Evoking through Design

Evoking Through Design: Contemporary Moods in Architecture is visually stunning, featuring built work and speculative projects, which highlight how contemporary practices are using devices such as spatial compositing, surface articulation and novel manipulations of materials in order to constitute spatial conditions radiating in delicate and sophisticated atmospheres.

Contributors: Benjamin Bratton, Jeffrey Kipnis, Neil Leach, Silvia Levin, Frederic Migayrou, Juhani Pallasmaa, David Ruy, and Mario Carpo.

Architects: Phillip Beesley, Marjan Colletti, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Evan Douglis, Michael Hansmayer, Steven Holl,Ferda Kolatan, Sean Lally, Greg Lynn and Peter Zumthor.

About the Guest-Editor 05
Matias Del Campo

Introduction Moods and Other Ontological Catastrophes 06
Matias del Campo

Mood Swings

Architectural Affective Disorder 14
John McMorrough

!ntimacy

Eragatory’s Experiments in Materiality, Deep Texture and Mood 20
Isaie Bloch

Aesthetics as Politics

The Khaleesi Tower on West 57th Street, NYC 26
Mark Foster Gage

Figuring Mood

The Role of Stimmung in the Formal Approachof Heinrich Wölfflin andAlois Riegl 34
Andrew Saunders

Low Albedo

The Mathilde Project 42
Jason Payne

Oh, Vienna!

An Interview with Wolf D Prix of Coop Himmelb(l)au 46
Matias del Campo

Moody Objects

Ore Fashion Stores and Blocks 54
Matias del Campo

The Affects of Realism

Or the Estrangement of the Background 58
Michael Young

Parrhesia-stases

(The Preamble) 66
François Roche with Camille Lacadée

Affects of Intricate Mass

The Strange Characteristics of the RMIT Mace and NGV Pavilion 72
Roland Snooks

Excessive Resolution

From Digital Streamlining to Computational Complexity 78
Mario Carpo

Something Else, Something Raw

From ProtoHouse to Blokhut: The Aesthetics of Computational Assemblage 84
Gilles Retsin

XenoCells

In the Mood for the Unseen 90
Alisa Andrasek

Bad Mood

On Design and ‘Empathy’ 96
Benjamin H Bratton

Emanating Objects

The Atmospheric Ecosystems Generated by Gelatinous Orb and Buru Buru 102
Michael Loverich

Mood, Posture and Rhythmic Feedback

MONAD Studio’s Sonic Experiments with 3D-Printed Musical Instruments 108
Eric Goldemberg

The Awesome and Capricious Language of Past, Present and Future Digital Moods 118
Marjan Colletti

Counterpoint The Sixth Sense

The Meaning of Atmosphere and Mood 126
Juhani Pallasmaa

Contributors 134

Matias del Campo is Associate Professor of Architecture at Taubman College, University of Michigan. Chilean-born and Austrian by nationality, Matias graduated with distinction from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. In 2003 he co-founded SPAN Architects in Vienna, together with Sandra Manninger. The practice is best known for its sophisticated application of contemporary technologies in architectural production. Its award-winning architectural designs are informed by Baroque geometries, romantic atmospheres and biological systems.

There is an elemental conviction that great architecture must move us. It should trigger an emotional response: the drawing in of breath on entering a Gothic cathedral. But how is it possible to create highly contemporary architectural spaces that are infused with atmosphere, ambience and mood? Evoking Through Design: Contemporary Moods in Architecture highlights how up-to-date architectural technologies and techniques can be combined with traditional knowledge and design skills to enhance the sensorial qualities of space. Moods range from the lighthearted, the colourful, playful and happy to the painterly, the nebulous, the drama of chiaroscuro light and shade, the gloomy and the cavernous.

A visually stunning title, Evoking Through Design features built work and speculative projects that highlight how contemporary practices are using devices such as spatial compositing, surface articulation, novel manipulations of matter and computational code in order to constitute spatial conditions radiating in delicate and sophisticated atmospheres. The theoretical foundations of the subject are also explored through core essays on key themes: the historic lineage of the evocation of atmosphere and moods in architecture; the more recent preoccupation with speculative realism in architecture; the human body and atmosphere; and picturesque techniques.

Contributors: Benjamin H Bratton, Matias del Campo, Mario Carpo, Marjan Colletti, Eric Goldemberg, John McMorrough, Juhani Pallasmaa, Andrew Saunders, and Michael Young.

Featured architects: Alisa Andrasek, Isaie Bloch, Mark Foster Gage, Jason Payne, Gilles Retsin, François Roche and Camille Lacadée, and Roland Snooks.