Atmosphere

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.

in P. Tidwell (ed. by), Architecture and Atmosphere, Tapio Wirkkala-Rut Bryk Foundation, Espoo 2014, pp. 15-47

Having in mind a quite fictional primitive man, for Koffka «each thing says what it is and what [we] ought to do with it: a fruit says, "Eat me"; water says, "Drink me"; thunder says, "Fear me", and woman says, "Love me" 1 . This is the so-called "demand character", or "invitation character" and "valence", of our environment, a character that doesn't completely change according to the need or the intention of the actor and exists sometimes even if it is not perceived. But couldn't this be applied more generally, and a fortiori especially in an architectural environment, conceived not as a collection of causes but as an emotional manifold of action possibilities?

AMPS Conference 17.1: Education, Design and Practice – Understanding skills in a Complex World., 2019

This paper will examine the primary and essential function of architecture as an experiential and sensory form of art, through theories of industrialisation and intuition, as well as practice-based research we have conducted with students of architecture at Padmabhushan Dr. Vasantdada Patil College of Architecture, Pune in Design Studio since 2015. Our research has shown that the relationship between the fundamentals of architecture is interdependent, leading to a necessary synthesis, privileging an intuitive understanding over a purely analytical one. In the post-industrialisation era, the function of architecture has shifted from a sensory and emotional art form, engendering a sense of delight in its perceiver, to utilitarian and consumer-based. We attribute this to a reconfiguration of the interactions between the three essential players - the Space (Site), the Perceiver (User) and the Creator (Architect). This takes the form of an increasing gap in the tangible and intellectual space between the architect, the client and the site of creation, reflected in the reduction of space as the place to consume/a mere physical entity/a set of data; the perceiver to the client/stakeholder/user and the creator to problem solver. These reductions have not only shaped the practice of architecture but also the pedagogical discourses reflected through teaching methods. In-studio, our practice takes the form of sensory-led exercises that rely on and nurture a multidisciplinary skill set, encouraging students to respond to prompts (ex: seasons and not climate/weather), both tangibly (temperature, humidity, etc.) and intangibly, by creating a piece of non-architectural art in relation to their emotional response (a piece of writing, a painting, murals etc.). The art produced in the studio serves as an idea-model, as a way for the Creator to learn to provoke their own emotional responses in the Perceiver. We contend that this will impact and fundamentally change the modes of discourse and methodology of research surrounding architecture. Beyond treating it as a mere tool of problem-solving (and the architect as problem-solver), this method will bring with it a new vocabulary, associated with experience and delight, and restore the creativity of the architect as an essential cornerstone of architectural practice.

2012

The sensations and the meanings rendered from the experience of an architectural atmosphere depend directly on the inhabitant. The architect, helped on multiple disciplines, lay out a wide palette of resources to characterize an abstract space and turn it into a singular one. Normally, the architect works with all the sensory possibilities that can interact between the architecture and the inhabitant. In consequence, the architectural atmosphere turns into something special with the power to influence his user. Nevertheless, the capacity to be moved by an architectural atmosphere also depends on the cultural, perceptive and psychological capacities of the individuals. The architecture research group "Atmospheres", from the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain (UPV), deals with how to design and communicate specific architectural atmospheres, and, at once, to frame both activities in the architectural pedagogic field (International Workshops: Atmospheres, 2010; Alter+...

The bodily senses–touch, taste, sight and smell–should be fully engaged throughout the process of both making and interacting with architecture and art. Three works by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor reveal the generative role of the senses in poetically orchestrating light, space, form, color and tactile material properties. Each exquisitely intertwines light and one primary material to great effect: wood in the Expo 2000 Swiss Pavilion, stone in the Vals Thermal Baths, and concrete in the Bruder Klaus Chapel. Just as installation art engages a specific place in time, so too does the most provocative architecture. Zumthor’s buildings support a human sensory connection to place and a deep awareness of time and material transformation through natural forces. Though the importance of the senses in making may seem indisputable, current architectural design processes have become increasingly focused on visuality as the physical world is dematerialized by electronic media and appearance is often valued over existence. This situation in architecture is not unique, however, for we all live in an increasingly visual and image-conscious culture. Because architecture and art is disseminated and legitimated in 2D media, more architects and artists are concerned with creating work that will appear well in magazines than aim to support human occupation or engender sensory engagement. Nevertheless, the essential power of touch, sound, and smell clearly persists. Phenomenology, in its desire to restore the sensory plenitude of lived experience, has been revelatory for the disciplines of art and architecture. Rooted in the ideas of Husserl, Heidegger and Bachelard, for example, Juhani Pallasmaa’s writing laments the loss of sensuality in culture and architecture. In The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, he describes the contemporary dominance of vision or ocularcentrism and argues that the senses are not independent, but interactive and synergetic. From a related position, Zumthor articulates nine things in his creative process that produce a unified sensory approach. He considers how human bodies find pleasure and protection in specific thermal conditions. As Zumthor’s work eloquently exemplifies, the senses together spur enlightened reflection and amplify human experience of architecture and art.

