Can numbers describe how a space “feels”?
Well, perhaps not. Analyzing the experiential (or “phenomenal”) qualities of spaces and places has long remained a hard problem in design computation. Such qualities are often difficult to capture through quantities or predefined conceptual categories (such as beauty, safety etc.). They are also often dependent on the subject as much as they are on the space itself. Given these challenges, how can spatial experience and associated value judgements be approximated computationally?
My talk at the Autodesk Research Connections Speaker Series outlined my past and present research surrounding this question. It focused on possible ways of overcoming the challenge of measurement and discuss some of his recent tools for evaluating the complex experiential qualities of design scenarios.