On Atmospheres symposium | Harvard Graduate School of Design by Siena Scarff Design

Spaces of Embodiment

February 4, 2016 6.30–8pm February 5, 2016 9am–6pm Harvard Graduate School of Design Piper Auditorium Gund Hall 48 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA

Moderators and respondents from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and other institutions include Iñaki Ábalos, Edward Eigen, Kiel Moe, Antoine Picon, Sonja Dümpelmann, Mohsen Mostafavi, Anita Berrizbeitia, Silvia Benedito, Anuradha Mathur, and Anne Whiston Spirn. The symposium also includes the participation of students from both the MDes concentration in Art, Design and the Public Domain and the Landscape Architecture program.

The symposium aims to press for a “meteorological turn” in design—a shift that recognizes the role of atmosphere and atmospherics as crucial subjects in the design of the contemporary city, and thus repositions the importance of aesthetics and sensation as physiological responses that mediate between the body and the built environment. Acknowledging the increasingly broad and specialized inquiry from a range of disciplines in the context of measured and sensed meteorological conditions, the symposium gathers a series of internationally prominent philosophers, artists, urbanists, architects, scholars, landscape architects, and landscape historians to reflect upon sensory well-being and the conditions of embodiment in the city. This multi-disciplinary event convenes techniques and methods that operate separately according to their disciplinary affiliation but can be understood in relation to one another. The symposium proposes three ways to undertake atmosphere: as matter (considering the relevance of meteorological elements and processes), as condition (considering the qualities of space i.e. thermal, aural, luminous, scented, humid), and as affect (claiming the body as a sensor and register). In the urban contexts of pressing social and environmental imperatives and integrative and adaptive public realms, the presentations will project a series of techniques for a heightened sensibility in design—one that is cross-disciplinary, holistic, and relational; one that positions the body, individual and societal, at the center of the design inquiry into healthy, equitable, and affective civic landscapes. This event targets students, scholars, and designers in landscape architecture, urban design, architecture, and planning, as well as artists, policy makers, and the various communities that seek to learn more about the role of air, atmosphere, weather, and sensation in the design of the built environment.

Spaces of Embodiment

With the growing understanding of human impact on the gaseous envelope of the earth—what we call atmosphere—and its all-pervasive effects on the collective well-being, the discussion about the atmospheric qualities of the built environment has become of critical relevance. Including both the planetary scale of the envelope containing meteorological exchanges and the perceptual register contained in the atmospheric, atmosphere is the domain in which detrimental human impacts become observable and, importantly, sensed. Current discussions on geo-engineering proposals to control solar radiation, military research on climatic technologies to locally and globally modify the weather, and planning policies at the city scale to limit pollution levels or urban heat island effects are increasingly coming to public attention as either contested or crucial necessities. Unsurprisingly, a growing number of art interventions in the various domains of cultural production have captured the public imagination through their atmospheric or enveloping qualities, and by metonymic insistence of a heightened sensitivity to an altered world. Pressures to develop carbon-neutral economies to reduce the costly adverse effects of an altered atmosphere are here to stay, suggesting that the regulation of the atmosphere will be a crucial area for impending social and environmental efforts. While atmosphere and the atmospheric have gained new cultural, economic, societal, and ecological urgency, attempts to address the immediate relationship between the body and its surrounding atmospheres have been largely overlooked in design. This is paradoxically true for the design disciplines focused on the public realm, such as landscape architecture and urbanism. On the one hand, scientific models render climatic models as highly specialized and unattainable; on the other hand, an approach focused on phenomenology, as highly subjective or singular, has proved challenging for addressing wider and multi-layered scopes of the contemporary urban milieu. The world appears in shifting conditions as the body, individual and collective, senses the qualities of the built environment in which we live and breathe. The properties of the atmosphere—aural, thermal, luminous, scented, or humid—manifest as the sensory exchanges between the body and the surrounding environment. These properties are essential to engaging and evaluating the qualities of the built environment, particularly one that fosters comfort and sensory well-being. The simultaneity of human beings as impactful agents, registers, and qualitative sensors of the built environment calls for a comprehensive discussion about atmosphere as integral to the public sphere. The dichotomy between the scientific and phenomenological domains, the rational and the imaginative, must therefore be replaced by an expanded reflection in which the physiological, social, aesthetic, cultural, and ecological milieus are in continuous examination relative to each other.