" A building is the concretization of an intention, which is always – although usually unconsciously – based on a particular world-view. In fact, everything that we do is done according to the way we understand our being-in-the-world. Therefore, all our experiences and actions take place “inside” an ontological framework. Today, it seems incredibly difficult to identify a “common world-view” (at least in most Western countries). Thus, we tend to believe that human experiences are entirely personal, and therefore completely subjective and unpredictable. But is it still possible to find a common-ground among different architectural experiences? In “The Transcendent Unity of Religions”, Frithjof Schuon states that all religions share a common “esoteric” essence, while differing “exoterically” in form. In this paper, we propose transferring this notion to the realm of spatial experience, searching for an architectural theory based on concrete human experiences, but at the same time acknowledging the ontological framework of human life. Individual experiences are exoteric, and therefore specific, but they share a common esoteric essence. If we confront our experiences with those of others, we will be able to identify “coincidences” that point to the general structure of our being-in-the-world. This is the theoretical approach we wish to present in this paper. The best testimonies of specific experiences can be found in art, especially in the discursive descriptions of literature and poetry, which describe numerous “hows”. On the esoteric level, we find the “whys”, the existential roots of all individual experiences, as identified by the major metaphysical traditions. These exoteric and esoteric “testimonies” must be confronted with our own experiences, in an ongoing philosophical investigation. To study architecture is to study the spatial dimension of human existence. Architecture deals, literally, with our “place in the world”. “Place” cannot, however, be understood in mere physical terms; “place” is actually “existential space”, humanized space created by man, for man. Thus, it is impossible to address the meaning of architecture without addressing the meaning of being, since the former is part of the latter. On “Being and Time”, first published in 1927, Martin Heidegger states that the question of the meaning of being “has today been forgotten”[1]. His work was the main inspiration for Christian Norberg-Schulz’s “Architectural Phenomenology”, which opposed the mainly intellectual approach of modernism, turning, instead, to the reality of concrete experiences. Norberg-Schulz has “recovered” the notion that architecture is a prerequisite for human existence, but the question of the meaning of architecture remains unanswered, since the question of the meaning of being remains forgotten. Most architects maintain a purely “exoteric approach” to architecture and human existence as a whole, creating a superficial architecture which deals only with the “hows”, avoiding a deeper investigation towards the “whys”. This paper aims at introducing the metaphysical aspects of human existence in the architectural debate, in order to search for a deeper understanding of our spatial experience. Therefore, we propose an architectural theory which is neither a “system” nor a “methodology”, but, instead, a constant search for the meaning of our being-in-the-world. ISPA Conference - Ethics and Aesthetics of Architecture and The Environment - Newcastle, UK - July 2012; 07/2012"

Atmosphere(s) for Architects: Between Phenomenology and Cognition

This book was born to home the dialogue that the neuroscientist Michael A. Arbib and the philosopher Tonino Griffero started at the end of 2021 about atmospheric experiences, striving to bridge the gap between cognitive science's perspective and the (neo)phenomenological one. This conversation progressed due to Pato Paez's offer to participate in the webinar "Architectural Atmospheres: Phenomenology, Cognition, and Feeling," a roundtable hosted by The Commission Project (TCP) within the Applied Neuroaesthetics initiative. The event ran online on May 20, 2022. Bob Condia moderated the panel discussion between Suchi Reddy, Michael A. Arbib, and Tonino Griffero. The RESONANCES project (Architectural Atmospheres: The Emotional Impact of Ambiances Measured through Conscious, Bodily, and Neural Responses) was responsible for developing the editing and publishing process. It received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 101025132. The content of this book reflects only the authors' view. The European Research Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. For further information, please visit the project website: www.resonances-project.com Disclaimer Every effort has been made to identify copyright holders and secure the necessary permission to reproduce featured images and other visual material. Please direct any inquiries regarding image rights to the editors Cover image

In_Bo, 2015

The point of departure of the architectural project has to stem from the combination of inner and outer journeys in between the real or imagined limits. The pressing challenge is to destabilize the neat division of architecture into separate bodies of knowledge and pose the architect’s mode of action on the threshold between the concrete and the universal. Architecture is a lens, an instrument one looks through to bring new perspectives into focus, enabling the transformation of experience from a magnified self-concentrated space to a wide horizon. Architecture narrates relations between spaces and examines its validity through signifying practices of design. Design for itself becomes the language of the current, of the immediate fashion. Architecture can fulfill peoples’ dreams and miraculously can provide them tools to invent new ones: Curiosity is the first motive to act.

2021

How do atmospheres ground the subject through embodied experiences of space? This thesis is an argument for embodiment and duration in architectural space, a theory of spatial hospitality that attempts to make some room for the subject as a spatial being. My research has proceeded over two lines of inquiry: on the one hand a dissertation forming a phenomenological study of contemporary atmospheric spatial practices, and on the other a practice-led studio investigation exploring perception, duration and the unfolded embodied experience of atmospheric spaces. By its very nature the concept of atmosphere is vague and diffuse. In these spaces, the felt experience of atmosphere acts upon individuals within their surroundings, which in turn are being co-constituted by that subject. At its core, this dissertation is an ontological study of subjectivity and atmosphere in the perceptual environments and spaces produced by artists Robert Irwin (1928 - ), James Turrell (1943 - ) and Olafur Eli...