Perception of Space: Atmospheres
Seminar
Spring 2022 term

The following contributions synthesize the theoretical work developed by our students during the seminar Perception of Space: Atmospheres, Spring 2022 course. Master of Architecture (M.Arch.), Department of Architecture, College of Architecture, Planning and Design (APDesign), K-State University, Manhattan, Kansas.

Prof. Bob Condia, FAIA
Prof. Elisabetta Canepa, Ph.D.

The Biophilic
Resonant Body

Repressing children’s instincts

“There was a time when children described as hyperactive were placed in ‘stim-free’ classrooms: classrooms in which stimuli were minimized, so that children would have no occasion for excess activity. Desks were far apart. The walls had no decoration. The windows were curtained. The teacher wore a plain black dress with no ornaments.”

Hacking, Ian. 1999. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (HUP). Cited in DeLanda, Manuel. 2006. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London and New York, NY: Continuum • p. 2. Book [EN]

Supporting children’s cognitive development

“The natural world provides unparalleled opportunities for children to label, distinguish, and organize knowledge that in turn facilitates speech and language development.”

Kellert, Stephen R. 2010. Birthright: People and Nature in the Modern World. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press (YUP) • p. 27. Book [EN]

Tracing children’s cognitive development

“The second element is the tracing of cognitive development in children to identify key stimuli that evoke the responses, along with the ages of maximum sensitivity and learning propensity.”

Wilson, Edward O., and Kellert, Stephen R. (eds.). 1993. The Biophilia Hypothesis. Washington, DC: Island Press • p. 34. DOI; 10.1177/027046769501500125. Book [EN].

Biophilia and perceptual process

“Some evolutionary psychologists, in making the case for biophilic design [...] have argued that the industrial materials and monochromatic severity of the modern metropolis are not particularly well suited to human perceptual systems — those sensory systems that evolved in natural terrains.”

Mallgrave, Harry F. 2018. From Object to Experience: The New Culture of Architectural Design. London and New York, NY: Bloomsbury • p. 48. Book [EN]

Biophilia and cognitive development

“ART [attention restoration theory] proposed that natural environments abound with ‘soft fascinations’ could replenish people’s cognitive capacity and thus reduce their mental fatigue and increase their focus and attention (Kaplan, 1995).”

Kaplan, Stephen. 1995. “The Restorative Benefits of Nature: Toward an Integrative Framework.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 15, 3: 169–182. Cited in Yin, Jie, Yuan, Jing, Arfaei, Nastaran, Catalano, Paul J., Allen, Joseph G., and Spengler, John D. 2020. “Effects of Biophilic Indoor Environment on Stress and Anxiety Recovery: A Between-Subjects Experiment in Virtual Reality.” Environment International 136: 105427, 1–10 • p. 2.
DOI: 10.1016/j.envint.2019.105427. Paper [EN]

Anne Criddle
Marvy Whittaker

Anne and Marvy have suggested a collection of bibliographic sources (combining theoretical texts with experimental outcomes) about the role biophilia (namely, the innate connection people have to nature and other forms of life) and bodily resonance play in early childhood development.

The Biophilic Resonant Body:
Integrating Biophilia, Resonance, and Atmospheric Generators to Design Children’s Educational Environments

Abstract

Agency and
Atmosphere

Edgar Ortuño
Carly Temming

Edgar and Carly suggested five works of literature to explore the meaning of agency in perceiving atmospheric affordances. The texts come from different disciplines, including architecture, philosophy, sociology, and psychology.

Agency and Atmosphere:
A Sociocultural Lens for the Perception
of Architectural Affordances

Abstract

Perceiving affordances

“The perceiving of an affordance is not a process of perceiving a value-free physical object to which meaning is somehow added in a way that no one has been able to agree upon; it is a process of perceiving a value-rich ecological object. Any substance, any surface, any layout has some affordance for benefit or injury to someone. Physics may be value-free, but ecology is not.”

Gibson, James J. 1986. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979). Hove and New York, NY: Psychology Press • p. 140. Book [EN]

Atmospheric affordances

“Forms, whether they are static or in motion, do not merely express apparent causal relations and pragmatic affordances but also tertiary qualities or sentimental (and therefore atmospheric) ones that permeate the space in which they are perceived.”

