Future/sense: The sensory resonance of architectural media in urban (re)developments

Living in “the most sustainable urban district of the Netherlands” will be a sensory experience: for the (re)development project Bajeskwartier in Amsterdam, the senses form the core of the urban imaginary produced in the publicly available material. Part of the larger discourse of “sustainable cities,” contemporary architectural projects are frequently infused, merged, and saturated with the multi-sensory qualities of nature. In doing so, urban planning is increasingly paying attention to presenting, promising, and constructing very specific sensory experiences. How does tuning in to the sensory appeal of architecture in different states of becoming shape our shared imagination of more livable, more sustainable cities? “Sensing” the future, here, follows a recent line of sensory interventions in architectural theory and practice interested in “listening” to buildings and “touching” design in exploring architectural soundscapes, sensescapes, and smellscapes. The “becoming present” of sensory experiences and their resonance in/through architectural media is understood as a both conceptual and methodological challenge connected to existing approaches to mapping the senses and feeling the urban. In pointing to these challenges, I aim to highlight the senses as a productive lens to explore the entanglement between nature and architecture in the literal and figurative construction of “green” urban futures. Tracing sensory experiences—and particularly “sustainable” sensoriality—as part of (urban) image building through the conceptual framings of presence, absence, and resonance points to the processual understanding of architecture, as well as a larger understanding of the urban as a complex affective assemblage in a constant state of becoming.