In Philippe Rahm’s thinking the architecture is therefore mold according to the climate conditions: heat, humidity, air flows shape the space and allow the functions and its users’ behaviours to find a place in it, while the simulation of the radiation, convection, conduction, evaporation and pressure aims to reproduce a natural environment into the architecture. Effectively, the climate assume the role of Architecture, while the Architecture, in its forms and functions, becomes the vehicle to create a climate environment. Eventually, his architectural approach doesn’t want to establish an open dialog with the Nature, investigating the blurry and unclear space between the black and the white as in Fushimoto’s research. He is not even creating a physical contoured space as for the Alison Smithson’s grotto, but rather an atmosphere of trascendence, a series of sensations, feelings and mapped motions borrowed from the Nature and enclosed in a timeless space.

Dealing only with the air and through the integration of invisible limits, Rham’s effort is an envelope of atmospheres, an invisible architecture of flows modeling the livable space. His sense of Architecture is a poetic and technological approach to the creation of  a comfortable space, made by undefined colors and different air densities.

Nevertheless, the Architecture is reduced to a filter- if not a wall- between man and Nature. It’s not the external climate that shape the Architecture in its forms and programmes, but it is rather a hi-tech and controlled reproduction of it. The need to control the climate derives from a modern society which is not anymore able to deal within an ‘unfriendly’ environment. The technology helps the human being to reach a better comfort level, but at the same time permits the growth of new and more sophisticated needs. Since the artificial environment is affecting the natural sphere, this relation is going to be an endless escape from a reunion with Nature. Perhaps, an advanced architecture should be even that one that forces the human being to have a natural- more than artificial- relationship of acceptance with the climate and its ‘caprices’.

Summary of T3-Wigley-Arch Atmosphere-Daidalos68-1998

The text by Mark Wigley deals with the atmosphere in the context of the buildings. The atmosphere is outside the buildings and the atmosphere occupies the space between a building and its context. The atmosphere activates your senses. The atmosphere can be physical as fx moisture and sounds, and gets psychosocial in the combination of components. There are infinite possibilities of combinations.

In the explanation of architecture, the architects uses the atmosphere to improve the understanding of their design concepts. For instance, Frank Lloyd Wright is using the nature and atmosphere active in his sketches. The skies is turned into geometrical horizontal lines in the project for the H.C. Price Company Büroturm 1952, Oklahoma, which is adding strength to the height of the building, and the horizontal slices in the building. The atmosphere becomes a part of the design.

In the history the architect has been turned into a “specialist” in special effects. The architects let the building (the architect) control the atmosphere rather than the atmosphere is controlling the atmosphere. But the fact is, that the atmosphere cannot be controlled, though many architects think that the can.

The situationist tried to control and analyze the atmosphere. They defined architecture as pure atmosphere – a redefinition of architecture.  The movement, in this topic led by Debord, was trying the make a new awareness of the atmospheric effect in the context of the city itself, by creating new varieties of emotional feelings and experiences, by using urban décors. The décors create and control the atmosphere.  The ideas is carried out in the project of the “new Babylon” a waste machine for producing atmosphere made by Constant Niewenhuys. The project placed the man before the structures, and the structures should facilitate the man to live a nomadic life. The world should be constructed by users. Constant were working for the project for 20 years, but left him with the paradocs, that the uncontrolled architecture displaces the architect.

Situationists 2013 and “one city”

Maybe Constant Niewenhuys project of New Babylon was carried out to early. Today we have  more tools to map, analyze and execute different décors, which can be used in the city. Maybe today it is the right time to execute the New Babylon with software and hardware tools as the Arduino to control new atmospheres and defining a new era of interactive architecture controlled by the user. But still, where does that put the architect and the depth of the architecture?

Toyo Ito mentioned (in learning from a tree), that the architecture in general is transforming more and more into “skin” architecture in for example Tokyo. The projects are made out of the value of the land rather than the value of the architecture. Toyo Ito says that we should learn from the nature to the nature and ask us self; what is architecture for?

The relation from the nature and the city has been a given parameters for many architects. But most architects focus on few elements of the nature, like the tree. To learn from the nature, I think that we should see the nature as a whole element as we understand and see cities. The nature is the whole world, so why not see the whole world as one city?

To see the whole world as one city can maybe help us to try to understand and control the atmosphere. To blend the city and nature as one element. Like the Sou Fujimotos N-house is like a city and make a metaphorical relation to the city, by having a structure like the city. The house erase the separation of a house and the city.  Sou Fujimoto mentioned in his reading (Primitive Future), that the best architecture arise from the gradiation (city/nature, in/out etc). Our buildings should not have strictly borders and the atmosphere should not stop at the facade. Imaging a city without borders, like the nature, where a space is another space. Where an atmosphere replaces another with a single footstep (like the situationists).

My research

My research could be on this topic; how to see the world as one city. But also with a more sustainable twist. I have noticed that each specific architecture in the different cities I have visited has an enormous impact on people’s lives. This has made me challenge myself to learn more about how buildings are constructed, and how they interact with their surroundings. In my opinion it is not the buildings in themselves that are the solutions to our problems of dealing with the changing climate. I feel more dedicated to issues around how buildings affect people, and I am particularly excited about buildings’ potential to influence people´s habits towards sustainability. Could the atmospherically relation to the nature, help to influence peoples habits? How is the relation between the senses (atmosphere) and peoples actions (habits)? And could the whole “city” be transformed into different zones as Philippe Rahm (Form and function follow climate)? These could be few of the questions to my research.

To visualize the “new city”, I have made a diagram/drawing of it.