The Grounded Experience: The Effect of Floor Design Typologies on Human Behavioral and Cognitive Experience

Design reflects the human tendency to adapt to and inhabit surroundings, with architectural decisions significantly shaping behavioral and cognitive experiences. This pictorial focuses on the floor as a primary, embodied interface in space. To explore its influence, five floor design typologies (completing, switching, zoning, stimulating, and bending) were identified through twenty hours of expert discussions involving architects, designers, an artist, an engineer, and researchers. A collaborative workshop further defined sub-categories via participatory observations. Fieldwork then informed site selection for an observational study, which confirmed the behavioral and cognitive impacts of the identified typologies. Based on these findings, floor codes were developed by shifting the design focus from visual cues to somatic sensations and applied in design scenarios. This research contributes to understanding human experience in architectural environments. It offers insights for virtual architecture, proposing evidence-based strategies for designing personalized and interactive spaces in virtual and mixed-reality contexts.