Atmospheres

What really constitutes an architectural atmosphere," Peter Zumthor says, is this singular density and mood, this feeling of presence, well-being, harmony, beauty ... under whose spell I experience what I otherwise would not experience in precisely this way." Zumthor's passion is the creation of buildings that produce this kind of effect, but how can one actually set out to achieve it? In nine short, illustrated chapters framed as a process of self-observation, Peter Zumthor describes what he has on his mind as he sets about creating the atmosphere of his houses. Images of spaces and buildings that affect him are every bit as important as particular pieces of music or books that inspire him. From the composition and presence" of the materials to the handling of proportions and the effect of light, this poetics of architecture enables the reader to recapitulate what really matters in the process of house design.

Atmosphere is a term often used in everyday life to describe how a consumption space feels and has long been an important theme within marketing. There has been renewed interest in atmosphere over recent years in marketing and beyond, with the concept at a crucial point in its development. However, research about atmosphere is often confined into disciplinary silos. Consuming Atmospheres unsettles such disciplinary boundaries by delivering an interdisciplinary collection of cutting-edge work on atmosphere and consumption. Specifically, the book brings together experts from various disciplinary backgrounds to explore how atmospheres are designed, experienced, and researched. Within these three thematic parts organising the collection, atmosphere is explored across a range of consumption and geographic contexts, including pop-up stores, music festivals, tourist spaces, town centres, sports stadia, amusement arcades, food and drink, urban squats, and seaside piers across England, Scotland, Denmark, and Slovenia. The book will appeal to academics and postgraduate students within marketing and beyond, given the chapter authors have backgrounds in marketing, consumer research, geography, sociology, youth studies, art and design, place management, and law. It may also be of interest to practitioners endeavouring to co-create more effective consumption atmospheres, such as marketers, retailers, and place managers.

The study by Alexandra Bernhardt deals with coworking spaces and their atmospheres. In addition to a comprehensive consideration of the role of atmospheres, the special significance of community in the context of these work spaces is examined in more detail. Two case studies in urban coworking spaces form the core of the investigation, following a qualitative research design oriented towards ethnography and a plurality of methods. In the context of the analysis, on the one hand, what constitutes coworking in everyday life and thus the new communality at work is considered: relevant practices and rituals, spatial arrangements and atmospheres are elaborated in their composition. On the other hand, coworkers, their spatial actions, and the attitudes associated with them come into closer focus: It is shown how users access coworking spaces as work and community spaces and what role atmospheres play. In addition, social entities are highlighted that are taken up by coworkers in relation to their coworking space and that help shape everyday coworking space life. Tensions that arise from the coexistence of community and service logic are also uncovered, and how they are dealt with is examined in more detail.

Architecture is increasingly understood to be a sensual, spatial experience, which means that the experience of buildings and spatial constellations is also a perception of atmospheres that are rated as positive or negative. Architects, planners, investors, and politicians must produce effects such as these according to intersubjective and communicable criteria, and not intuitively or randomly. Architectural Atmospheres addresses the growing awareness of the atmospheric dimension of architecture and provides a current, programmatic discussion of this topic. What possibilities does this approach open to architecture, what value does this knowledge have? Three essays and a conversation lead a cross-discipline discussion on the impact of architecture, and contribute to the debate first initiated by Peter Zumthor. The texts are accompanied bythirty-five color images that capture architectural moods in a variety of ways. Gernot Böhme is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Darmstadt Technical University and Director of the Institute for Practical Philosophy, e.V., Ipph, in Darmstadt, Germany. Christian Borch is Professor of Political Sociology at the Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Olafur Eliasson is a Danish-Icelandic artist. Eliasson incessantly explores our modes of perceiving. His work spans photography, installation, sculpture, and film. Juhani Pallasmaa is one of Finland's most distinguished architects and architectural thinkers.

Interest in sensory atmospheres and architectural and urban ambiances has been growing for over 30 years. A key figure in this field is acclaimed German philosopher Gernot Böhme whose influential conception of what atmospheres are and how they function has been only partially available to the English-speaking public. This translation of key essays along with an original introduction charts the development of Gernot Böhme's philosophy of atmospheres and how it can be applied in various contexts such as scenography, commodity aesthetics, advertising, architecture, design, and art. The phenomenological analysis of atmospheres has proved very fruitful and its most important, and successful, application has been within aesthetics. The material background of this success may be seen in the ubiquitous aestheticization of our lifeworld, or from another perspective, of the staging of everything, every event and performance. The theory of atmospheres becoming an aesthetic theory thus reveals the theatrical, not to say manipulative, character of politics, commerce, of the event-society. But, taken as a positive theory of certain phenomena, it offers new perspectives on architecture, design, and art. It made the spatial and the experience of space and places a central subject and hence rehabilitated the ephemeral in the arts. Taking its numerous impacts in many fields together, it initiated a new humanism: the individual as a living person and his or her perspective are taken seriously, and this fosters the ongoing democratization of culture, in particular the possibility for everybody to participate in art and its works.

What is an “Atmosphere”? As part of the book series “Atmospheric Spaces”, this volume analyses a new phenomenological and aesthetic paradigm based on the notion of the “Atmosphere”, conceived as a feeling spread out into the external space rather than as a private mood. The idea of “Atmosphere” is here explored from different perspectives and disciplines, in the context of a full valorization of the so-called “affective turn” in Humanities.

Lahore’s Hall Road is the largest electronics market in Pakistan. Once the center of film and media piracy in South Asia, it now specializes in smartphones and accessories. For Hall Road’s traders, conflicts between the economic promises and the moral dangers of film loom large. To reconcile their secular trade with their responsibilities as devoted Muslims, they often look to adjudicate the good or bad moral “atmosphere” (mahaul) that can cling to film and media. Timothy P. A. Cooper examines the diverse and coexisting moral atmospheres that surround media in Pakistan, tracing public understandings of ethical life and showing how they influence economic behavior. Drawing on extensive ethnographic work among traders, consumers, collectors, archivists, cinephiles, and cinephobes, Moral Atmospheres explores varied views on what the relationship between film and faith should look, sound, and feel like for Pakistan’s Muslim-majority public. Cooper considers the preservation and censorship of film in and outside of the state bureaucracy, contestations surrounding heritage and urban infrastructure, and the production and circulation of sound and video recordings among the country’s religious minorities. He argues that a focus on atmosphere provides ways of seeing moral thresholds as mutable and affective, rather than as fixed ethical standpoints. At once a vivid ethnography of a market street and a generative theorization of atmosphere, this book offers fresh perspectives on moral experience and the relationship between religion and media.

Proceedings of the IAU Symposium No. 40, held in Marfa, Texas, U.S.A., October 26-31, 1969