The Sensory Self invited students to awaken their sensory intelligence and explore the power of the five senses as creative tools for shaping the world around us. Through a dynamic and unconventional session, Emilie Baltz challenged students to think beyond screens and prototypes and instead create experiences that are deeply felt and embodied.
In an age where design often begins on the screen, artist and experience designer Emilie Baltz reminded students that design truly starts in the skin. In her energetic and interactive talk, titled “The Sensory Self: Designing Embodied Experiences Through the Five Senses”, Emilie explored how taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound can be used as powerful tools for creative expression and innovation.
Drawing on her interdisciplinary background in food, art, and immersive environments, Emilie emphasized the importance of designing from the body outward. She challenged students to move beyond digital designs and consider how sensory engagement can unlock new forms of connection, storytelling, and emotional resonance. By incorporating embodied experiences, Emilie showcased how design can become a tool for deepening human engagement and inspiring wonder.
As a leader in multisensory experience design, experiential art, and interactive technology, Emilie Baltz has been at the forefront of pioneering new ways to design experiences that engage all five senses. Her work has been featured at prestigious institutions such as the Museum of the Future in Dubai, NEW MUSEUM, and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. Over the course of her 20+ years of work in various creative industries, Emilie has used sensory design to foster teamwork, innovation, and play.
Through a series of playful and fast-paced exercises, Emilie invited students to explore each of the five senses individually and in combination, encouraging them to use their own bodies as research labs, design instruments, and storytelling devices.
Space Talks
This lecture is part of SPACE TALKS, curated by Rana Rmeily, co-founder of the exhibition design collective TheLoveTriangle and former associate partner at Atelier Brückner. Space Talks is a lecture series that explores scenography as a medium of dialogue—between bodies, environments, systems, and stories. Rooted in Rana’s vision of space as both platform and protagonist, the series brings together designers and thinkers who challenge, expand, and reframe the ways we experience and engage with our surroundings. From the architecture of fashion and the spatial power of sound, to sensory intelligence and the evolution of third spaces, each talk opens a distinct lens into scenographic thinking—embracing movement, materiality, technology, and emotion as tools for shaping meaningful, responsive environments.