Affective territories (original) (raw)

Affective atmospheres, essence of architecture, and spirit of place

Reconstructing Urban Ambiance in Smart Public Places, 2020

This chapter reviews the implications of using the words “essences” and “spirit” in urban studies and their link with the concept of affective atmospheres in the realms of architecture. Two assumptions are valid when this matter is addressed. The first is that, despite affective atmospheres being considered as the fifth dimension in architecture, they are not their essence or spirit. The second is that these atmo- spheres impersonate a crucial role in reconstructing different urban environments, which are based on the perceptual dimension. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an informed view bibliographically and conceptually about distinguishing between essence, spirit, and affective atmospheres. The chapter also provides an analysis of the concept of affective atmospheres to verify the hypothesis. The conclusion is latent in the possibility that the expression “affective atmospheres,” instead of “essence” or “spirit,” can be used for referring to people’s emotional impressions in urban environments as a fifth dimension.

The Affective City. Spaces, Atmospheres and Practices in changing Urban Territories

The Affective City, 2021

Cities are not made only of stone: they harbor ways of life, practices, movements, moods, atmospheres, feelings. Yet the ineffable nature of affects has long deprived human passions of a meaningful role when it comes to observing urban space and envisioning its future transformation. With this book, we explore the contemporary city and its transitional conditions from a different perspective: a quest to understand how the space of collective life and the feelings this engenders are connected, how they mutually give form to each other. In an interdisciplinary collection of essays, The Affective City means to open a discussion on the "soft" presences animating the world of urban objects: beyond the city built out of mere things, this book's focus is on the forces that make urban life emerge, thrive, flourish, but also wither, and sometimes die. A task crucial for the survival of cities as human habitats, in an urban world that-with every passing day-seems to draw closer a crisis.

More than a Feeling: Affect as Radical Situatedness

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2017

It can be tempting to think of affect as a matter of the present moment – a reaction, a feeling, an experience or engagement that unfolds right now. This paper will make the case that affect is better thought of as not only temporally extended but as saturated with temporality, especially with the past. In and through affectivity, concrete, ongoing history continues to weigh on present comportment. In order to spell this out, I sketch a Heidegger-inspired perspective. It revolves around two claims. The first is that we should understand what Heidegger calls 'Befindlichkeit' (findingness) as radical situatedness. Affectivity is a matter of 'finding oneself' constellated – thrown – into the world in ways that necessarily outrun what an individual or collective might grasp and process. The second claim is that the temporal dimension, as a relatedness to the past, takes precedence in affect's situatedness. Key to affect is the way in which the past – beenness – continues to hold sway over present comportment, both collectively and individually. In order to articulate this perspective, it is important to overcome the idea that affect must be understood mainly in terms of feeling or of experiential states of other kinds. Better suited to grasp central points about findingness is the concept of 'disclosive posture', as proposed by Katherine Withy. I suggest that this notion should be put at the fore of a phenomenological approach to situated affectivity capable of informing work on affect in the humanities and beyond.

On the Role of Affect and Practice in the Production of Place

Michel de Certeau's account of the modern city emphasises the `doing' and `making' residents undertake in an attempt to render a city more amenable to an `art' of resistance. Yet, in attending to this doing and making, de Certeau has largely ignored the felt and affective dimensions of city life. Edward Casey provides a compelling means of interrogating these affective dimensions, distinguishing `thick' and `thin' places in everyday life. Thick places are contrived in the imbrications of affect, habit, and practice, presenting opportunities for personal enrichment and a deepening of affective experience. Casey's work restores the affective fecundity of place, even if it fails to provide a clear sense of how thick places might be identified. This paper takes up this challenge in an attempt to clarify the role of affect and practice in the production of place. The paper first reviews the practical and affective dimensions of this place-making before turning to an ethnographic account of young people, place, and urban life recently completed in Vancouver, Canada. This study explored the ways young people negotiate and transform place and the impact these practices have on the characteristic orientations of self and belonging. The experience of place was found to involve a series of affective relays between the cultivation of private places and the negotiation of designated spaces. The affective atmospheres created in these exchanges helped participants transform thin or designated spaces into dynamic thick places. The paper closes with a discussion of the role thick places might play in the design of innovative youth development efforts in urban settings.

Buildings, faces, songs of alienation: how interiority transforms the meaning out there.

This paper presents a theoretical framework that explores visual meaning in the design and use of interior space. It is comprised of three main parts. The first outlines the framework and draws on several key theories. The second introduces three very different constructs as case studies; that influence (or are a product of) spatial quality, namely: buildings, faces, and songs of alienation. The third part is a discussion about how each of these three constructs are linked to each other as well as to the idea of interiority. While architectural forms are containers of meaning, the way in which interior space is curated is driven by a deeper meaning. One that transcends form and function because people ultimately produce the meaning. And because each person is different, the conditions of interiority (in this case, the meaning that resides within each person) drives the meaning of external constructs (buildings and their interiors) that act as enclosures of meaning. The findings are that mind and body can be projected beyond the fa{\c c}ade and into the spaces contained in the buildings we occupy. The role of technology is also important because changes in technology help mediate the process linking the meaning inside with the meaning out there.

Affective Spaces in Urban Transformation's Contexts

Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture, 2018

According to the contributions coming from different fields of research-from aesthetics to cognitive science-the paper intends to address the topic of urban transformation within the framework of the concept of "affective space", which associates the emotions with all stimuli both internal to the agent and within its environment. The central research question will be: what is the influence of the affective sphere on changes that take place in the city and vice versa how much do these changes affect the emotional sphere? By placing subjects at the center of the research, the paper intends to study the relationship between individuals-as well as groups and communities-and urban spaces they inhabit. This can be done by guaranteeing centrality to the pre-reflective emotional impact that spatial situations produce on subjects, where for "spatial situation" it is intended the inclusive description of a specific condition, including both the material articulation of space and its intangible qualities that influence the subject's emotional sphere.

Affect and geography

The Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2024

Affective dynamics shape spatial practices and social relations. Various strands in human geography have contributed to the study of affect, emphasizing its irreducibility to discourse and conscious understanding. This entry provides a comprehensive review of the role of affect in geographical research. It addresses the variety of expressions of affect that geographers have studied in different spatial contexts, discusses historical shifts in geographic research on affect, and traces the theoretical references, methodological directions, key concepts, and empirical fields of affective geographies. Furthermore, the entry points to the critical implications of affective geographies as well as to the promises and tensions that emanate from geographical research with and on affects.