Architectural Atmospheres: On the Experience and Politics of Architecture

Author: Christian Borch (ed.), with essays by Gernot Böhme, Christian Borch, Olafur Eliasson, and Juhani Pallasmaa
Year: 2006 (Birkhäuser; from a 2011 Copenhagen Business School conference)
Source type: book (edited volume)
Raw file: raw/books/borch-2006-architectural-atmospheres.md

Summary

A volume on the recent turn toward atmospheric qualities in architecture and urban planning. It theorizes "atmosphere" as the overarching, multisensory, pre-intellectual impression of a space, and embeds it in social theory (Böhme, Sloterdijk) and in debates over art, capitalism, and politics. The editors frame the volume as addressing the two deficiencies of the atmospheric cult of Peter Zumthor: its lack of conceptual theorization and its silence on power and politics.

Key Claims

• Atmosphere as architectural quality: following Zumthor ("It is the particular atmosphere of a building that moves us"), quality in architecture is a matter of atmosphere, felt "in a fraction of a second" through emotional sensibility and bodily, haptic encounter before any intellectual understanding.
• Pallasmaa on periphery and haptics (existential-experiential): atmosphere is "the overarching perceptual, sensory, and emotive impression of a space" — a "mental 'thing'" suspended between object and subject. We grasp a place's atmosphere before its details. Critically, on a diagnostic note, the emphasis on vision/image in contemporary architecture produces a counter-"quest for a haptic architecture": "The architecture of the eye detaches and controls, whereas haptic and atmospheric architecture engages and unites." The normative lesson is to replace perspectival with peripheral perception and attend to multisensory design.
• Böhme on urban atmospheres: atmospheres "emanate from things and persons," are experienced as quasi-objective yet bound to individuals ("co-presence of subject and object"); they can be staged/produced instrumentally (e.g. city lighting for crime prevention) or emerge from daily life forms. Normatively, urban planning should adopt an atmospheric approach (often as forbearance).
• Borch on the politics of atmospheres (Sloterdijk): atmospheres as "sphere production" that provides meaning and immunity; an atmospheric politics moulds atmospheres — physical and psycho-social — to achieve political objectives, constituting a "sensory politics" and "a subtle form of power" that governs behaviour "without them being consciously aware of it" (e.g. olfactory manipulation).
• Context: the atmospheric turn as a return to earlier concerns (genius loci via Norberg-Schulz; Nouvel's Louisiana Manifesto; Sejima/Nishizawa's SANAA; Renzo Piano) — and its critical stakes: multisensory experience can be "endowed with, or adopted by, political (or capitalist) objectives."

Connections

Concepts: Atmosphere · Iconic Architecture · Spectacle
Authors: Juhani Pallasmaa · Gernot Böhme · Christian Norberg-Schulz
Debates: Spectacle vs. Function
Related source notes: (related: phenomenology-of-place cluster)

Direct Quotes

"The architecture of the eye detaches and controls, whereas haptic and atmospheric architecture engages and unites." (Pallasmaa, as summarized)

"[A]tmospheres are in fact characteristic manifestations of the co-presence of subject and object." (Böhme, as quoted)

"Atmosphere is the overarching perceptual, sensory, and emotive impression of a space, setting, or social situation." (Pallasmaa's definition, as summarized)

"[T]he design of architectural atmospheres amounts to a subtle form of power, in which people's behaviour, desires, and experiences are managed without them being consciously aware of it." (Borch, as summarized)

Open Questions

• Does the atmospheric/affective turn align architecture with governance (cf. Douglas Spencer's "affective turn as governance"), or offer a genuine critical-experiential alternative to the eye's spectacular architecture?
• How do the "atmosphere politics" of Sloterdijkian sphere-production relate to the noopolitical governance of attention discussed in Wallenstein's account?