PCA Design Management Chair Yasmine Abbas Hosts Workshop at Kyoto Seika University in Japan

Yasmine Abbas, Chair of Design Management at Paris College of Art and Professeur Associé at l’Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture, was recently chosen to lead an architecture workshop at Kyoto Seika University in Japan.

The workshop aimed to explore the architectural process of evoking ambiance. An ambiance results from physical features, sensory data (humidity, smell, etc.) and the movement of people within a space. Yasmine led students through the process of investigating, generating and parameterizing ambiances through mapping mobile and sensory data.

On a sunny day, early October, students conducted their observations in the Kyoto Station designed by renowned architect Hiroshi Hara. Teams observed that people waiting for others tended to wait at particular spots in the station: against a wall, near a column, or in spaces protected from wind. Others recorded movement in space and the “ballet” of people moving around obstacles.

These observations led to an analysis of architectural parameters (“architectural attractors” for example) that students could use to generate new ambiances.