Multi-Disciplinary Contributions to Atmosphere/Ambiance

Reconstructing Urban Ambiance in Smart Public Places, 2020

This chapter investigates the ambiguity of the word "atmospheres" in the fields of urban studies. It examines the justifications (plausibility) beyond its uses, with the terms that are focusing on the perceptual qualities. The author investigated the uses of the word "atmospheres" from the beginning of the 17th century to the year 2020, a period which he divided into four stages. The investigation covered the work of 27 thinkers in the fields of natural sciences and humanities, including 10 in architecture disciplines, in addition to 28 manuscripts that addressed the relationship between atmospheres in the areas of architecture , particularly urban planning and design and urban landscape architecture between 1998 and 2020. The outcomes were developed through a comprehensive literature review by gaps analysis and a deductive online survey with 58 specialized participants, using SurveyMonkey. This chapter contributes to the rationale that an urban designer can use to study people's changing feelings, emotions, and moods according to the understanding of the terms related to atmospheres.

SHS Web of Conferences

The concept of “ambiance” has been shaped over the years by questioning the interactions between three attractors: architecture and the city, climatic and sound phenomena, uses and perception. Studied in pairs, each of these attractors refers to very different disciplinary fields; architecture and phenomena concern the physics of the city, architecture and uses interest sociology and uses and phenomena are rather turned to comfort. Studies concerning ambiances are therefore highly interdisciplinary and raise many questions: living spaces, urban renewal and heritage, urban prospective and the city as a stage. For this, many conceptual and technical tools are mobilized: digital tools for simulation and immersion, investigation, surveys and storytelling, prototyping, field action. What may be new in the field of academic studies is the awareness of artistic creation as a resource for the use of digital tools, storytelling and the representation of complexity through original means.

International Lexicon of Aesthetics, 2020

Heritage and the City: Values and Beyond, 2022

The aesthetic perception of a spatial atmosphere is related to the sensory experience we have in that space. Although this experience is led by a multisensory understanding, the dominant sense is generally the sense of sight in architectural spaces. This dominance—which is generally connected to the Modernist architects as asserted by, for example, Juhani Pallasmaa (2005)—is related to the speed of the perception, or speed of the transfer of the data amount collected by this sense. What is perceived and evaluated aesthetically via the data provided by the sense of sight comprises the composition of the spatial atmosphere in visual respect. In this visual rendition, composition principles have an important role in affecting the experiencers aesthetically in the evaluation of space by setting objective criteria. Therefore, in this paper, I aim to read and understand the relationships between architectural spaces and composition principles as objective atmosphere generators. I chose rhythm, contrast, and unity in variety as the composition principles frequently used in architectural design. To demonstrate this relationship, I firstly made a literature review to provide a base for the analyses theoretically, and secondly, I made a case study comprising the examples having visual organizations created by the mentioned composition principles. The cases to discuss the visual qualities provided by these principles comprise the Villa Stein (Paris, France, 1927) designed by Le Corbusier, the Barcelona Pavilion designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Georg Kolbe’s sculpture named the Dawn (Alba) (Barcelona, Spain, 1929), and the Brion Cemetery (San Vito d’Altivole, Italy, 1969-77) designed by Carlo Scarpa. Examining the atmospheric design and genii given by the composition principles in these cases may pave the way for understanding the lack we have in the aesthetic qualities of today’s architecture.

New Instrumentalities, 2018

Atmosphere, atmospheric, or atmotopo attempts to capture a crucial cultural moment that weaves together different schemes of thought with myriad technologies of communication and visualization. The methods of representation are arguably more varied than ever, and with them, design methods cross all kinds of knowledge. But almost none of the elements that constitute the problem of the atmosphere are aligned under the same ideology. Therefore, addressing the atmosphere within architectural thought becomes a pressing issue today. It involves the acceptance of heterogeneities, contradictions, and antagonisms between the different ways that the term is being used. From Fumifugium: or the Inconvenience of Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated, (1661) of John Evelyn´s to the implants of nature (2003) of Olafur Eliasson on weather dispositions (arrangements), nature, ecology, energy, economy, urbanism, and architecture are aligned under the context of the term “atmosphere.” Embracing such diff...

International Journal of Public and Private Perspectives on Healthcare, Culture, and the Environment, 2019

In this debate, we claim that few Egyptian scholars are considering issues of phenomenological critiques addressing adequately the atmosphere of cities and places, and that Egyptian urban design education does not address the possibility of teaching through commentary of this kind. This article examines the dilemma of using the term “atmospheres” in urban design education. It theorises the nature of this relationship, developing an analytical framework creating the architecture of the city as similar as the artworks through which to investigate them related through their aspects—ideas, themes, and dramatic text—and those overarching effects of the technical elements. The question is: how can one use the artworks in urban design teaching? This article discusses the atmospheres in many artworks of Western and Egyptian thought to explore the effect of the architecture of cities in creating the atmospheres of the cities. The conclusion aims to reach some of the lessons learned by analysing artworks that have achieved a different atmosphere in specific places.

Espes - The Slovak Journal of Aesthetics, 2022

This paper discusses the concept of climate in relation to architectural space. By elaborating on the notion of atmosphere, that today permeates a wide range of architectural research, I intend to expand its relevance by outlining a relationship between atmosphere and climate analogous to what occurs in meteorological studies. While climate represents a rather stable (if evolving) cycle of recurring conditions, atmospheric events are fleeting and less predictable. Equally, architectural spaces can establish a general climatic scaffolding that increases the possibility of particular atmospheres to unfold, without however evolving into a deterministic cause-effect relationship. By addressing and comparing philosophical notions and architectural questions, I intend to formulate a novel theorisation as a useful tool for both criticism and design.

2020

The limits of sensory apprehension can take different forms: phenomena can be so tenuous that they do not necessarily reach consciousness; habit can bring them out as missing; they can also manifest only in a delayed manner, primarily through their sensory consequences; and finally, devices – such as a digital display – can bring them back into the realm of human perception. This paper first seeks to explore their integration into the lived ambiances, especially from the contem- porary geophysical and climatological expla- nations. Then it questions how architecture and urban design can, through new attention to these limits of the phenomenal, contribute to the readability of the world and collective response-abilities at the time of the entry of humanity into the Anthropocene.

Ambiances, 2018

Ambiances is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Architecture, atmospheres and architects 3 Michael Amundsen (M.A.): To you, what does ambiance denote in a room or urban space? Q&A with Juhani Pallasmaa on Architecture, Aesthetics of Atmospheres and the ...