The Touch: Spaces Designed for the Senses brings together over 25 homes, hotels, museums, and retail environments to build a case for sensory design — exploring how light, materiality, colour, nature, and community can be deployed with deliberate intent.
About This Book
A new edition of the first collaboration between Kinfolk and Norm Architects, this volume moves beyond visual appeal to interrogate how interior design engages the full range of human perception. Each featured space — spanning contemporary work and canonical references — is examined through the lens of sensory experience: how a material registers to the touch, how natural light shifts behaviour, how community shapes atmosphere. Interviews with figures including John Pawson and David Thulstrup sit alongside philosophical and art history references drawn from the tradition of design and colour theory. An appendix profiles architects such as Lina Bo Bardi and Richard Neutra, grounding the contemporary work in a longer intellectual lineage. Essential reading for practitioners working at the intersection of architecture, interior design, and human experience.
Key Features
- 544 pages of large-format photography, interviews with design industry leaders, and philosophical and art history references
- Edited by Kinfolk and Norm Architects; interviews include John Pawson and David Thulstrup
- Appendix profiles featuring Lina Bo Bardi and Richard Neutra; heritage design pieces that influenced the sensory design movement
- Published by Die Gestalten Verlag
What You'll Discover
- How light, materiality, colour, and nature can be consciously deployed in interior design to deepen everyday sensory experience
- The philosophical and art-historical frameworks underpinning contemporary sensory design, from colour theory to phenomenological traditions
- How architects from Lina Bo Bardi to Richard Neutra laid the groundwork for the movement explored across the featured spaces
- The role of community and collective atmosphere as active design elements within domestic, hospitality, and cultural environments
About the Author
This volume is edited by Kinfolk, the Copenhagen- and Portland-based publication known for its considered approach to design, culture, and living, in collaboration with Norm Architects, the Copenhagen studio whose practice centres on sensory and humanist principles. Further contributor details are available upon request.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 544
- Dimensions: 24.5 × 30 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783967041842
- Publisher: Die Gestalten Verlag
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Interior designers, architects, and design enthusiasts with a serious interest in sensory experience, materiality, and the philosophical foundations of humanist design.