Our brains link information across senses to make meaning from our environments.

Sensory conflict and motion sickness may become a growing concern as building shapes increase in complexity.

Reducing sensory conflict in our built environments offers a non-pharmacological approach to motion sickness.

Car sick, boat sick, and yes, building sick.

I often experience motion sickness, feeling nauseous and dizzy, on winding mountain roads, rough waters, and in virtual reality. I also experience it in some buildings.

Wired for Sensory Collaboration

Our senses routinely collaborate to translate information from the environment, and in most cases, our senses tell us a coherent story. For example, sound-shape association has been well documented in the Bouba-Kiki effect, where people tend to associate the rounded sound of “Bouba” with its rounded blob shape, and the sharp sounds of “Kiki” with its jagged, spiky shape. The Bouba-Kiki effect is just one example of cross-modal interaction where information from different senses, such as hearing and vision, are linked in the brain. A recent study has shown that the phenomenon extends to baby chicks, suggesting that these cross-modal associations may help certain species interpret their environment from the earliest days of life.

For humans, environments that tap into our crossmodal abilities create links between inputs from different senses which help us make meaning from limited sensory information. For example, color can convey a sense of temperature, where blue represents a cold plunge pool, and red a warm bath.

Rich textures can elicit our sense of touch through........

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