Multisensory and Crossmodal Strategies for the Reuse of Abandoned Interiors Between Fascination, Comfort, and Regeneration

Adaptive reuse is increasingly framed as a regenerative practice that extends building lifecycles while responding to environmental responsibility and social well-being. Nevertheless, discussions on the reuse of abandoned interiors still privilege visual aesthetics and technical performance, often overlooking the embodied and multisensory nature of spatial experience. This article investigates how multisensory and crossmodal design strategies operate between fascination, comfort, and regeneration in abandoned interiors temporarily activated through cultural programmes and installations. A qualitative methodology combines a state-of-the-art literature review, three semi-structured expert interviews, and two empirical cases: Alcova 2025 in Italy, focusing on the Pasino Glasshouses and the former SNIA factory, and O Tempo das Coisas at Edifício Virgínia during DW! 2022 in Brazil. The findings indicate that comfort emerges less from sensory minimisation than from crossmodal coherence and temporal orchestration, perceived as a “sensory score” aligned with bodily movement and environmental conditions. The article proposes a layered analytical framework linking host spatial conditions, multisensory interventions, perceptual mechanisms, experiential outcomes, and critical modulators such as accessibility, sustainability, and the risk of aestheticising decay or accelerating exclusion. The study contributes theoretically by reframing comfort as a multisensory, temporal, and relational phenomenon in adaptive reuse, and practically by offering guidelines for reflective and inclusive multisensory regeneration.