Comment passer de la réflexion esthétique sur les atmosphères à une pratique architecturale des atmosphères? En suivant les Leçons d’esthétique du philosophe allemand Gernot Böhme, nous analysons la façon dont leur esprit est mis en œuvre par l’architecte suisse Peter Zumthor. Comment le sentiment fondamental de la présence est-il principiel dans le projet du plus grand musée d’art de Los Angeles? Composée de propositions concrètes, l’enjeu de l’esthétique envisagée ici tient moins de la détermination de l’œuvre d’art (...) que du sentiment de liberté qu’éprouvent des sujets dans le site qui leur est offert. (shrink)

Peter Zumthor est aujourd’hui considéré comme « l’architecte des atmosphères ». De ce fait, son œuvre est souvent rapprochée des théorisations de la notion d’atmosphère issues de la phénoménologie allemande. L’article vise à ressaisir la singularité de la problématique de l’atmosphère chez Zumthor (liens à la théorie du projet et à la production architecturale, aux notions centrales d’image et d’histoire), ainsi qu’à revenir sur les sources de ce concept chez Aldo Rossi, cela afin de comprendre de manière (...) synthétique la nécessité, le sens et les évolutions du recours à l’atmosphère dans cette manière de penser en architecture. (shrink)

There is fast-growing awareness of the role atmospheres play in architecture. Of equal interest to contemporary architectural practice as it is to aesthetic theory, this 'atmospheric turn' owes much to the work of the German philosopher Gernot Böhme. Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces brings together Böhme's most seminal writings on the subject, through chapters selected from his classic books and articles, many of which have hitherto only been available in German. This is the only translated version authorised (...) by Böhme himself, and is the first coherent collection deploying a consistent terminology. It is a work which will provide rich references and a theoretical framework for ongoing discussions about atmospheres and their relations to architectural and urban spaces. Combining philosophy with architecture, design, landscape design, scenography, music, art criticism, and visual arts, the essays together provide a key to the concepts that motivate the work of some of the best contemporary architects, artists, and theorists: from Peter Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron and Juhani Pallasmaa to Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell. With a foreword by Professor Mark Dorrian and an afterword by Professor David Leatherbarrow,, the volume also includes a general introduction to the topic, including coverage of it history, development, areas of application and conceptual apparatus. (shrink)

À partir d’éléments théoriques situés au fondement de sa conception des atmosphères (espace pensé à partir de la présence charnelle vs conception géométrique de l’espace comme topos ou spatium ; notion de Befindlichkeit ou « disposition affective » ; réflexions sur la perception), le présent texte de Gernot Böhme offre une synthèse tout à fait remarquable de ses réflexions tissées entre architecture et atmosphères. Il s’agit dès lors, pour le philosophe allemand, de chercher tout autant à penser la spécificité (...) esthétique de l’architecture que de permettre de situer celle-ci de manière adéquate face aux enjeux du monde contemporain, ou encore d’inciter les architectes à réfléchir leur pratique dans et par le type de rapport à l’espace, au monde et aux hommes qui se manifeste dans la méditation de la notion d’« atmosphères ». (shrink)

Résumé La pensée architecturale de Peter Zumthor, l’un des plus grands architectes contemporains (lauréat du Pritzker Price en 2009), est l’une des plus fortes de notre temps. Loin de tout sensationnalisme théorique, il développe une véritable pensée en architecture, faisant de l’« atmosphère » son déterminant essentiel. Contre l’oubli de l’histoire constitutif de la pensée moderniste, il cherche à « retrouver » l’architecture au moyen de l’exploration des données biographiques et contextuelles qui la fondent. C’est à la mise (...) au jour des éléments essentiels de cette pensée qu’est consacré cet article. (shrink)

Interest in sensory atmospheres and architectural and urban ambiances has been growing for over 30 years. A key figure in this field is acclaimed German philosopher Gernot Böhme whose influential conception of what atmospheres are and how they function has been only partially available to the English-speaking public. This translation of key essays along with an original introduction charts the development of Gernot Böhme's philosophy of atmospheres and how it can be applied in various contexts such as scenography, (...) commodity aesthetics, advertising, architecture, design, and art. The phenomenological analysis of atmospheres has proved very fruitful and its most important, and successful, application has been within aesthetics. The material background of this success may be seen in the ubiquitous aestheticization of our lifeworld, or from another perspective, of the staging of everything, every event and performance. The theory of atmospheres becoming an aesthetic theory thus reveals the theatrical, not to say manipulative, character of politics, commerce, of the event-society. But, taken as a positive theory of certain phenomena, it offers new perspectives on architecture, design, and art. It made the spatial and the experience of space and places a central subject and hence rehabilitated the ephemeral in the arts. Taking its numerous impacts in many fields together, it initiated a new humanism: the individual as a living person and his or her perspective are taken seriously, and this fosters the ongoing democratization of culture, in particular the possibility for everybody to participate in art and its works. (shrink)

