The International Ambiances Network aims at structuring and developing the research field of architectural and urban ambiances. It wishes to promote the sensory domain in the questioning and design of lived space. This sensitive approach of the built environment involves all the senses (sound, light, odors, touch, heat, etc.).

The International Ambiances Network favors multisensoriality and pluridisciplinarity (human and social sciences; architecture and urban planning; engineering and applied physics). It is open to a wide variety of profiles and includes research activities as well as design, teaching or artistic ones.

Questioning the notion of comfort in the urban environment focuses attention on our relationship with the inhabited spaces. In this thematic school, the notion of comfort will be investigated in the so-called “innovative” districts targeting energy transition, as is the case of the Presqu’Île in Grenoble. By identifying the various amenities of the territory, and by capturing what reveals the standardized comfort (seeking a homogenization of sensation) and what reveals the sensory comfort (searching, on the contrary, a variation of sensation), this will open a new reflection that questions the relationship between a sensory diagnosis capable of carrying prospective design intentions and an urban development model that is still evolving.

Deadline for registration: December 25th 2017

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This two-day conference and workshop presents an interdisciplinary interrogation of the place of theatre in the understanding of ”atmosphere”. Within the current interdisciplinary atmospheric turn, theatre has presented itself as an heuristic paradigm in which the social, material and political elements of atmosphere are thought to resonate – albeit in an idealised manner. How stable is this paradigm as it departs from the specificities and exigencies of theatrical practice? What might the extended mode and model of ”performance” with which theatre studies has conducted a sustained enquiry over more than half a century, add to other disciplinary studies of ”atmosphere”?

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The CNRS International Research Group (GDRI) was initiated by the International Ambiances Network to explore the issue of ambiances in translation. The aim of the 4th seminar is to look at how the field of ambiances is transformed and hybridized as soon as it comes into contact with design practice and development constraints. We shall draw on the experience of each team to put into perspective the various contexts, applications and uses of the ambiance concept. This form of translation will deliberately focus on a forward-looking approach, in search of new modus operandi for design.

By focusing on operations designed to clarify, explore, experiment and look to the future, we can assess the possibility of a pragmatist attitude to ambiances. In this respect our purpose is not so much to take stock of existing learning or to stop at a single model for making sense of ambiance, but rather to put to the test a field of research and action that is in the process of taking shape

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Ambiances are at the heart of this research and workshop, as a way to reveal how this modern heritage is understood/approached and its peculiarities in times of energy transition.

 Conferences and field work will tend to investigate the users’ perceptions and representations of several modern residential sites as well as to sharpen the students’ ability to design an architectural and urban project taking into account environmental and social aspects.

The workshop is an opportunity for the students to confront their knowledge and practice to alterity – be it cultural (American – French) or based on their status (professional, apprentice, daily user of the sites…).

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In the 2017 edition, the aim of the Mobiance 3 seminar and workshop will be to study the relationship between the sharing society paradigm, new mobile technologies and how these are changing the way we interact and design cities. The event is, in fact, intended as an opportunity for exploring novel ideas and for envisioning future urban scenarios for the facilitation and development of the sharing society in cities.

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The seminar brings together researchers in social sciences, cartographers and human rights activists / NGOs. The purpose is to reflect on the challenges of mapping urban violence and the memories of violence which are most of the time conflicting. The workshop seeks to discuss the possibility and purposes of mapping political violence from a variety of data collected on the ground, among populations, by actors and activists from non-governmental organizations, Human rights organization and by researchers. The workshop will propose a comparative approach of two cities which can be considered in a state of war: Srinagar, in Kashmir and Hebron, in Palestine.

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While the first Congress held in Grenoble in 2008 was all about forging a community and taking stock of research and practices in creating architectural and urban ambiances, the second Congress held in Montreal in 2012 was able to point up their practical – and even praxeological dimensions, be they of an architectural, urban, social, aesthetic, artistic, political, technical, environmental or pedagogical nature.

