Integrating Sensory Experience in Parametric Architecture through a Phenomenal Lens

‘Parametricism’ has come to play a major role in contemporary architectural design and is now considered the dominant style for avant-garde practice. This thesis argues that despite parametricism’s unique capacity to articulate programmatic complexity, visual and intellectualized imperatives at the loss of experiential imperatives have limited parametricism as a medium through which architecture is produced, promoted, and evaluated. Architect Juhani Pallasmaa believes that this leads to the deprivation of vital human existential questions that enable us to relate to our built environment and that provide meaning to that environment. This thesis explores how parametric architecture can further develop by addressing the deficiencies that Pallasmaa has described, to further incorporate a sense of temporality, experiential depth and personal belonging. Based on these critical examinations, the second half of the thesis includes design experiments which test the integration of sensory experiences within parametric design. Archives New Zealand has been selected as the vehicle for this design exploration because throughout history, archives have symbolically represented important spaces in cities to express the re-connection of our history and culture. Today, however archives are often perceived as little more than secular storage for objects and documents. The thesis tests how the interior design of a nation’s archives can be conceived through parametricism, while also incorporating symbolic and phenomenological imperatives. This thesis concludes with five interior design experiments that are each derived from this experimental design process. The five interiors illustrate the mediation between parametric and phenomenal imperatives. These experiments conclude that through critical application of sensory imperatives, we may reconnect our human existence within the parametric world

ヒトの高周波振動知覚の類似特性に基づく触覚変調

Tohoku University昆陽雅司課

Diagnostic Palpation in Osteopathic Medicine: A Putative Neurocognitive Model of Expertise

This thesis examines the extent to which the development of expertise in diagnostic palpation in osteopathic medicine is associated with changes in cognitive processing. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 review, respectively, the literature on the role of analytical and non-analytical processing in osteopathic and medical clinical decision making; and the relevant research on the use of vision and haptics and the development of expertise within the context of an osteopathic clinical examination. The two studies reported in Chapter 4 examined the mental representation of knowledge and the role of analogical reasoning in osteopathic clinical decision making. The results reported there demonstrate that the development of expertise in osteopathic medicine is associated with the processes of knowledge encapsulation and script formation. The four studies reported in Chapters 5 and 6 investigate the way in which expert osteopaths use their visual and haptic systems in the diagnosis of somatic dysfunction. The results suggest that ongoing clinical practice enables osteopaths to combine visual and haptic sensory signals in a more efficient manner. Such visuo-haptic sensory integration is likely to be facilitated by top-down processing associated with visual, tactile, and kinaesthetic mental imagery. Taken together, the results of the six studies reported in this thesis indicate that the development of expertise in diagnostic palpation in osteopathic medicine is associated with changes in cognitive processing. Whereas the experts’ diagnostic judgments are heavily influenced by top-down, non-analytical processing; students rely, primarily, on bottom-up sensory processing from vision and haptics. Ongoing training and clinical practice are likely to lead to changes in the clinician’s neurocognitive architecture. This thesis proposes an original model of expertise in diagnostic palpation which has implications for osteopathic education. Students and clinicians should be encouraged to appraise the reliability of different sensory cues in the context of clinical examination, combine sensory data from different channels, and consider using both analytical and nonanalytical reasoning in their decision making. Importantly, they should develop their skills of criticality and their ability to reflect on, and analyse their practice experiences in and on action