Impressionable Atmospheres: a felt phenomenology

Conference presentation, Moved: On Atmospheres and Affects – 2013 Interstices Under Construction Symposium, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, 23 November 2013.

The presentation that introduced impressionable atmospheres. No recording exists; the paper is unpublished. The record of the presentation, with the abstract, is deposited at Zenodo: doi:10.5281/zenodo.23990726.

Abstract, as published in the symposium programme

“Architecture is defined by atmosphere” claims Mark Wigley (1998). Indeed, contemporary architectural discourse is littered with allusions to ‘atmosphere’ with seemingly little need for further consideration or explanation of what it is, how it is expressed or, more importantly, how it is perceived. We feel it. It touches us. This expression of intimate reciprocal contact implies a reflexive exchange – essentially embodied, or haptic perception. This paper will explore the perception of atmosphere as a “felt phenomenology” (Paterson, 2007) and the impressionable architecture of the body as the ductus of atmospheric experience.

We have become well versed in atmospheric appreciation of space and place, and can instantly form a lasting impression of how an environment feels, in a visceral ‘gut-reaction’, a kind of tacit knowledge learnt from first-hand experience. Communicating the immersive experience of an artwork or pictorial representation through culturally enforced codes of optical contemplation and concentration (Benjamin 2006), we may say that the viewer is moved by the image, that together they may forge an empathetic relationship (Hill 2006). This is participatory exchange at its most diluted. To appreciate the limitations of visual reception, one only has to close one’s eyes – to shut off the sense of sight – and recognise that the agency of that image has become dulled, if not entirely muted. A haptic perception of atmosphere, by contrast, requires the entire body and sensory schema, as an impressionable, thinking-body and is not dependent on direct lines of sight, levels of illumination, or directly tangible or material. It is an embodied experience that actively engages and flows from one atmosphere into another, as one body among others. The Swiss Architect, Peter Zumthor practices what he preaches: he has written on the subject of navigating the atmospheres of his own designs (2006), and his work is often referenced as an exemplar of atmospheric architecture (Pallasmaa, 2012). I will draw upon my own experience of Zumthor’s Therme Vals, as a vehicle for answering the question – what is a haptic atmosphere, and what is its architectural significance?

Source: symposium brochure, Interstices 15, 1–27.