The Architecture of Atmosphere

Abstract

This thesis aims to enrich and enliven our experience of the built form. The issue in the current technological age of the 21st century is the shift in the way we are engaging with and producing architecture. Seemingly never-ending webpages are filled with images computer- generated or photographic - of beautiful people, vistas and staged facades of buildings produced with the intention of luring the consumer into the brand and style of the product, enabling our visually biased culture. These images bring the world ever closer and make us feel as if we personally know these people, or have experienced these spaces. Thewidespread use of such images as the primary way of experiencing is causing a visually biased architecture designed for the production of eye-catching imagery. This engages with its users primarily on one level, rather than layers of complexity and meaning. This image- based focus is feeding clients’ fixation with surface beauty, emphasising a human reality that is constructed on superficiality and ignoring the deeper understanding and embodied experience that architecture has to offer. This thesis is about widening the lens from merely visual aspects of design to include an experiential understanding of space. This is proposed through an understanding of architectural phenomenology and atmosphere. Phenomenology addresses the problems plaguing society today, including dominance of aestheticism and neglect of the embodied or sensory experience. Throughthe research this thesis has found that heightened awareness is the critical factor in producing atmospheric architecture. A design methodology that can be used in practice to heighten the architectural experience is proposed. This methodology, set-up and resolution, is explored through the design of a series of experiential moments at Langs Beach, Northland, that speak to all our senses and provoke an awareness of atmospheric architecture.