Griffero, Tonino. 2014. “Architectural Affordances: The Atmospheric Authority of Spaces.” In Architecture and Atmosphere, ed. by P. Tidwell, 15–47. Espoo: Tapio Wirkkala — Rut Bryk (TWRB) Foundation • p. 21. Essay [EN]

Towards feeling agents

“Why do we feel like insiders and participants in some spaces, whereas in others we experience alienation and ‘existential outsideness’? Is this not because the settings of the first type embrace and stimulate us, make us surrender ourselves to them, and feel protected and sensually nourished, strengthening our sense of reality, belonging and self; whereas alienating and disturbing settings weaken our sense of being?”

Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2016. “The Sixth Sense: The Meaning of Atmosphere and Mood.” AD. Architectural Design 86, 6 (special issue on “Evoking Through Design: Contemporary Moods in Architecture”): 126–133 • p. 127.
DOI: 10.1002/ad.2121. Essay [EN]

Sense of agency

“When we make voluntary actions we tend not to feel as though they simply happen to us, instead we feel as though we are in charge. The sense of agency refers to this feeling of being in the driving seat when it comes to our actions.”

Moore, James W. 2016. “What Is the Sense of Agency and Why Does it Matter?” Frontiers in Psychology 7: 1272, 1–9 • p. 1.
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01272. Paper [EN]

Spatial agency

“In spatial agency, their agency is affected both through actions and visions, but also through the resulting spatial solutions. It resides in both the human and the non-human, and spatial agents have to be responsible for all aspects of their actions, from their initial relationship with others to enabling the production of physical relations and social structures, because all are means of playing out their intent. Spatial agency is here as much about modes of behaviour as it is about modes of making.”

Awan, Nishat, Schneider, Tatjana, and Till, Jeremy. Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture. Abington and New York, NY: Routledge • p. 43. Book [EN]

Thriving
Atmospheres

Nested interactions

“The fact that we simply cannot exist outside a constructed envelope [is] the very reason that we have become human in the first place. We become human only in the arms of another. Whether held by human arms or the support of an incubator, human life develops in the nested interactions that take place in a succession of constructed envelopes. To say that we have coevolved with our buildings is to grossly understate the deeply intertwined, developmental nature of our transactions with our surroundings. We are who we are because of the innumerable ways we have mutually shaped and interacted with our dwellings.”

Robinson, Sarah. 2021. Architecture Is a Verb. Abingdon and New York, NY: Routledge • pp. 3–4. Book [EN]

Haptic perception

“We are bodies who start inside other bodies. [...] Touch does not stop at the skin; it involves deformations of the tissues, configurations of joints, the stretching of muscle fibers through contact with the earth. In the haptic system, the hands and other body members are active organs of perception. [...] Vision, touch, and action are inextricably linked, so that when we perceive the tactile experience of others, our own motor and somatosensory system are systematically activated.”

Robinson, Sarah. 2017. “Nested Bodies.” In Mind in Architecture: Neuroscience, Embodiment, and the Future of Design, ed. by S. Robinson and J. Pallasmaa, 137–159. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press • pp. 137; 145; 147. Essay [EN]

Physical affection

“Touch for the human baby serves both physical and emotional functions. Somatic stimulation begins in labor when uterine contractions activate principal organ systems of the fetus. Human babies actually die from lack of touch. In the nineteenth century, most institutionalized infants in the United States died of marasmus (‘wasting away’). Institutions surveyed in 1915 reported that a majority of infants under the age of two had died due to failure to thrive, related to the lack of touch and affection.”

Levy, Terry M., and Orlans, Michael. 2014. Attachment, Trauma, and Healing: Understanding and Treating Attachment Disorder in Children, Families and Adults (1998). 2nd edn. London and Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley) • p. 64. Book [EN]

The primacy of touch in infancy

“Babies born prematurely are kept in incubators and fed intravenously. They had been touched as little as possible [...]. However, [Dr. Tiffany Field, a psychologist at the University of Miami Medical School] found that a light massage of the babies’ backs, legs and necks and gentle movement of their arms and legs proved to have a tonic effect, immediately soothing them, and eventually speeding their growth.”

“Dr. Field had decided to try massages because of findings by Saul Schanberg of the department of pharmacology at Duke University. [...] He hypothesizes that the touch system is part of a primitive survival mechanism found in all mammals.”

“‘It’s the first way an infant learns about the environment,’ said Kathryn Barnard, a professor of nursing at the University of Washington. ‘About 80 percent of a baby’s communication is through its body movement.’”

