Abstract/Summary

The title ‘Atmospheres in Formation’ carries a twofold meaning. It invites an examination of heterogeneous constituents, conditions, properties and processes from which spatial atmospheres emanate. It also suggests a tracing of how the concept of atmosphere has been formed in architectural discourse, exploring atmosphere’s challenging yet inspiring plurality as well as revealing the earlier strata of its history. To explore atmospheres in formation is, therefore, to adopt a quasi-archaeological approach and search for both material and discursive traces, illustrating the rise of an atmospheric sensibility and its translation into specific design procedures and processes, triggering new conceptions, perceptions, and experiences of space. In doing so, despite the established assumption that the history of architecture has largely neglected its atmospheric component, the paper locates architecture in a long tradition of building atmospheres, indicating an alternative architectural history.