Multisensory Landscape Design: A Designer?s Guide for Seeing

The interaction of our bodies in space is intrinsically linked to the ways in which we design. In spatial design we tend to focus on solely the visual, often treating it as the dominant sense while ignoring the other four senses: touch, sound, smell, taste. While research has been carried out on the perception of multisensorial experiences and design in the last two decades, there is no combined resource on how to address multisensory design in landscape architecture, architecture, urban and environmental design. This is a textbook for design students, professionals, and educators to develop multisensorial literacy. This book is the first of its kind, providing introductions on each of the five senses, along with exercises that demonstrate how to observe, record, and visualize them. It explores current design school pedagogy, and how we might imagine a more mindful way of teaching. The book is a foundational resource for students, professionals, and instructors to understand and ultimately create multisensorial spaces that are inclusive for all. This book imagines a world where seeing is redefined in a way that encompasses all of the senses―not just the visual.

Daniel Roehr, MBCSLA, CSLA, AKB. Author. Roehr is an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in Vancouver, Canada. He is a registered landscape architect in British Columbia and Berlin as well as a horticulturalist. Daniel has earned a Higher National Diploma (HND) in Horticulture and Landscape Technology from Askham Bryan College (York, England) and a BA (Hons) in Landscape Architecture from Heriot-Watt University / Edinburgh College of Art (Edinburgh, Scotland).

He is the founder and director of greenskinslab at UBC. For nearly three decades, his research has focused on international living roof design, construction, and low impact development (LID) as part of holistic stormwater management. This work is documented in his co-authored book Living Roofs in Integrated Urban Water Systems (Routledge 2015). Since 2013, he has been exploring how to make the concepts of LID accessible and acceptable to the public through animated hand drawn videos.

In recent years Daniel’s research has expanded into how to teach visual literacy and multisensorial literacy to students accustomed to using the computer. Roehr is also interested in the role of architectural hand drawing as a research tool to see the environment and to guide design iterations, and he shares his drawings on Instagram.

He has practiced extensively in Europe, North America, and Asia. From 1995 to 2000, he was project architect of the ground-breaking water sensitive living roof design of the Daimler-Chrysler Green Roof Project, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany. In 2013 he was a UBC Sustainability Research Fellow and was selected as a team member to compete in designing the Canadian National Holocaust Memorial in Ottawa. In 2016 he received the Killam Teaching Prize from UBC.