Goleman, Daniel. 1988. “The Experience of Touch: Research Points to a Critical Role.” The New York Times (print edition), February 2, 1988: section C • p. 1. Article [EN]

Nursing model

“A human is a combination of biological, psychological, sociological, and spiritual factors. A human is a unitary being staying in continuous interaction with the surrounding environment. [...] [Rosemarie Parse’s Humanistic Theory of Human Becoming] is a nursing theory that is an alternative for both conventional bio-medical and bio-psycho-social-spiritual approaches ⁠— and for most other approaches in the nursing theory. [...] This theory is structured around three themes: meaning, rhythmicity, and transcendence.”

Kowalik, Grażyna. 2016. “The Conception of Humanism and Its Significance for Nursing and the Profession of a Nurse.” Medical Studies 32, 4: 307–314 • pp. 311–312.
DOI: 10.5114/ms.2016.64705. Paper [EN]

Natalie Cox
Bethany Pingel

Natalie and Bethany investigated the following question: if haptic interactions with the surroundings impact our lives, how might our home, our intimate shelter, provide an atmosphere which nurtures thriving individuals? Inspiration came from insights in philosophy, physiology, psychology, and nursing science. The notion of thriving atmospheres hards back to Rosemarie Parse’s Theory of Human Becoming, as opposed to the medical concept of failure to thrive, which refers to a lack of contact and care in mammalian newborns.

Thriving Atmospheres:
A Conversation between Natalie Cox
and Bethany Pingel

Abstract

In Praise of Light

Light and absence

“I gave myself an assignment: to draw a picture that demonstrates light. […] You say that the white piece of paper is the illustration what else is there to do? But when I put a stroke of ink on the paper, I realized that the black was where the light was not, and then I could really make a drawing, because I could be discerning as to where the light was not, which was where I put my black. Then the picture becomes absolutely luminous.”

Kahn, Louis I. cited in Lobell, John. 1979. Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications • pp. 22–23. Book [EN]

Light and matter

“Energy becomes materialized as matter becomes energized, so that once vacant and inert material flames up with a vibrant presence. This apparition is the most spectacular experience of the sense, a wonder of simple perception which can suddenly and unexpectedly arise yet disappears with equal ease, returning material to clay.”

Plummer, Henry. 1987. “Poetics of Light.” A+u. Architecture and Urbanism 12 (extra edition) • p. 11. Essay [EN]

Light and form

“Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light.”

Le Corbusier. 1931. Towards a New Architecture (1923). Trans. by F. Etchells. London: John Rodker • p. 29. Book [EN]

Light and materials

“The first of my favourite ideas is this; to plan the building as a pure mass of shadow then, afterwards, to put in light as if you were hollowing out the darkness, as if the light were a new mass seeping in. […] The second idea I like is this; to go about lighting materials and surfaces systematically and to look at the way they reflect the light. In other words, to choose materials in the knowledge of the way they reflect and to fit everything together on the basis of that knowledge.”

Zumthor, Peter. 2006. Atmospheres: Architectural Environments. Surrounding Objects. Basel, Berlin, and Boston, MA: Birkhäuser • p. 59. Book [EN]

Light and mood

“‘The carriers of such moods are […] in particular air, light, shade, darkness, warmth, coolness, clouds, water. This is understandable when we consider why we value such natural elements: not, or at least not solely because they support specific vital functions, but rather for their general invigorating effect — enhancing my total life activity by invigorating, accelerating, relieving and liberating; or calming, restraining, exciting and releasing.’”

“According to Lipps, the mood that ‘air, light, shade, darkness, warmth, coolness, clouds, water’ convey results from the way these phenomena influence how vibrant we feel.”

Lipps, Theodor. 1903. Ästhetik: Psychologie des Schönen und der Kunst, 222. Hamburg and Leipzig: von Leopold Voss. Cited in Schönhammer, Rainer. 2018. “Atmosphere — The Life of a Place: The Psychology of Environment and Design” (2012). Trans. by D. Henderson. In Designing Atmospheres, ed. by J. Weidinger, 141–179. Berlin: Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin • p. 144: original italics. Essay [EN]

Yovanka Ortega
Andrew Smith

Yovanka and Andrew have proposed five research lines to illustrate how designers, psychologists, and philosophers explain light’s emotional impact on generating and experiencing architectural atmospheres.

In Praise of Light:
The Predominant Force
for Experiencing Atmosphere

Abstract