The concept of atmosphere may be defined as tuned space, i.e. space with a mood. This concept opens a lot of new perspectives for Aesthetics. The very paradigm of it is stage design. Stage designers install a certain climate on the stage. But in our days almost everything is staged. Thus the theory of atmosphere finds applications in Commodity Aesthetics, Design, Architecture, but also the staging of politics as well as the staging of a person through a certain life-style is (...) a field of application. Finally the Aesthetics of Atmosphere helps to understand art, in particular performative art and music. (shrink)

In this paper I seek to initiate a research agenda on mega-urban airs that comprehends their atmospheres as simultaneously meteorological and affective ( McCormack, 2008 ), an agenda which seeks to apprehend megacity air/atmospheres in their vitality, corporeality and expressiveness. This paper attunes to the close and expressive substances that make up immersion in a material-affective ecology of a place, the qualities of the city that seep and imbue its material and biological fabric with affect. There is a growing body (...) of work and literature to aid us from traditions in continental aesthetic theory, French urban sociology and architecture, and an emergent cultural geographic field of atmospheric enquiry. The paper develops such an approach to megacity air in three main ways. First, air tells us about difference. In the testimony of pollutants and choking effluvium, an analysis of air reveals who belongs and who does not, who is deserving and who is not in a constellation of megacity inequality. The atmosphere puts the megacity apart from other urban and political forms. Second, closely related to the issues that circulate around a geopolitics of verticality and the technocratic security concerns of volumetric conceptions of territory, air/atmospheres constitute an environmental ecology of security threats and crisis that thwart megacity life and justify environmental policies as ‘security’ (see Zeiderman, 2013). Third, the paper argues how megacities are increasingly productive of secessionary atmospheres, often by removal and exclusion, which are not entirely separate from other atmospheric security concerns. (shrink)

With this article we intend to explore the concept of «esthetical object» proposed in Dufrenne’s text entitled La Phénoménologie de l’experience estéthique I. The potentiality/activity binomial appears as the ground for Dufrenne’s definition of esthetical object as perceived work of art. According to this, the happening of any artwork truly finds its proper place in esthetical experience, which arises as the meeting point of art’s expressive potentiality and the spectator’s perception act. Establishing an accurate distinction between esthetical perception and other (...) kinds of human perception, Dufrenne sees the former as the pure presence of the sensitive. Advocating the inseparability of significant and signification for the esthetical object, the author declares the meaning of esthetical experience as immanent to its own sensitive presentation. Dufrenne presents authentic esthetical perception as something, which has the power to, engage subjectivity in a radical experience. Under the light projected by the work of art, human beings are enabled to actualise other modes of being-in-the-world. With expression as its proper signifying mode, the esthetical object reveals itself as a world beginning, proposing an affective atmosphere, which opens the subject of esthetical experience to new existential possibilities. (shrink)

Le texte aborde un cas particulier d’atmosphère, l’inquiétante étrangeté, dans son rapport à l’espace architectural, selon une inflexion phénoménologique soulignant la teneur d’atmosphère (Stimmung) du sentiment éprouvé. Effectuant une relecture du texte éponyme de 1919 de Freud sous cet angle, notamment l’épisode de la promenade dans la petite ville italienne, la réflexion s’engage ensuite dans une approche de la peinture de De Chirico, en particulier le tableau de 1913 La grande Tour. Les écrits du théoricien américain de l’architecture Anthony Vidler (...) viennent à l’appui de la réflexion. La conclusion fait retour sur la maison hantée, au regard d’expériences artistiques plus contemporaines. (shrink)

Dans cet article ici en traduction inédite, dont la première version allemande date de 2011, Hermann Schmitz s’interroge sur les éléments qui, se déployant dans l’interaction entre les édifices et la vie sensible et affective des habitants, constituent l’atmosphère d’une ville. Dans cette perspective, il met à contribution plusieurs grands concepts de sa philosophie (la « Nouvelle Phénoménologie » développée dès les années 1960), destinée à élucider l’expérience vécue involontaire : dynamique du corps de chair (Leib), suggestions de mouvements, caractères (...) synesthésiques. (shrink)