Sessions

… as Matter Atmosphere, when approached from the viewpoint of ecology and human sustenance, is matter that supports life, nourishes health, and stirs delight. Space, including landscape space, is often misinterpreted as merely void, waiting to be occupied. Alternatively, it is the active link between parts, the thick space charged with matter and meaning—visible and invisible, in vibration and constant unsteadiness. This session addresses the potentials and kinships of atmosphere as matter in the context of multidisciplinary realms. How is atmosphere, as medium and matter, considered in philosophy, history, design, and film? The various presentations explore the potentials of atmosphere as charged space, construing it both as material that holds properties and affordances, and as design medium so as to foster well-being in the city.

… as Condition Cosmonauts of our own physiologies, we live immersed in an ocean of moving air. Atmosphere is egalitarian and constitutes our global commons, the condition in/from which we live and breathe. It is the site of synthesis at the planetary scale, the scale of the individual and collective body. Rather than focusing on disciplinary specificity, this session critically engages a new design sensibility in landscape architecture and urbanism that is interdisciplinary while imagining spatial qualities for inhabitation and use in the city. Atmosphere as condition is the space that results from design thinking and making. This session invites us to think inside-out, from the premise that design begins with the space of embodiment at multiple scales and inputs.

… as Affect Thriving urban landscapes stem from, among other factors, their atmospheric qualities and heightened sensorial engagement; they promote multiple sensory inputs for physiological and mental well-being. Exposed or sheltered, under rain or shine, smog or drizzle, landscapes in the public realm are indivisible from their atmospheres. In the context of today’s collective awareness of anthropogenic weather, this session examines sensation as the mediator between the body and the built environment. Sensing the world means making sense of the space that surrounds oneself—to evaluate, relate, value, and remember. The speakers in this session focus on the articulation between the public domain, aesthetic qualities, and the crafting of atmospheres—sonic, thermal, luminous, scented, humid, and shaded. They critically invite us to go beyond the ocular-centric domain, to imagine space through its affective affordances—physiologically and aesthetically registered.

February 4, 2016 6.30–8pm 6.30

INTRODUCTIONS Mohsen Mostafavi and Silvia Benedito

KEYNOTE Günther Vogt, Vogt Landscape Architects, ETH Zürich “Spatial Nature” DISCUSSION With Anita Berrizbeitia and Silvia Benedito

February 5, 2016 9am–6pm 9.00 COFFEE 9.15

INTRODUCTIONS Anita Berrizbeitia and Silvia Benedito

9.30

SESSION 1 ... as Matter

Moderator: Iñaki Ábalos, Harvard GSD Respondent: Edward Eigen, Harvard GSD

Gernot Böhme, Institut für Praxis der Philosophie “The Theory of Atmospheres and its Applications” Kathleen L. John-Alder, Rutgers University “Climate as Medium and Matter” Philippe Rahm, Philippe Rahm architectes, Harvard GSD “Architecture as Climatic Construction” Klaus K. Loenhart, terrain: architects and landscape architects, Technical University of Graz “Subtly Paradigms are Changing: Atmospheres of the Anthropocene” Chris Welsby, Filmmaker, Simon Fraser University “Out of Thin Air: A Post Romantic Landscape”

DISCUSSION

12.00

LUNCH

1.00

INTRODUCTION Silvia Benedito

Michael Jakob, La Haute École du Paysage, d'Ingénierie et d'Architecture de Genève “An Inquiry into the Grounds of Atmosphere and Landscape” Barbara Kenda, Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center, Virginia Tech “Breathing Landscape, Tempering Architecture” Ulrich Reuter, Department for Urban Climatology, Office for Environmental Protection, Stuttgart “Urban Climate in Urban Planning – The Strategy in the City of Stuttgart”

Iwan Baan, Photographer “Atmospheres for Living”

