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Spence and Carvalho add to the interesting body of research linking sensory experiences. Via a literature review focused on factors related to drinking coffee they found, for example, that “Those who liked strong coffee tended to drink more under conditions where the ambient lighting was bright (two 500 watt halogen lamps), while those who self-reported preferring weaker coffee drank more under dim conditions instead (one 60-watt incandescent bulb) [Gal, Wheeler, and Shiv 2007]. . . . Knoferle (2012) . . . was able to systematically influence what people said about a cup of Nespressor coffee simply by filtering the sounds made by the coffee machine. . . . When the harsher, higher-pitched sounds of the machine’s operation were accentuated, participants . . . rated the coffee as tasting harsher and/or more bitter.  When the high-frequency components were cut, taste ratings suddenly went up. Specifically, the spectral contents of the sound associated with the operation of the coffee machine were either boosted or cut by 20 dB between frequencies of 2.5 and 6.5 kHz.”  Information on the relationships between sensory experiences is regularly reported in Research Design Connections.

Charles Spence and Fabiana Carvalho.  “The Coffee Drinking Experience:  Product Extrinsic (Atmospheric) Influences on Taste and Choice.”  Food Quality and Preference, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2019.103803

Beier and colleagues researched how culture influences responses to music.  They report on “measure[ing] chill responses, sudden increases in emotional arousal, through self-report and skin conductance measures. Excerpts of Western classical, traditional Chinese, and Hindustani classical music were presented to 3 groups of participants, each familiar with one of these styles. Participants felt a similar number of chills to both familiar and unfamiliar musical styles, but significantly fewer chills to scrambled music, which acted as a control. Acoustic analyses revealed that sudden peaks in loudness, brightness, and roughness were correlated with chills across styles, suggesting that similar acoustic elements induced emotional responses cross-culturally. . . ., this research counters the idea of musical emotional meaning as being entirely generated within cultural conventions and supports the claim that some aspects of the way music conveys emotion may be shared across cultures.”

Eleonora Beier, Petr Janata, Justin Hulbert, and Fernanda Ferreira.  “Do You Chill When I Chill?  A Cross-Cultural Study of Strong Emotional Responses to Music.”  Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, in press, https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000310

Mask’s book probes the power of street names.  Her review is valuable because. “Street names . . . are about identity, wealth, and . . . race.  But most of all they are about power—the power to name, the power to shape history, the power to decide who counts, who doesn’t, and why. . . . We think of street addresses as purely functional and administrative tools, but they tell a grander narrative of how power has shifted and stretched over the centuries. I make this argument through stories, for example, of streets named after Martin Luther King Jr., the way-finding methods of ancient Romans, and Nazi ghosts on the streets of Berlin. This book travels to Manhattan in the Gilded Age, London during the reign of Victoria, and Paris during the Revolution. . . . Arguing about street names has become a way of arguing about fundamental issues in our society at a time when doing so sometimes feels impossible. How often are we called to take a stand and decide who we are as a community?  We lose something of ourselves if we don’t keep up the relentless, argument-riddled, community-based work of mapping and naming the places where we live.”

Deirdre Mask. 2020.  The Address Book:  What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power.  St. Martin’s Press; New York.

The AIA has developed a checklist that can be used to evaluate buildings that might be used as temporary healthcare facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.  It is available here.   http://content.aia.org/sites/default/files/2020-04/KC20_AAH_C-19_Prepare...          The checklist is immediately useful for its intended purpose and can also be used during the programming/development of additional sorts of locations, with appropriate modifications.  As detailed at the beginning of the checklist, it “contains information synthesized from non-crisis situations (design principles, available supporting evidence, or translation of applicable standards) in combination with federal documents issued during the COVID-19 crisis. The content was prepared with joint professional input from trained and experienced health care architects, designers, engineers, scientists, life-safety consultants, healthcare professionals, and hospital facility operations. . . . The checklist does not describe mandatory requirements; it does highlight important areas for evaluation by hospital and public health agencies in selecting ACS for the care and treatment of COVID-19 or surge-capacity patients. The goal is to identify appropriate rapid- adaptive reuse of existing built environments such as convention centers, sports arenas, community centers, hotels, dormitories, or other space for occupancy during the pandemic.”