Atmosphere in 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.

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.

Reconstructing Urban Ambiance in Smart Public Places, 2020

This chapter reviews the implications of using the words “essences” and “spirit” in urban studies and their link with the concept of affective atmospheres in the realms of architecture. Two assumptions are valid when this matter is addressed. The first is that, despite affective atmospheres being considered as the fifth dimension in architecture, they are not their essence or spirit. The second is that these atmo- spheres impersonate a crucial role in reconstructing different urban environments, which are based on the perceptual dimension. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an informed view bibliographically and conceptually about distinguishing between essence, spirit, and affective atmospheres. The chapter also provides an analysis of the concept of affective atmospheres to verify the hypothesis. The conclusion is latent in the possibility that the expression “affective atmospheres,” instead of “essence” or “spirit,” can be used for referring to people’s emotional impressions in urban environments as a fifth dimension.

Over the whole Twentieth century, philosophical theories have dealt with the impossibility for the contemporary society to make authentic experience. Overwhelmed by an excessive amount of stimuli and data, metropolitan individuals become indifferent to the outer world. Amplified by this phenomenon but also by its very nature, architecture is perceived by non-architects in a state of distraction, as the soundtrack in the background of a movie. It seems that until now the only answer architecture gave to this statement was a desperate and uncoordinated request of attention resulted in the iconic and autonomous buildings identically erected from London to Beijing over the last thirty years. Perhaps it is time to reflect on how space affects its users and to find the link between the existing architectural “syntax” and its “semantics”, in order to better understand the meaning and the effect of architectural gestures. This essay aims to bring together these attempts to create a coherent theory on how architectural design influence people’s experience of space.

Proceedings of the 2011 ARCC Conference, 2011

While there have been many theoretical and philosophical speculations on the role of emotion and embodiment in the aesthetic experience of architecture, there have been little or no actual empirical support substantiating the claims made. If this lack of hard proof was not an issue in the past, our epoch, profoundly influenced by Modernity, has made increasingly difficult to advance any significant allegation without providing some factual evidence in the scientific sense. This paper reports on work directed to address this challenge. Using a previously documented survey on Extraordinary Architectural Experiences, a large quantity of ‘qualitative measurements’ was collected along 13 categorical variables gauging feeling and embodiment. These data were then thoroughly examined through four levels of statistical analysis. The results empirically demonstrate 69 significant correlations among the variables and thus the central role of embodiment and emotion in extraordinary architectural experiences. Of these correlations, 23 were specifically analyzed to define their psychological and physical characteristics to an unprecedented level of detail. It is hoped that this knowledge sets up a foundation from where to test, develop, and/or apply old and new hypotheses of aesthetic affect and effect in architecture.

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

Buildings, 2022

This paper provides a phenomenological understanding of interior space to explore the emotional connection between space and experience. It focuses on the significant aspects of interior space, considering how people experience interior space and which aspects improve the quality of spatial and emotional experience. I have argued that the interior experience offers effective ways of stimulating emotional experience to create spatial perception as a way of understanding architecture. Interior experience can be developed through: (a) stimulating a lived body; (b) emphasizing materiality; and (c) generating emotional connection. This allows people to develop an awareness of the sensual aspects of the interior space and improve the quality of their emotional experiences. I have drawn upon representative case studies about spatial experience to explore how they use materiality to stimulate sensory effects and how the multi-sensory space connects with emotional experience, which is one of...

B@abelonline vol. 6, New Phenomenological Horizons/Nuovi orizzonti fenomenologici, 2020

My paper addresses the founding body emotions of architecture, and in particular it aims at redefining the sublime into phenomenological terms. Starting from Kant, it argues that the phenomenological sublime is a bodily-felt emotion aroused by the excess of sensuousness over conceptuality. But at present, the body metaphor does no longer guarantee order and symbolic meaning. This disruption was brought about by Husserl's and Merleau-Ponty's criticism of compossibility and representation, which led, paradoxically enough, to a sublime bodily experience of space. As contemporary architectural space shows, body and space are affectively intertwined, but this co-belonging is characterized by conflicts, tensions, and the suspension of meaning.

Architecture and Emotion , 2019

The aim is to explore different orchestrated spaces and analyze the stimuli generated in the inhabitants. This paper intends to delve into the elements that form these spaces through a mixture of extensive research, cross-analysis of scholarly articles and self-led investigation by the methodology of interview. The initial research of literature and cross-analysis of scholarly articles should give way to then perform a study in which the inhabitants report the emotion caused by several interventions in the hope of arriving in the conclusion of whether the exhibits shown demonstrate to be successful or unsuccessful to produce such interactions and produce stimuli. The following results will be narrowed down to the clarification of whether these interventions cause emotions (good or bad emotions) or no emotion at all.