Abstract/Summary

A disjunction between ‘the material’ and ‘the immaterial’ has been at the heart of the architectural debate for decades. In this dialectic tension, the notion of atmosphere, which increasingly claims attention in architectural discourse, seems to be parallactic, leading to the re-evaluation of perceptual experience and, consequently, to the conceptual and methodological shifts in the production of space, and hence in the way we think about materiality. In this context, architectural space becomes a contingent construction: a space of engagement that ‘appears’ to us as a result of continuous and complex interferences revealed through our perception. The 'atmospheric’ is explored as a spatial and affective quality and a sensory background, and materiality as a powerful and almost magical agency in the shaping of atmosphere. Challenging existing dichotomies and unravelling intrinsic characteristics of atmosphere as a spatial phenomenon, the aim of this text is to illustrate these associations and draw out design procedures, focusing on ways in which atmosphere can be conditioned architecturally. In other words, the objective is to trace the conceptual contours of ‘atmospheric materiality’.