VENICE | FLORENCE | PERUGIA Atmosphere

and Mood

December 20th - 23rd

We will investigate how architectural atmospheres are created by the interaction of seeing, hearing, haptics, and olfaction, and also the senses that register one's own posture, balance, and movement. We will also study the intricate relationship between emotions, mood and cognitive faculties, and how this relationship is fundamental to experiencing special atmospheres which arise in architectural spaces. This study will allow us to investigate how insights from the objective, third-person perspective of the sciences can be integrated into design.

The concept of architectural atmosphere blends sensory and emotive aspects of experience. Having explored the sensory side of atmosphere in previous days, now we will concentrate on emotions and mood. We will tour several works created by Carlo Scarpa, where we will engage in analysis of atmosphere and emotive aspects of Scarpa’s architecture. We will study how atmospheric aspects of experience are incorporated in the process of architectural representation and design. At the end of the course, we will bring together many ideas that will have emerged from this journey, and will collectively imagine the tools and strategies arising from the collaboration between architecture and human sciences. We will explore how architectural atmosphere and mood can be captured by different methods of architectural representation and how notions of spatial attunement and embodiment can dramatically alter our approach to design education and practice.