a multi-sensory composition of visual, sound, smell and haptic characteristics. Like with an artwork (whether a painting, a piece of music, or even a sculpture), although most of us can experience it in different ways and at different times, its full understanding depends on how much we know about its context, the artist(s), and materials.
This presentation will illustrate some preliminary results from my research, aiming at the creation of a comprehensive and open framework of analysis of how sensescapes can be defined and analysed. Handling streets (or urban public space) as the ‘artwork’, and senses as ‘brush strokes’ of an urban canvas.