L’œuvre littéraire et poétique de Gaston Bachelard tourne autour des potentialités imaginaires des matières, formes et mouvements (peu sur les couleurs), tout à tour mis en avant dans ses ouvrages. Si la dynamogénie du corps à travers les mouvements touche peu la scénographie, ses travaux sur les quatre matières de la nature et sur la géométrie de l’espace ( La poétique de l’espace est un des plus traduits et présent dans beaucoup d’écoles d’architecture dans le monde), proposent par contre de (...) multiples leçons sur la symbolique de l’espace naturel ou construit techniquement. Si ces éléments sont surtout abordés comme entités et moins comme des ensembles, comme des totalités agencées, ils livrent cependant bien des savoirs sur les potentialités de signification, objectives et subjectives, conscientes et inconscientes, des structures spatiales. L’article se propose de parcourir certains de ces résultats et d’en induire des leçons pour la création d’espaces, provocateurs d’émotions esthétiques, de surcharges symboliques et de transformation des représentations à partir d’une phénoménologie des formes et matériaux. (shrink)

Cet article examine la portée politique de l’esthétique des atmosphères de Gernot Böhme, en analysant sa filiation avec la théorie critique de Walter Benjamin. Puisque Böhme se réclame des analyses de ce dernier sur l’aura, il convient de les mobiliser pour envisager l’efficace des atmosphères, qu’il se propose lui-même d’explorer. L’étude proposée par Benjamin de la fantasmagorie du Paris du XIXe siècle, aura paradoxale, permet de penser la dimension sensible des rapports de force à laquelle s’intéresse Böhme et s’avère (...) un outil précieux pour cerner les effets des esthétiques urbaines contemporaines sur le corps des usagers. (shrink)

This paper is a fragment of the book “Kaja od Radosława, czyli historia Hubalowego Krzyża”, which was published by Warszawskie Wydawnictwo Literackie Muza in 2006. It will be published by the American publisher The Military History Press under the title “Kaia Savior of the Hubal Cross”. Covering a century of Polish history, it is full of tragic and compelling events. Such historic events as Polish life in Siberia, Warsaw before the war, the German occupation, the Warsaw Uprising, life in Ostaszków, (...) and the rebuilding of Warsaw are included.The hero Kaia is a woman, christened Cesaria, whose father was expelled to Siberia in 1905 for conspiring against the tsar. Kaia spent her early childhood there, and the family lived near the mountain Altaj. A chapter shows how the Polish community lived there, organized their daily lives, etc. In 1922, the family returned to free Poland, the train trip back taking almost a year. This ordeal is highlighted as a series of stops sometimes lasting for weeks because of heavy snow accumulation, the men shoveling a pathway for the train to pass through, many deaths occurring from the frigid cold with the “caboose” used as a mortuary for Poles to be returned to their homeland for burial. Kaia entered the school system, was eventually educated as an architect, and then World War II started. She lived under the German occupation for the first few years, and later became a conspirator by helping the underground movement. She joined the Armia Krajowa in 1942. At considerable risk, her apartment became a meeting place for the conspirators.After Hubal’s death, one of his couriers gave Kaia the Hubal Cross Virtuti Militari. The cross was with her for the ensuing 50 years. During the Warsaw Uprising, in which she was a courier, she carried the cross around her neck. Many times, she had to travel via the Warsaw underground sewer system. Twice, she was wounded. After the Warsaw Uprising collapsed, she went to the east territory to look for her mother. She was captured by the Russian NKVD in Białystok and sent to Ostaszków. An interesting scene describes one of many interrogations: the Russian interrogator asks if she knows about the cross. Her reply causes a puzzled look on his face. The cross was never discovered (she had hidden it in a specially made shoe). Protection of the Virtuti Militari Cross, which at first had been a challenge to Kaia to survive the Uprising and Russian imprisonment, later became a symbol of courage and determination of the Polish people. In 1946, Kaia returned to Poland very ill and weighing only 38 kg (83.6 pounds). Eventually recovering her health, she worked as an architect involved in the rebuilding of Warsaw totally decimated by the Germans.In the Warsaw Uprising chapter, Kaia’s diary is included, and the book relates the scenes and events that she described. One such experience is most moving. It was a quiet moment, i.e. the shooting had subsided. On a warm beautiful August night, she was sitting, enjoying the quiet alone when, a young man sat down next to her. He was a colleague from architectural school. Together, a few months earlier, they had attended a university ball, and Kaia remembered him as always being funny and amusing. Then, she noticed he was missing one eye and part of his chin. He returned her gaze and jokingly said, “I still have one eye left”. And then, he quietly sang a popular song that they had danced the waltz to… “Not to be in love on such a beautiful night is a sin”… Kaia had to be in the same mood as he was and smiled. A few days later, half of his body was covered in ruins…he could not be helped. His death lasted several days, and he is buried in Powązki Cemetery, like many soldiers of the Uprising. (shrink)