DISCUSSION

3.00

COFFEE BREAK

3.30 SESSION 3 ... as Affect Moderator: Kiel Moe, Harvard GSD Respondent: Anne Whiston Spirn, MIT David Howes, Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University “Sensory Surrounds” Jonathan Hill, Bartlett School of Architecture “A Landscape of Architecture, History and Fiction” Matthias Schuler, TRANSSOLAR Climate Engineering “Cloudscapes – Sustainability and Clouds” Catherine Mosbach, Mosbach Paysagistes “Atmosphere, Atmosphere, Do I Look Anything Like Atmosphere” Tomás Saraceno, Artist “Áerocene – Around the World to Change the World” DISCUSSION 5.35

ROUND TABLE Moderated by Anuradha Mathur, University of Pennsylvania

Anita Berrizbeitia, Mohsen Mostafavi, Gernot Böhme, Günther Vogt, Philippe Rahm, Klaus Loenhart, Catherine Mosbach, Tomás Saraceno

CONCLUSIONS Silvia Benedito

6.15

RECEPTION

Schedule

1.10 SESSION 2 ... as Condition Moderator: Sonja Dümpelmann, Harvard GSD Respondent: Antoine Picon, Harvard GSD

Iwan Baan’s photographs reveal our innate ability to reappropriate our available objects and materials, in order to find a place we can call our own. Examples of this can be seen in his work on informal communities, such as his images of the Torre David in Caracas—a series that won Baan the Golden Lion for Best Installation at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale. Baan is the inaugural recipient of the Julius Shulman award for photography. Alongside his commissions by many renowned architects, Iwan has collaborated on several successful book projects, such as Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities and Brasilia & Chandigarh—Living With Modernity. Dr. Gernot Böhme is a German philosopher and author whose main fields of research include classical philosophy, the philosophy of science and nature, philosophical anthropology, aesthetics, ethics, and theory of time. He serves as Director of the Institut für Praxis der Philosophie at Technical University of Darmstadt and President of the Darmstadt Goethe Association. From 1977 to 2002, he was Professor of Philosophy at the Technical University of Darmstadt. His publications include Invasive Technification: Critical Essays in the Philosophy of Technology (2012) and Atmospheres: The Architecture of Felt Spaces (forthcoming). Jonathan Hill, architect and architectural historian, is Professor of Architecture and Visual Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, where he directs the MPhil/PhD Architectural Design program. He is the author of The Illegal Architect (1998), Actions of Architecture (2003), Immaterial Architecture (2006), Weather Architecture (2012), and A Landscape of Architecture, History and Fiction (2016); editor of Occupying Architecture (1998) and Architecture—the Subject is Matter (2001); and co-editor of Critical Architecture (2007). David Howes is Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director of the Centre for Sensory Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. His research has included exploring sensory life in the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford; investigating historic and contemporary trends in multisensory marketing in the United States and Canada; examining the judicialization of the “culture” concept in courts of law; and designing performative sensory environments (in collaboration with Chris Salter). His publications include Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society (2013, with Classen). He is also the founding editor of the journal The Senses and Society. Michael Jakob is Professor in History and Theory of Landscape at hepia in Geneva and École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, as well as Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at Grenoble University. His teaching and research focus on landscape theory, aesthetics, the history of vertigo, contemporary theories of perception, and the poetics of architecture. He is the founder of COMPAR(A)ISON: an International Journal of Comparative Literature; the chief editor of «di monte in monte»; and the head of the Paysages books series with Infolio, the major publishing house of architectural books in Switzerland. Kathleen L. John-Alder is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Rutgers University and a registered landscape architect with over twenty years of professional experience. Her research involves the transformative role of ecology and environmentalism in the discourse of mid-20th-century landscape design, and historical engagement within the context of the academic and professional design studio. Her work has been published in Landscape Journal, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, and Journal of Planning History. Barbara Kenda is Visiting Professor at Virginia Tech’s Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center, where her research investigates the history and theory of architecture as well as issues of our global built environment and health. With a focus on pneumatology, she seeks to develop sustainable design solutions to create healthy buildings and cities. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Notre Dame, Virginia Tech and elsewhere. Her research has been published in Green Living (2010) and Aeolian Winds and the Spirit in Renaissance Architecture (2006), among others. Klaus K. Loenhart is a multi-disciplinarian. His systemic interest is based on his studies in architecture at the Munich University as well as in landscape architecture and architectural theory at the Harvard GSD. His interdisciplinary approaches was sparked both while working at Herzog & deMeuron and while studying and teaching at the Harvard GSD. Since 2003, he has been a partner at the Munich- and Graz-based terrain: architects and landscape

