Translator: Theresa Ranft Reviewer: Leonardo Silva
When people ask me what it is that I do,
I say I'm a design professor here at Ohio State.
But what kind of design do you teach?
Interior Design.
But didn't you go to school for architecture?
Yep, I did that too.
But if I could define who I am rather than what I do,
I would say that I'm a storyteller and a design thinker
who strives to create meaningful experiences for people.
So, where did that all begin?
Well, if you ask my parents,
it started in first grade when they went to a parent-teacher conference
and sat down to a little stack of three-by-three squares,
and they asked my teacher,
"Did Rebekah create a memory game?"
And she said, "No, she invented textile patterns."
So from first through fourth grade I wanted to be a fashion designer,
and as hopefully many of you can relate, I was undecided from fourth through sixth.
But a science fair project set me on my course towards architecture
and I haven't looked back since.
When I started to look for colleges, I met a professor
who said that architecture is the sculpture in the landscape
that brings you to the front door.
And of course, it's much more than that,
but he went on to say that interior design holds the hand of the person
and walks them through the unraveling journey of the interior environment.
I was sold; that was the story that I wanted to live,
because every one of us walks through space every day, it's what surrounds us,
from our classrooms to a quick run to the shop, our libraries and even our own home.
But what makes a space a memorable place?
And isn't that something we all strive for,
to create meaningful memories?
When my students come to me as sophomores,
I tell them you come in seeing the world like a civilian,
but when you leave
you're going to experience the world through the lens of a designer.
And that's my goal for this presentation,
to hopefully inspire all of you to start experiencing the world around you,
to start to reconstruct your own reality through that same lens,
and to build that reality through sensory memory.
But what is sensory memory?
We have three types of memory: long-term, short-term, and sensory.
And as many of you can imagine
our sensory memory is made up of our five senses.
But what's surprising is that our sense of sight
only has a hundred milliseconds of recall,
whereas sound has three to four seconds.
So together our senses forge an emotional response to the moment that we're in,
and those create a sensory memory
which contribute to the creation of our lasting memory.
But as a culture, we become ocularcentric.
We walk around immersed in our digital devices
and seeing the world through the lens of our phone, or maybe a different device.
But what does that do?
Does that allow us to only see, and forsake our other senses?
What will that future be?
Many of us have a soundtrack to our lives. I know I do.
I can viscerally recall the first time I heard "Thriller" when I was six.
Now that might date me a little bit, but hopefully you get the idea.
Certain songs trigger certain memories,
and as soon as I hear it I'm immediately transported to that place.
But we also have a subconscious awareness to our environment.
Different sounds in our space conjure up a memory as well,
we're just not keyed into it.
So I'm going to make us hyper-aware.
Let's take a moment and pause, and listen rather than see.
(Different sounds of footsteps)
So we just heard different shoes walking across different floor surfaces.
From a high heel on a marble, to wood, to carpet,
and then a thudding of a boot on concrete.
What does that tell us about our space?
Just simply by hearing the sound of high heels on marble,
we understand the space that we're in.
This space has a certain presence to it, even film captures it.
When I say the "clacker", understand that I'm referring to the "fashionistas"
walking across the marble lobby on their way to a high-power magazine job.
There's an essence to that space: high-class sophistication.
There's a personality.
What personality does this material have?
And this?
What are its characteristics?
When we see this material in its environment,
we're communicated to a story,
we're told a story about what that space is, its mission.
So when we see that material, we understand that it's reclaimed,
it's environmentally and socially responsible.
That's the same personality of the people that come to the Toms Roasting store.
When we see this textual material
in its smooth but undulating form, and its vibrant colors,
we're immediately taken to a fall day,
and maybe we even hear the crackling of that leaf underfoot.
So I'm going to take you on a journey
through some of my most sensorial memories.
I spent a summer living in Japan.
Each morning we'd wake up to the hot, humid, muggy day.
It was like swimming through the air, and we'd sit on the front porch,
or in this case, in a Zen temple that's referred to as the "engawa",
and we would watercolor.
And I would look out at the tranquility of the garden in front of me.
But one day I realized that the engawa that I was sitting on,
these ancient wood floor boards,
were actually connected to Osho doing zazen behind me.
So each morning I would hear his prayer,
but this morning in particular I felt his prayer.
It radiated through the floor boards,
so there was this layering of symphonic crescendo
that was being built, by not only the temple I was in,
but the temple surrounding me.
And as that symphony built around me, it transported me to a different place.
It was transcending.
I'll never forget that moment, even though it's been ten years.
A memorable place doesn't have to be a sacred space.
It can be the sushi restaurant I walked into in London last year,
and immediately its vibrancy that pops of color, its energy,
transported me back to Tokyo, in the Harajuku district,
and a sushi restaurant I had there.
People were engaged in the atmosphere,
there was pop culture music playing in the background,
and the sushi was incredible, the fresh salmon and mango - delicious!
It's memorable, it had a story to tell me,
and it connected me to the purpose of the restaurant.
But what makes something unmemorable?
It doesn't have a purpose, it doesn't tell us a story.
I walk into the Union to eat sushi
and there's no connection from me as a person to the place that I'm in,
and the purpose that I'm there for.
It doesn't tell me anything, it's not authentic.
So let's take another moment and listen.
What memories do these sounds conjure for you?
(Sound of thunder and rain)
(Sound of rain on a roof)
(Sound of voices and splashing)
Each of us has our own memory that it evokes.
For me, the thunder rolling in puts me on my parents' front porch
on a summer day, here in Ohio.
That's not the same experience I had with rain in Oregon.
The tinkling sound of rain on the tin roof
makes me think of sitting on the back porch of my grandpa's house.
The splashing of puddles and the playful laughter
makes me think of being a child playing in my own backyard
with my little raincoat and boots.
Those are the tools as a designer we use to create meaningful and memorable spaces.
Like the Hunter's store in London, the design of the space left room
for each person to bring their own memories to the environment.
They used digitally projected rain cloud screens up above,
so that we understood the movement of the clouds
as it transports us to that place.
We don't hear the sound of rain,
but by feeling the texture of the corrugated metal beside us
and seeing the rain cloud shadows moving,
we bring our own sense of sound to this space.
And, of course, those bright-colored rain boots are illuminated
by the essence of light peeking through the clouds.
I'm six again, splashing in the puddles of my parents' backyard.
These are all things we can't get
by looking through the lens of our devices,
by forsaking our other senses.
We can't get this experience by seeing.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for Instagram, and I love photography,
but we've got to put our phone down and take in the moment,
and experience it.
As a designer, I'm always thinking about the future,
whether it's designing a store of the future, for 5 to 20 years from now,
and what that might be;
or designing today in order for people to have memories in the future.
But it got me thinking:
if we continue on the path that we're on, what will our future be?
What memories will we have? And is our sensory memory at stake?
In 20 years from now, when you think back,
what kind of memories will you have?
Will you only have pictures, but not really be immersed in that moment?
I don't know about you, but I don't want to become a culture without memories.
So let's start reconstructing our own reality,
a reality built through sensorial memories,
in order to create meaningful memories.
Thank you.
(Applause)