Since the publication in 1975 of Paul Virilio's Bunker Archeology, the range of Virilio's critical works and their impact have now become clear within a variety of subjects. Making astonishing interventions into art and architecture, geography, cultural studies, media, literature, aesthetics and sociology, the momentous implications of which have yet to be entirely understood, Virilio is the cultural theorist for our troubled twenty-first century. Responding to this growing interdisciplinary interest, Virilio Now: Current Perspectives in Virilio Studies comprises Sean Cubitt's critical (...) overview of Virilio's aesthetics of disappearance, an important newly translated text by Virilio interrogating the impact of contemporary art, and eight other major original essays by noted scholars on the wide scope of Virilio's writings, inclusive of Adam Sharr on Virilio and the architect Peter Zumthor's Bruder Klaus chapel, and Nigel Thrift's crucial assessment of Virilio's City of Panic. Substantial coverage of Virilio's essential texts such as The Information Bomb is presented alongside his hypermodern conjectures on television and speed, globalization, media and representation. Navigating Virilio's 'accident of art', the 'aesthetics of disappearance' and widespread cultural devastation, additional essays bring together considerations of financial adversity, war, calamity and the apocalypse. Dazzling yet perceptive, these texts on the 'post-nuclear imagination', terror and dread are simultaneously creative and theoretical extrapolations from Virilio's 'scenic imagination' and companion essays to his most contemporary, highly original and powerful books such as The Original Accident and The University of Disaster. Clearly introduced by the editor, Virilio Now is the preeminent single volume on Virilio's work and world available today."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In the paper Gernot Böhme considers the spatial aspects of the perception of sound, especially the human voice, which he sees not as a verbal bearer of meaning but the expression of “the speaker’s atmospheric presence.” The voice lends the communication space emotional colour and the atmospheres it creates envelop the communication partners by way of resonance. The author sets the signatures concept propounded by the Renaissance philosopher Jacob Böhme against semiotic theories: understanding music is not interpretation but resonance. (...) Gernot Böhme also focuses on contemporary experimental music, where musical instruments are not treated as tools for the production of musical sounds but bodies “provoked” to generate specific sounds in the acoustic space. (shrink)

Cet article vise à exposer et discuter les thèses du phénoménologue Mikel Dufrenne au sujet de la danse. Dans _Phénoménologie de l’expérience esthétique_, Dufrenne interroge l’art chorégraphique aux côtés des autres arts et depuis les concepts « d’objet esthétique », « d’_a priori _existentiel » et de « monde ». Plus exactement, il soutient que l’œuvre chorégraphique déploie, par l’entremise des danseurs, de leurs mouvements et des autres éléments scéniques, une atmosphère affective qui correspond à l’attitude existentielle du chorégraphe. Après (...) élucidation du sens de ces formules, et en vue d’approcher davantage du phénomène chorégraphique, nous soulevons une triple réserve vis-à-vis de la position dufrennienne. (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive development and defense of one of the guiding assumptions of evolutionary psychology: that the human mind is composed of a large number of semi-independent modules. The Architecture of the Mind has three main goals. One is to argue for massive mental modularity. Another is to answer a 'How possibly?' challenge to any such approach. The first part of the book lays out the positive case supporting massive modularity. It also outlines how the thesis should best (...) be developed, and articulates the notion of 'module' that is in question. Then the second part of the book takes up the challenge of explaining how the sorts of flexibility and creativity that are distinctive of the human mind could possibly be grounded in the operations of a massive number of modules.Peter Carruthers's third aim is to show how the various components of the mind are likely to be linked and interact with one another - indeed, this is crucial to demonstrating how the human mind, together with its familiar capacities, can be underpinned by a massively modular set of mechanisms. He outlines and defends the basic framework of a perception / belief / desire / planning / motor-control architecture, as well as detailing the likely components and their modes of connectivity. Many specific claims about the place within this architecture of natural language, of a mind-reading system, and others are explained and motivated. A number of novel proposals are made in the course of these discussions, one of which is that creative human thought depends upon a prior kind of creativity of action.Written with unusual clarity and directness, and surveying an extensive range of research in cognitive science, this book will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in the nature and organization of the mind. (shrink)

