The Singapore Polytechnic’s department for Interior Design organizes various specialized sessions for their students to acquaint them with the tools and techniques that elevate their skills beyond the traditional curriculum. The students participated in Mindful Spatial Experiencing (MSE) to get away from their digital skin, i.e. computer and phone screens, and to get back in touch with their immediate physical environment that they are co-designing.
We conducted a two-hour MSE session for a group of seventy first-year students. We began with The Urban Yoga & Mindful Spatial Experiencing slideshow presentation, an introduction on the corporeal and sensorial experiencing of architecture. In the experiential part we started off with a concentration technique elevating breath, body, sensory and mind awareness.
We continued with MSE Spatial Sensing, an activity carried out in pairs. Experiencing our everyday environment blindfolded, relying on our sense of touch only, a whole new world reveals to us. Our memories are awakened, associations are brought up and all this this changes our perspective of the surrounding environment.
We wrapped up our session with MSE’s significant activity “Spatial Imitating”. It is carried out both in pairs and in groups and consists of two stages. Using the suggested part of the body students experience various spatial elements, playing with surprise and unpredictability, action and contemplation. Furthermore, they imitate spatial elements and spatial compositions documenting the process by taking photos.
Re-connecting with the environment through smell, touch, taste, and hearing systematically develops students’ heightened spatial awareness. Heightened spatial awareness in turn stimulates innovative and creative problem solving. It helps create a world that is not only made by humans but for humans.
Would you also like your students to experience Mindful Spatial Experiencing’s unique combination of tools and techniques thriving their embodied knowledge and developing their spatial sensibility, helping them with approaching their projects in an engaging and innovative way? Just get in touch with us – we would love to tailor an MSE session for you.