Ambiances, 2 | 2016 (original) (raw)

Envisioning ambiances: Representing (past,present and future) atmospheres for architecture and the built environment

SHS Web of Conferences

The concept of “ambiance” has been shaped over the years by questioning the interactions between three attractors: architecture and the city, climatic and sound phenomena, uses and perception. Studied in pairs, each of these attractors refers to very different disciplinary fields; architecture and phenomena concern the physics of the city, architecture and uses interest sociology and uses and phenomena are rather turned to comfort. Studies concerning ambiances are therefore highly interdisciplinary and raise many questions: living spaces, urban renewal and heritage, urban prospective and the city as a stage. For this, many conceptual and technical tools are mobilized: digital tools for simulation and immersion, investigation, surveys and storytelling, prototyping, field action. What may be new in the field of academic studies is the awareness of artistic creation as a resource for the use of digital tools, storytelling and the representation of complexity through original means.

Mapping Ambiance. A synopsis of theory and practices in an interdisciplinary perspective

2016

Mapping Ambiances is a research carried out by an international and multidisciplinary team, involving research laboratories working within the themes of multisensory perception and experiential simulation, namely Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana “Fausto Curti” (DAStU, Politecnico di Milano, Milano – Italy) and CRENAU (UMR 1563 AAU CNRS/MCC/ECN Nantes – France), and the Department of Cultural Heritage and Environment (UniMi, Milano - Italy). The aim of the research is to give a wide and depth definition of the Ambiance notion, starting from interviews to researchers belonging to different disciplines that deal with urban issues. In order to define a comprehensive interdisciplinary methodology, the outcomes were analysed, systematically reorganized and represented from a disciplinary, thematic and geographical point of view. The final result allowed to define overlaps and discrepancies among disciplines and approaches from a theoretical and experimental perspective; this framework ha...

Author manuscript, published in "Ambiances in action / Ambiances en acte(s)- International Congress on Ambiances, Montreal 2012, Montreal: Canada (2012)" Experiencing built worlds Atmosphere in the contemporary practices of architecture exhibition

2012

Abstract. Building an exhibition means giving shape to an artificial environment in which certain meanings are transmitted. In a dialectical relationship with the visi-‐ tor, objects reclaimed from the context that generated them are ordered and pre-‐ sented, defining situations full of new meanings and dimensions. In this context, atmosphere plays a significant role: objects and public are simultaneously in one place and, to ensure a successful communication, the emotional component takes on strategic importance. Building an architecture exhibition means giving shape to an artificial environment in which the object of the display is absent. Therefore, in some cases, the purpose of the show becomes the issue of making a spatial experi-‐ ence accessible to the public. Some architecture exhibitions do not define their goal as an objective presentation based on technical drawings, models and strangely uninhabited photographs but, on the contrary, they try to reconstruct a certain “some...

Author manuscript, published in "Ambiances in action / Ambiances en acte(s)- International Congress on Ambiances, Montreal 2012, Montreal: Canada (2012)" Atmosphere and heritage Documenting the architectural heritage

2012

Abstract. Often, when we choose buildings to be categorized as heritage, it is the building as a whole that calls for protection and not only some specific detail that is worth preserving. In this case, the values of the building not only relate to the tan-‐ gible, physical material but also to the in-‐between of the materials. This is what we identify as atmosphere, an enveloping phenomenon that surrounds and affects our sensuous system and well-‐being when we approach, enter, stay or move in a build-‐ ing. When we leave the building again we carry this atmospheric multi-‐sensory experience with us without adequate methods to describe and document it. In this paper I will introduce both new and traditional approaches to document the archi-‐ tectural heritage with the final conclusion to describe both tangible and intangible values, it requires an objective and geometrical approach as well as a subjective and phenomenological approach.

Ambiances, 4 | 2018

2019

This article presents the results of a spatial experiment, which investigates the ambience potential of coloured illuminations in architecture. The experiment took place over a period of two weeks, situated in a semi-laboratory setting of a performance art installation. Qualitative methods inspired by sensory ethnography and cultural probes were applied to grasp the fullness and originality of human bodily sensations of coloured illumination by exploring its effects on participants’ perception of body-space interaction. During the days of experimentation participants were interviewed on their bodily sensation in and perception of a space, while being blindfolded and exposed to three different hues of illumination; red, blue and amber. Findings from the experiment showed how participants sensed their bodies and perceived the space around them in a comparatively different manner in relation to the different hues of illumination, independently of being blindfolded or not. By this, the ...