On 15 October 1959, Rudolf Carnap, a leading member of the recently founded Vienna Circle, came to lecture at the Bauhaus in Dessau, southwest of Berlin. Carnap had just finished his magnum opus, The Logical Construction of the World, a book that immediately became the bible of the new antiphilosophy announced by the logical positivists. From a small group in Vienna, the movement soon expanded to include an international following, and in the sixty years since has exerted a powerful sway (...) over the conduct of the philosophy of science as well as over wide branches of philosophy, economics, psychology, and physics. The site of Carnap’s lecture that day, the Dessau Bauhaus, was a stunning building designed by Walter Gropius and dedicated just three years earlier. Protected by its flat roof and glass walls, the artists, architects, weavers, and furniture designers had made the school a citadel of high modernism. It was here that Carnap addressed an enthusiastic audience on “Science and Life.” “I work in science,” he began, “and you in visible forms; the two are only different sides of a single life.”1 In this paper I will explore this “single life” of which the new philosophy and the new art were to be different facets; in the process, I hope to cast light on the shared modernist impulses that drove both disciplines in the interwar years. 1. Rudolf Carnap, lecture notes for his Bauhaus lecture, “Wissenschaft und Leben,” prepared 1 Oct. 1929 and delivered 15 Oct. 1929, transcription from shorthand by Gerald Heverly, Carnap Papers in the Archives of Scientific Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Libraries, University of Pittsburgh , document RC 110-07-49. Quoted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh. All rights reserved. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. Peter Galison is associate professor in the departments of philosophy and physics at Stanford University, where he co-chairs the program in the history of science. His primary interest is in the history and philosophy of experimentation, the subject of his How Experiments End and Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research, edited with Bruce Hevly . His current project is entitled Image and Logic: The Material Culture of Modern Physics. (shrink)

Another monumental ZKM publication, redefining politics as a concern for things around which the fluid and expansive constituency of the public gathers; with contributions by more than 100 writers and artists.

In J. Evans and K. Frankish (eds.), In Two Minds: dual processes and beyond. Oxford University Press, 2008. (In draft.).

The case for massively modular models of mind -- The architecture of animal minds -- Modules of the human mind -- Modularity and flexibility : the first steps -- Creative cognition in a modular mind -- The cognitive basis of science -- Distinctively human practical reason.

This chapter traces the genealogy of the term atmosphere in the German language, identifies historical semantic shifts, and points to its grammatical specifics. The state of research on atmospheres is briefly summarized and an overview is offered of the various definitions of the term in different disciplines. Drawing on Timothy Morton’s theory of ambient poetics, and on Hermann Schmitz’s “new phenomenology,” four key characteristics of atmospheres are discussed and elaborated: their mereological constitution, their modal structure, their intensification at affective thresholds, (...) and their affective efficacy through suggestions of movement. (shrink)

Architectural Drawings as Investigating Devices explores how the changing modes of representation in architecture and urbanism relate to the transformation of how the addressees of architecture and urbanism are conceived. The book diagnoses the dominant epistemological debates in architecture and urbanism during the 20th and 21st centuries. It traces their transformations, paying special attention to Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s preference for perspective representation, to the diagrams of Team 10 architects, to the critiques of functionalism, and the (...) upgrade of the artefactual value of architectural drawings in Aldo Rossi, John Hejduk, Peter Eisenman, and Oswald Mathias Ungers, and, finally, to the reinvention of architectural programme through the event in Bernard Tschumi and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Particular emphasis is placed on the spirit of truth and clarity in modernist architecture, the relationship between the individual and the community in post-war era architecture, the decodification of design process as syntactic analogy and the paradigm of autonomy in the 1970s and 1980s architecture, the concern about the dynamic character of urban conditions and the potentialities hidden in architectural programme in the post-autonomy era. This book is based on extensive archival research in Canada, the USA and Europe, and will be of interest to architects, artists, researchers and students in architecture, architectural history, theory, cultural theory, philosophy and aesthetics. (shrink)

This volume provides the reader with an integrated overview of state-of-the-art research in philosophy and ethics of design in engineering and architecture.

The phenomenology of atmospheres is recently gaining attention in debates on situated affectivity. Atmospheres are defined as holistic affective qualities of situations that integrate disparate affective forces into an identifiable and unitary gestalt. They point to a blurred, pathic, relational, and pre-individual form of experience which has been described in terms of ecological affordances. Despite its relevance in diverse areas of research such as architecture, phenomenological psychiatry and aesthetics, a thorough analysis of the phenomena of affective atmospheres from an enactive-ecological (...) perspective is missing in the literature. This article aims at clarifying how and to what extent affective atmospheres can be accommodated into ecological-enactive understandings of the environment in terms of affordances. To do so, I review four perspectives on ecological affordances – the gibsonian account, the relational account, affective affordances, and the Skill Intentionality Framework (SIF) – and contrast them with the ontological and epistemológical principles that ground the phenomenology of atmospheres. I argue that only the field perspective developed in SIF is compatible with the phenomenology of atmospheres. From this perspective, affective atmospheres can be understood as phenomenological counterparts of context sensitivity, that is, as the holistic and pathic background feelings that make certain affordances more salient than others. As a conclusion, the analysis in this article shows the potential of the phenomenology of atmospheres to enrich the ecological-enactive cognition framework. It also highlights the opportunity to construct a situated understanding of affectivity that is informed by phenomenological perspectives. (shrink)

