'Please Do Touch!'

As a result of the dominance of visual and digital information in design, the surface qualities of our immediate surroundings are often disregarded. Because of this, we live in overly smooth and polished environments with little focus on haptic experiences. Humans clearly have an instinctive desire to gather such information through interaction with the physical world. The diversity of tactile stimuli in nature is significantly larger than in our artificial surroundings. Why couldn’t man-made objects offer similarly stimulating experiences?

The project is a material investigation, attempting to tackle the essence of textural information; detached from all visual elements like shape or colour.

By isolating and analysing satisfying tactile experiences in nature, I aim to translate their qualities into interior surfaces. This is presented through a range of half products that challenge conventional ideas of comfort and common perceptions of pleasant/unpleasant stimuli. They offer a wider variety of textures inviting users to actively seek tactual information in their environment.