of particular interest is her research regarding the issue of atmosphere in architecture,
as explored in AD vol 73 no3. entitled Interior Atmospheres, of which she was guest editor.
I admit that before guest-editing the issue, I never fathomed just how elusive atmosphere could be. Despite its habit to rove among rational and minimalist architectural shells, stomp brazenly through historic period rooms and infect anaemic gallery and museum institutions, atmosphere evades definition."
she questions the relationship between the inhabitant, architecture and site.
removing the void of architecture and in-between uses of space.
no longer thinking of architecture as simply a 'riparian edge' but also the creation of atmosphere in between.
v
When one attributes an interior with the atmospheric qualities, what exactly is being communicated?
Does it mean that the room has been designed, stylised or even thematised?
Is it a spatial quality that conditions one's experience or perception?
What is its subjective element?
Does atmosphere originate from material attributes given by interior finishes and decor?
Or is it established by the skillful use of lighting and colour to affect drama?
Is atmosphere anything like an immersive ambience
How does it coincide with the spatial art of performance whereby event replaces function as a temporal descriptor of inhabitation?
How is atmosphere crafted?
v
and references Peter Zumthor and Mark Wigley as two architects who have begun to explore these questions.
Zumthor outlines nine ways with which it is crafted as an architectural quality that provokes a spontaneous emotional responce, an impression sensed in a fraction of a second. His system of atmospheric factors dwells on material presence coupled with an actual and sensing body to include sound, light, temperature and objects operating within a spatiotemporal context hinged on a tension between proximity of interior and exterior. Peter Zumthor, Atmosphere: Architectural Environments - Surrounding Objects, Birkhauser (Basel), 2006.
Wigley cites atmosphere's dependence on building and context, crediting it with 'some kind of sensuous emission of sound, light, heat, smell, and moisture; a swirling climate of intangible effects generated by a stationary object'. Mark Wigley (ed), The Architecture of Atmosphere, Constructing Atmospheres, Daidalos No 68, Berlin, 1998, pp 18-27.
image credits. top: La Monte Young Marian Zazeela, Dream House: Seven+Eight Years of Sound and Light, MELA Foundation, New York, 1993–present; middle: LTL Architects, Tides Restaurant, New York, 2005; bottom: Andrew Kudless, Flexible Formwork Research (FFR), ‘Digital Exchange’, 2006
