Week 5: Affect, Atmosphere, Sensibility

Key Readings:

Merleau-Ponty - The Intertwining: the Chiasm

Pallasmaa - The Eyes of the Skin

Wigley - The Architecture of Atmosphere

The texts by Pallasmaa and Wigley set out two counter arguments around the topic of atmosphere in architecture. For Pallasmaa, the atmosphere of a building comes about largely from an engagement with all the senses, beyond the purely visual. His argument is incredibly romanticised and in some respects an oversimplification (especially when he talks about 'natural' materials) though several parts of the essay do strike a chord with my own thinking. By contrast, Wigley argues that architecture can create atmosphere through a 'stage set' which does not depend on tectonic logic and is highly visual. He makes a convincing argument about the difficulty of approaching the topic of atmospheres in architecture - those who deny atmosphere still create them, and those who center their work around atmosphere displace themselves and their buildings. Whilst I agree that no matter how much the architect denys it, atmosphere is always created, I am less sure about the issue surrounding the second point. Does it really matter if the architect is displaced? If architecture is about the creation of atmosphere, does it matter that the building itself is subordinated?

Haptic architecture - Travels in Helsinki & Vals: Aalto, Holl, Zumthor

Merleau-Ponty is referred to heavily in Pallasmaa's essay, especially with regard to the critique of ocularcentrism. The idea that the body is in a thickened relationship with the world, and that sight and touch are superposable, but separate conditions might help explain the relationship between the haptic and the visual in Corbusier's architecture, which seemingly prioritises sight.

A common theme that I notice grows throughout this course is the constant criticism of architectural representation. Perhaps this is rooted in the curious role of the architect between autographic and allographic artist. Since we do not (usually) realise our projects ourselves, a crucial part of all architectural discourse is how we communicate our ideas to others. Wigley's analysis of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier's drawings reminded me of last week's text by Stan Allen, where he suggests that dry notational representation could ultimately be the best way to draw complex atmospheres. Another approach to emotive drawing could be seen in the 'digital' drawings of Gross Max, which do not attempt to simulate reality, but give a sense of the atmospheric intention behind the design (and in some of the imagery used, they are quite kitsch...).

Ideas about atmosphere were a part of my dissertation from 4th year, comparing and contrasting the 'tonal' atmospheres of Zumthor with those produced by Libeskind through a kind of structural tonality. In it I argued that Zumthor's notion of atmosphere had strong parallels with Peter Høeg's literary understanding of atmospheres and tonality:

"She Almighty had tuned each person in a musical key, and Kaspar could hear it... They reached the centre of the courtyard, and Kaspar got his first sense of their musical key. It was D-minor, at its worst. As in Toccata and Fugue in D-minor. Great fateful pillars of music." P. Høeg, The Quiet Girl, p. 3

The basic concept being that you could use musical tonality as a metaphor for describing the qualities of a space, which has interesting implications when looking at the transitions (or modulations) between spaces. Libeskind approaches atmospheres from a very different angle, based on a spatialisation of the musical scale, but in some ways reaches very similar effects. An interesting point is that both architects create an atmosphere around their work in how they write about and discuss their buildings. Libeskind in particular conjures up an aura around his use of music in design - he often refers to directly using music, but never explicitly as to how.

Atmospheres of structural tonality - Architectural Design Dissertation

In my opinion, Zumthor gets extra points for referring to music written for viola in his architectural writing. In Atmosphären, setting out his ideas about architectural atmospheres, he describes the opening to Brahms' Viola Sonata in E flat. He believes that whilst not as immediately powerful as those in music, the atmospheres created by architects can also have a very rapid effect on people. His chalk and charcoal design drawings convey a sense of the atmosphere from the outset, and by working through projects in large scale models he is able to come very close to the final atmosphere during the design process. This becomes a precise way of working with atmosphere, which he describes as "a little like tempering a piano, in other words, finding the right voice." Atmosphären, p. 35