Placing Atmosphere: Designing with a Client’s Perception of Atmosphere in Mind in Architecture and Urban Design

Philip Speranza (University of Oregon)

Atmospheric experience of sound, light, heat and humidity (Rahm 2014), whether considered negative problems to avoid or positive gritty downtown qualities to exploit, is often understood as a matter of perception. Client perception may often time be shaped by a past project or by the baseline of their own home as evolved over time. Is it possible to numerically measure a baseline understanding, both past and present, of a client’s perception? Emerging tools of remote sensing including their geo-locational positioning within 1m, data accessibility, cheapness, battery life and data aggregation accessibility now make it possible measure client’s home and post-project conditions at the same time as new project data. Designers may now integrate qualitative descriptions of experience with locational (Whyte 1980) (Appleyard 1982) (Franck and Stevens 2006) and numerical data of those same experiences, empowers designers to better know their client and to “place” atmospheric data.

This paper will describe the investigation of contextualizing client perception in experiencing atmospheric phenomena at the human scale in professional practice as informed by the education of students. Foundational architectural theories about perception and phenomenology and time will be explained. This paper will then explain the steps of a design process that relate human experience mostly gathered via interviews from human experiences and numerical data used to bridge the gap between human perception and analytical data. Case study will include a professional adaptive-reuse mixed-use development and methods tested in an educational urban design project. Challenges related to seasonal times of data collection, sensor deployment over various scales the neighborhood, client residence, a previous client project and unbuilt locations and media communication will be discussed. Conclusions will reflect on the new knowledge gained by the architect and client to contextualize, place and include perception into numerical data analytics to design feelings and spaces.