Parue en 1953, la Phénoménologie de l'expérience esthétique applique pour la première fois à l'esthétique l'appareil conceptuel de la phénoménologie. Elle élabore une analyse de l'oeuvre d'art et, plus largement, de l'objet esthétique, si divers et changeants qu'en soient les traits singuliers. Elle s'attache à décrire l'expérience esthétique vécue, ce moyen privilégié que nous avons d'éprouver notre présence au sensible. Elle célèbre cette forme heureuse du sentir, ce haut moment de la perception où se révèle, à la limite du pensable, (...) la connivence originaire de l'homme et du monde. (shrink)

Mediaeval psychological theory was a “faculty psychology”: a confederation of semiautonomous sub-personal agents, the interaction of which constitutes our psychological experience. One such faculty was intellective appetite, that is, the will. On what grounds was the will taken to be a distinct faculty? After a brief survey of Aristotle's criteria for identifying and distinguishing mental faculties, I look in some detail at the mainstream mediaeval view, given clear expression by Thomas Aquinas, and then at the dissenting views of John Duns (...) Scotus and William of Ockham. I conclude with some reflections on why the mainstream mediaeval view was discarded by Descartes. (shrink)

This article outlines the main themes and motivations of Carruthers, 2006. Its purpose is to provide some background for the critical commentaries of Cowie, Machery, and Wilson (this volume).

In the texts that presented the theoretical assumptions of the Parc de La Villette, Bernard Tschumi used a large number of terms that contradicted not only the traditional principles of composing architecture, but also negated the rules of social order and the foundations of Western metaphysics. Tschumi’s statements, which are a continuation of his leftist political fascinations from the May 1968 revolution, as well as his interest in the philosophy of French poststructuralism and his collaboration with Jacques Derrida, prove that (...) terms such as disruption, dissociation, disfunction, disjunctions and dispersion not only referred to architectural problems but also applied to political criticism and the deepest foundations of thinking itself. His collaboration with Derrida manifested itself primarily in the publication La Case Vide: La Villette, 1985, in which the architect’s design drawings and texts explaining his concepts related to the Park de La Villette were accompanied by an extensive essay by Derrida, which included theoretical problems taken up by Tschumi in a philosophical context. Architectural and philosophical issues were also combined during seven discussion meetings organised by Peter Eisenman, invited by Tschumi to collaborate on the design of the Parc de La Villette. Eisenman, who, like Tschumi, invited Derrida to participate in the design of the park and also led to the publication of Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman, in which his ideas were confronted with Derrida’s philosophical text. In this case, Derrida’s essay was not a direct commentary on the architect’s concepts, but rather a reflection on the question of the chôra presented by Plato in Timaeus. During the discussion and in his essay, Derrida pointed out that the chôra is a component of the created world, yet it does not belong to it, but precedes it. The originality of the chôra is so radical that she also precedes all the factors of creating the world, including ideas and the Demiurge. Thus a thesis appeared in the metaphysics of the West that the chôra is a form of active abyss, in relation to which all beings are secondary, both those perfect (as ideas or God) and those created, such as the world, things, people or language. This leads to the conclusion that the chôra does not exist, because all existence is a derivative of the chôra. Nor could the chôra be described, since it is a form of developing a space that is preceded by a lack of space characteristic of the chôra. Derrida intended the chôra to be an instance with an exceptional degree of transcendentalism, an anti-metaphysical instance, but also an a-theological one. However, this attempt failed, both in the field of secular philosophy and in the field of theology. Derrida’s characteristics of the chôra to strengthen its transcendentalism and negation of metaphysics had to be expressed in a language that immediately produces new concepts and a new metaphysics that reproduces the categories of the beginning, the origin or the foundation known from earlier philosophical traditions. All forms of criticism of metaphysics are also inspired by negative, apophatic and mystical theology. The undermining of many concepts of permanent meaning and the introduction of new concepts of unstable meaning, characteristic of the philosophy of deconstruction, had many features of originality, but it was directed towards problems whose solutions repeat, with the use of new vocabulary, the findings known in culture since Democritus. Thus, if apophatic philosophy can be regarded as deconstruction avant la lettre, then deconstruction itself in its late versions began to take on the features of a new religion. The exchange of inspiration between theology and deconstruction was manifested in a series of scientific conferences and publications in which Derrida’s philosophical concepts were interpreted within the scope of religious thought. Theological threads began to be found in such concepts of deconstruction as différance or the chôra, while at the same time Derrida himself undertook in his philosophy to study problems such as the Other (L’Autre) or Impossible (Impossible), which belonged to newer theological traditions. As a consequence of the new problems, the deconstruction became closer to the features of a new religion. Philosophy, at least from Kant’s time, has tried to create a system that would take over from religion the tasks of setting moral and political goals. Similarly, Derrida has directed his interest towards the problems of democracy and ethics, which would enable their renewal. Attempts to create a new religion (cleared of old metaphors), a new community or a new democracy bring problems and threats which may be no less troublesome than the previous systems. All promises of freedom carry with them threats, the greater the more they strive for perfection. The renewal of existential orders, sometimes carried out by means of violent changes, is a certain repetitive feature of human cultures. Deep changes, however, do not protect against the return of both old gods and old demons. Tschumi and Derrida were shaped in their youth by the atmosphere of leftist rebellion against the moral and political limitations of ossified communities and the imperfections of democracy. The ethical theme distinguishes many of their works, including the Parc de La Villette. The opposition to the metaphysical traditions of philosophy and architecture contained in this park was prompted by specific political situations and resulted from bringing political issues to the level of philosophical considerations. Achievements made at the level of pure concepts were then subject to elevation, to a kind of sacralization, which made them religious concepts. The deconstruction reached for the stratus of the new religion especially when it found its followers and began to generate moral obligations. In the new situation, terms such as the chôra, l’autre or the Impossible were absolutized and in relation to them a cult and attitude of adoration emerged. The Parc de La Villtette then gained new post-secular meanings, which allow it to be assigned the function of a Temple of Otherness (L’Autre) and Impossible. (shrink)

