Architecture’s shape is a negotiation between the control of our environment and the body’s ability to perceive that information. As our bodies increase their range of sensorial abilities through advancements in healthcare and access to wearable technologies, climate change is simultaneously redefining our expectations of future environments.  Architects are in a position to foreshadow the opportunities and implications these pressures will have on our shared public spaces. Shaped Touches offers an option for how architecture will define its shape and the relationships of people and communities sharing that space. The project provides a prototype experience for one such space.

Sean Lally is an architect. Lally is the author of ​The Air from Other Planets: A Brief History of Architecture to Come (Lars Müller Publishers, 2014). Lally is the recipient of the Young Architects Award from the Architectural League of New York and the Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize in landscape architecture from the American Academy in Rome. Lally is associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago currently living in Lausanne Switzerland.