Catherine Mosbach opened her studio in 1987 in Paris and founded the magazine Pages Paysages with Marc Claramunt, Pascale Jacotot and Vincent Tricaud. Her projects include the archaeological park of Solutré-Saone-et-Loire, the walk sluice of Saint-Denis, the botanical garden of Bordeaux, Shan Shui at the International Horticultural Exposition, and Place de la République in Paris. She is a graduate of the Versailles National School of Landscape Architecture. Philippe Rahm is the principal of Philippe Rahm architectes, based in Paris. His work, has received an international audience in the context of sustainability. He has taught at the Harvard GSD, Mendrisio Academy of Architecture, ETH Lausanne, the School of Architecture of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts of Copenhagen, and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. His work includes Taichung Gateway Park in Taiwan,;an office building in La Défense in France for the EPADESA; a convective condominium for the IBA in Hamburg, Germany; and the White Geology, a stage design for contemporary art in the Grand Palais on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Dr. Ulrich Reuter is a meteorologist and climatologist. Since 2008, has served as head of the Department for Urban Climatology in the Office for Environmental Protection of the municipality of Stuttgart, Germany. He is member of committees of the German Engineering Society (VDI) in the field of climate and urban climatology as well as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences Stuttgart. He is also leading a group on global climate change and adaptation at the Städtetag Baden-Württemberg. He is author of many publications concerning urban climatology and adaptation in city planning. Tomás Saraceno’s oeuvre could be seen as an ongoing research, influenced by the world of art, architecture, natural science, and engineering; his floating sculptures and interactive installations explore new, mindful ways of inhabiting and perceiving the environment. Saraceno attended the International Space Studies Program in 2009 at NASA Ames in Silicon Valley. He presented a major installation at the 53rd Venice Biennale, and received the prestigious Calder Prize. He was a Visiting Artist at MIT’s Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST). His work has been shown internationally in museums including the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce in Genoa, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. Matthias Schuler is a managing director at TRANSSOLAR Energietechnik in Stuttgart. He founded TRANSSOLAR Climate Engineering in Stuttgart in 1992. He has worked on national and international projects with architects including Kazuyo Sejima, Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, Peter Zumthor, and Renzo Piano. Since 2001 he has been a visiting professor at the Harvard GSD. Some of his projects include the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (with Steven Holl), the Louvre Abu Dhabi (with Jean Nouvel), Grace Farm in New Canaan, Connecticut (with SANAA), the Academy of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles (with Renzo Piano), Fondation Louis Vuitton (with Frank Gehry), and the Elb Philharmony (with Herzog de Meuron). Günther Vogt is a landscape architect who since 2000 has been owner of Vogt Landscape Architects, based in Zurich, London, and Berlin. Since 2005 he has been Professor of Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich, where from 2007 to 2011 he was head of the Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft (NSL). He was a visiting professor at Harvard GSD in Fall 2012. Chris Welsby is an experimental filmmaker, installation artist, and Professor Emeritus in Film at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. Welsby co-founded the Slade Centre for Electronic Media at STU. He began making landscape films and installations in the early 1970s, and has continued to explore the problematic relationship between humans, technology and the natural world. A pioneer, Welsby was one of the first artists to exhibit film installations at the Tate and Hayward galleries in London. His work has also been exhibited at the Musée du Louvre and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Panelists

architects. In 2007, he became head of the Institute for Architecture and Landscape at Graz University of Technology (TUG), and since 2009, he has led the LANDLAB platform for interdisciplinary research.