Deconstruction and the Visual Arts brings together a series of new essays by scholars of aesthetics, art history and criticism, film, television and architecture. Working with the ideas of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, the essays explore the full range of his analyses. They are modelled on the variety of critical approaches that he has encouraged, from critiques of the foundations of our thinking and disciplinary demarcation, to creative and experimental readings of visual 'texts'. Representing some of the most innovative thinking (...) in the various arts disciplines, these contributions offer important challenges to existing disciplinary orthodoxies. Also included in this volume is a long interview with Derrida, published here for the first time. (shrink)

L’atmosphère« Atmosphère » est un terme employé communément par des auteurs dans le domaine de l’esthétique que dans celui de la météorologie. Ils le comprennent pourtant de manière assez différente, chacun prétendant que leur emploi est la plus fondamentale et que l’autre est seulement métaphorique. Pour les esthéticiens, l’atmosphère réelle est une aura qui émane des choses et qui affecte nos humeurs et nos motivations; pour les météorologistes, il s’agit de l’enveloppe gazeuse qui entoure la planète. Je montre que les (...) deux sens excluent l’air ou le réduisent à un éther immatériel. D’une part, pour la science météorologique, tout se passe comme l’air était enfermé à l’intérieur et considéré comme un ensemble d’effets mesurables et calculables. D’autre part,l’esthétique de l’affect a relié l’atmosphère aux formes solides des artéfacts et des paysages. En ramenant le medium aérien, je cherche une signification de l’atmosphère qui transcende l’opposition entre l’affectif et le météorologique. Je le fais en suivant Merleau-Ponty, qui traite l’atmosphère comme un espace d’inspiration et d’expiration. En tant que tel, il correspond étroitement à ce que Merleau-Ponty lui-même appelle la « chair ». Ce concept pourrait aussi être traduit par « meshwork » (réseau/filet/grillage), référant à ces faisceaux de lignes et de chemins par lesquels chaque être humain est cousu à la fabrique du monde. Pour Merleau-Ponty, la portée de la notion de chair réside dans l’affirmation que la perception est fondamentalement réversible. On ne peut être sentant que dans un monde sentant; c’est pourquoi, comme il le soutient, notre perception des choses dans l’environnement répond à la perception par l’environnementde notre soi. Cependant, je soutiens au contraire que ces deux mouvements d’inspiration et d’expiration ne sont pas le contraire exact l’un de l’autre. Comme le mouvement de la brasse en nataion, le premier est un mouvement de rassemblement et le second de propulsion. Nous inhalons l’atmosphère, mais nous exhalons selon les lignes du réseau. Bref, réseau et atmosphère sont deux côtés de la chair, et c’est dans leur alternance rythmique que nous trouvons la relation entre les lignes et le temps météorologique, qui est, comme je le soutiens, fondamental à la vie.L’atmosfera‘Atmosfera’ è una parola usata comunemente tanto da chi scrive di estetica come dai metereologi. Ciononostante, essi intendono con ciò delle cose piuttosto differenti, ognuno ritenendo che il proprio e il senso più fondamentale mentre l’altrui è meramente metaforico. Per chi si occupa di estetica, l’atmosfera reale è un’aura che emana dalle cose e affetta il nostro umore e le nostre motivazioni; per i metereologi è l’involucro gassoso che circonda il pianeta. Mostro come entrambi i sensi trascurano l’aria, o la riducono a un etere immateriale. Da una parte, per la scienza metereologica, è come se l’aria fosse stata portata al chiuso e presentata come una serie di effetti misurabili e calcolati. Dall’altra, l’estetica dell’affetto ha legato l’atmosfera alle forme solide degli artefatti e dei paesaggi.Nel reintrodurre l’ambiente aereo, intendo trovare un significato di atmosfera che trascenda l’opposizione tra i sensi affettivo e meteorologico. Faccio questo, seguendo Merleau-Ponty, trattando l’atmosfera come uno spazio di inalazione e esalazione. Come tale, corrisponde da vicino a ciò che Merleau-Ponty stesso chiama “la carne”. Ma questo concetto potrebbe anche essere tradotto come ‘reticolo’ (meshwork), riferendosi a quei grovigli di linee e percorsi lungo i quali ogni essere vivente è cucito al tessuto del mondo. Per Merleau-Ponty, il significato della carne risiede nella sua affermazione secondo la quale la percezione è fondamentalmente reversibile. Si può essere senzienti soltanto in un mondo senziente; quindi, ritiene il filosofo, la nostra percezione delle cose nell’ambienteè ricambiata dalla percezione che quest’ultimo ha di noi. Io mostro, al contrario, che questi due movimenti, corrispondenti all’inalazione e all’esalazione, non sono l’esatto rovescio l’uno dell’altro. Come nella bracciata a stile libero nel nuoto, il primo è un movimento di raccolta, il secondo un movimento di propulsione. Ovverossia, inaliamo l’atmosfera, ma esaliamo secondo le linee del reticolo. In breve, il reticolo e l’atmosfera sono due facce della carne, e troviamo nella loro alternanza ritmica la relazione tra le linee e il tempo che, come sostengo, è fondamentale alla vita. (shrink)

