Teaching Perceptual Landscape Visualization through Multisensory Studio-Based Learning: An Urban Street Case Study

This study examines multisensory perceptual landscape mapping as a studio-based representational approach in landscape architecture education. Conducted within a fourteen-week undergraduate studio, the study involved six students who explored Kamil Demircioğlu Street in Kastamonu, Türkiye, through repeated sensory walks addressing visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory characteristics. Students used observation sheets, field notes, sketches, and five-point perceptual ratings as intermediate studio tools; however, the research dataset consisted only of the six final student-generated multisensory perceptual landscape maps. The maps were analyzed through systematic qualitative comparison using five a priori sensory categories and a cross-participant analytical matrix to identify recurring and divergent sensory-spatial patterns. A researcher-generated Lynch imageability analysis provided a complementary spatial framework for interpretation. The findings revealed recurring associations between traffic and negative auditory experience, food and beverage functions and olfactory/gustatory experience, and hard-paved versus softer-green surfaces and tactile perception. Visual representations showed greater variation, although openness, extended views, natural scenery, and distinctive spatial elements were frequently represented positively. Individual maps also retained differences in sensory emphasis, spatial interpretation, and graphical expression. The study contributes a studio-based framework that connects embodied multisensory observation, urban spatial structure, graphical representation, and cross-participant qualitative comparison while preserving perceptual diversity rather than reducing individual experiences to a composite map.