Iñaki Ábalos is Professor in Residence and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard GSD. With Renata Sentkiewicz, he is a founding member of Ábalos+Sentkiewicz, whose work proposes an original synthesis of technical rigor, formal imagination and disciplinary integration between architecture, environment and landscape—an approach they have named “A Thermodynamic Beauty.” Their work has been widely published, including most recently Essays on Thermodynamics, Architecture and Beauty. Silvia Benedito is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard GSD, where she serves as Co-Coordinator of the Master in Design Studies in Art, Design and the Public Domain. Benedito is co-principal of OFICINAA, an architecture, landscape and urban design practice. Forthcoming publications include the co-edited book Thermodynamic Interactions: An Exploration into Physiological, Material and Territorial Atmospheres (2016). Anita Berrizbeitia is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard GSD. Her research focuses on design theories of modern and contemporary landscape architecture, the productive aspects of landscapes, and Latin American cities and landscapes. Her publications include Roberto Burle Marx in Caracas (2004), the edited Reconstructing Urban Landscapes Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (2009), and Urban Landscape: Critical Concepts in Built Environment (2015). Sonja Dümpelmann is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard GSD. Her research and writing focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century landscape history, exploring the transatlantic transfer of ideas, the role of politics, technology, and science, and the work of women in the field. Her recent books include Flights of Imagination (2014) and A Garden Cultural History in the Age of Empire (2013). Edward Eigen is Associate Professor of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the Harvard GSD, where his work focuses on the intersections of the human and natural sciences. He is currently preparing to publish An Anomalous Plan, a study of laboratory spaces in nineteenth-century France. Anuradha Mathur, architect and landscape architect, is Professor in the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Pennsylvania. In collaboration with Dilip da Cunha, she focuses her artistic and design expertise on cultural and ecological issues of contentious landscapes,exploring, terrains as diverse as the Lower Mississippi, New York, and Mumbai. With da Cunha, her publications include Mississippi Floods (2001), Soak (2009), and Design in the Terrain of Water (2014). Kiel Moe is a registered practicing architect and Associate Professor of Architecture & Energy at the Harvard GSD. Recent publications include Convergence (2013) and Insulating Modernism (2014). Mohsen Mostafavi, architect and educator, is the Dean and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design at the Harvard GSD. His work focuses on modes and processes of urbanization and on the interface between technology and aesthetics. His publications include Ecological Urbanism (co-edited 2010); In the Life of Cities (2012); Architecture Is Life (2013); Nicholas Hawksmoor: The London Churches (2015); and Ethics of the Urban: The City and the Spaces of the Political (2016). Antoine Picon is Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology and Director of Research at the Harvard GSD. An engineer, architect, and historian, he works on the history of architectural and urban technologies from the eighteenth century to the present. His recent books, including Digital Culture in Architecture (2010) and Smart Cities (2013), examine the changes brought by digital culture to the theory and practice of architecture, as well as to the planning and experience of the city. Anne Whiston Spirn is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning at MIT. A scholar, practitioner, and photographer, she situates her research at the intersection of landscape architecture, environmental planning, and urban design, applying ecological principles to urban settings. Her publications include The Granite Garden (1984), The Language of Landscape (1998), Daring to Look (2008), and The Eye is a Door (2014).

Moderators/Respondents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Harvard Graduate School of Design Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean of the Faculty of Design and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design Anita Berrizbeitia, Professor of Landscape Architecture, Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture Charles Waldheim, John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture Patricia Roberts, Executive Dean Beth Kramer, Associate Dean for Development & Alumni Relations Benjamin Prosky, Assistant Dean for Communications Shantel Blakely, Public Programs Manager Jennifer Sigler, Editor in Chief Travis Dagenais, Communications Specialist Department of Exhibitions Dan Borelli, David Zimmerman-Stuart Jim Voorhies, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Siena Scarff, Siena Scarff Design A special thank you to our speakers who traveled long distances to contribute to this symposium. Also, a warm thank you to the cohort of colleagues who helped moderate and guide the conversations in each session. With the support of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the GSD's Rouse Visiting Artist Program, the Daniel Urban Kiley Fund, and the Harvard University Committee on the Arts. IMAGE CREDITS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE: Iwan Baan, Sea Ranch, CA Emma McNally, Carbon Cleaving, graphite on paper Iwan Baan, Sea Ranch, CA (detail) Emma McNally, CSF1, graphite on paper Iwan Baan, Sea Ranch, CA (detail) Emma McNally, BH1, graphite on paper