Soft Design: Aesthetic Experience at the Intersection of Materials, Technology & Interaction

soft Design explores an emerging design language of emotional aesthetics that merges emotive and sensory design with ancient and new technology to create multidimensional and multisensorial experiences. soft Design integrates tangible and intangible expression of the aesthetic experience with scientific research. Chapters span the physical, hybrid and digital realms discussing varied topics such as Biodesign, thermal comfort, spatial materiality, responsive architecture, soundscapes, geometry and Biogeometry®, digital materiality, artificial intelligence and language, and the age of Meta, among many others. Case studies from design firms including IOUS Studio, Pangaia, Carbon, OPUS, FIELD.IO, Dumo Lab, to name but a few, are showcased and analyzed throughout. Chapters also include featured interviews with Lachlan Turczan, Tarun Raj, and Mario Carrillo to bring the design concepts to life. While leveraging advanced technology, soft Design is an encompassing approach to aesthetics, advocating for wellbeing, neuroinclusivity, synchrony with nature, and stronger alignment with the entire sensorial spectrum of the human experience. This will be interesting reading for a wide range of design practitioners – interior, industrial, interaction, spatial, digital, sensory, and UX designers – as well as those working in neuroaesthetics and in the converging fields of health, science and design.