Atmospheres are affective, sensory realms, where mood is palpable. Memory landscapes intensify affectivity, amplifying emotion. The senses, especially smell and taste, trigger and heighten memory. There is therefore a potent intersection between landscape, atmospheres, memory, and the senses. These connections present the compelling prospect that atmospheres could be designed, with the intention of enhancing memory landscapes through sensory means. This paper is written from the perspective of landscape architecture, a discipline which designs and shapes landscapes. Landscape architects work within the (...) spatially and temporally fluid context of the landscape, and aligned with this is the prospect of generating and tuning atmospheres. Past traumatic events, losses of people and places, float in atmospheres of melancholy. Two projects are explored here to probe the possibilities of intentionally invoking atmospheres, exploring how the landscape could be sensorially tonalised. The memorial landscape of Pike River where 29 men died in a mine explosion, and Laura Daly’s augmented reality artwork, The Storm Cone, offer insights into the possibilities of atmospheric design. (shrink)

Following Jean-Marc Besse’s identification of landscape as a dynamic, changing, relational and ‘emergent’ entity, I argue in this article that the artistic creative process is a way of ‘doing with’ landscape that fully embraces this peculiarity of landscape. The art of dance, in particular, makes it clear that it is the artist who creates a kind of mutual attraction between the (trans)formative forces of the landscape, suggesting its renewal and thus giving impetus to its metamorphic and transformative nature. Drawing on (...) Tonino Griffero’s neo-phenomenological approach to the characterisation of landscape as an atmosphere, i.e. as an emotional tonality effused in a ‘felt-bodily’ space, I emphasise the role of the affective dimension in the perception of landscape as something ‘to do with’ rather than ‘to act upon’ in artistic practice. To this end, I take as a case study Anna Halprin’s ‘exploratory’ dance, which focuses on fostering an individual and collective search for a harmonisation of the relationship between movement and emotion. Drawing on notions of the ‘felt body’, ‘atmospheric affordances’ and ‘ecstasies of things’, I analyse the role that her outdoor dance studio – designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin – plays in placing the creative process at the centre of dance’s very specific way of ‘doing with’ the landscape. (shrink)

This paper discusses the concept of climate in relation to architectural space. By elaborating on the notion of atmosphere, that today permeates a wide range of architectural research, I intend to expand its relevance by outlining a relationship between atmosphere and climate analogous to what occurs in meteorological studies. While climate represents a rather stable (if evolving) cycle of recurring conditions, atmospheric events are fleeting and less predictable. Equally, architectural spaces can establish a general climatic scaffolding that increases the possibility (...) of particular atmospheres to unfold, without however evolving into a deterministic cause-effect relationship. By addressing and comparing philosophical notions and architectural questions, I intend to formulate a novel theorisation as a useful tool for both criticism and design. (shrink)

Language is inherently multimodal. In spoken languages, combined spoken and visual signals (e.g., co-speech gestures) are an integral part of linguistic structure and language representation. This requires an extension of the parallel architecture, which needs to include the visual signals concomitant to speech. We present the evidence for the multimodality of language. In addition, we propose that distributional semantics might provide a format for integrating speech and co-speech gestures in a common semantic representation.