The Third Congress will be used to circumscribe the notion of ambiance (or atmosphere) in a dynamic prospective and demonstrate how it can become an operator in transforming our habitats, cities and societies. So, the future of ambiances can be analysed according to a three-fold perspective in terms of its pragmatic, theoretical and prospective dimensions.

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Call for Abstracts: The Atmospheric Approach to Architecture in the Anthropocene.

Deadline: Feb. 20, 2020

Conference sponsored by the Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University, in Montreal, May 1st-4th, 2020.

Call for Papers available here

Conference sponsored by the Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University, in Montreal, May 1st-4th, 2020.

Call for Papers available here

A new book on Atmospheres edited by Tonino Griffero and Giampiero Moretti.

How to envision ambiances? Representing (past, present and future) atmospheres for architecture and the built environment.

The session brings attention to new spacings of terror and terror threat that go beyond the representational, state-centred, and territorial framings of national security, risk and resilience, geopolitics and identity studies. Katz’s work on security, performativity and the everyday urban environment (Katz 2007) is updated here and the research question and analysis pushed further into the everyday visceral materialities, bodily experiences, elemental aspects and ambiances/atmospheres that compose the changing landscapes of terror and terror threat.

The interplay of tourism and heritage is a powerful medium affecting cultural change in urban centres. This panel seeks to analyse its impact on the urban environment, focusing on the concept of "ambiance" to explore the regeneration and sensory transformation of contemporary touristic places.

The International Ambiances Network opens up the possibility for its members to organize this major event, and will provide help and financial support to its realization.

The Call for applications + all necessary details are online.

Applications deadline: June 30th 2018, 13:00 (GMT)

In this issue we shall be investigating experimenting on ambiances, or rather through ambiances, in the sense that the aim is not just to describe existing or given situations as such (with the possibility that they may include a certain type of experience), but also to set up the modalities of “making ambiance”, in order to derive elements with a bearing on theory, method or technique. So our purpose is to confront basic concepts and tools upstream from the project properly speaking, by only approaching the latter in part, or even outside its strict normative framework. How can research on architectural and urban ambiances come to grips with experimentation? How can ambiance phenomena be explored in greater depth or discovered through spatial experimentation? Or how can such experimentation be built or conceptualized on the basis of assumptions regarding ambiance?

Deadline for the submission of full papers is 1st March 2018.

À travers cet appel à contributions, la revue NPSS invite les chercheurs à penser les affects,  non plus simplement comme un type de relation parmi d’autres, ou seulement comme un « supplément d’âme » à la relation, mais en considérant qu’ils sont la qualité de la relation, qu’ils en sont indissociables, et qu’à ce titre ils constituent à la fois un matériau et un outil permettant de comprendre et d’analyser les dynamiques qui fondent le social.

Staging Atmospheres presents an interdisciplinary interrogation of the place of theatre in the understanding of ‘atmosphere’. Within the current interdisciplinary atmospheric turn, theatre has presented itself as an heuristic paradigm in which the social, material and political elements of atmosphere are thought to resonate – albeit in an idealised manner. ‘Theatre’ has been adopted as a paradigm of the site and operation of ‘atmosphere’ by philosophers and architectural theorists from Vitruvius to Gernot Böhme.

Although situations and atmospheres are omnipresent in organizations and have a significant influence on the behaviour of the members of the organization, they are only seldom regarded as relevant research subjects in management and organization research and systematically investigated. This book enters unknown territory in that it elevates situations and atmospheres to the most fundamental and everyday features of being-in-the-organization and investigates their development dynamics systematically. The new phenomenology of the German philosopher Hermann Schmitz, and critical supplements from his follower, Guido Rappe, serve as the theoretical foundation of the reflections. Human corporeality and subjectivity are at the centre of the reflections.

Creating Sensory Spaces celebrates spaces enlivened with sensual richness and provides you with the knowledge and tools necessary to create them. Drawing on numerous built case studies in ten countries and illustrated with over 85 full color images, the book presents a new framework for the design of sensory spaces including light, color, temperature, smell, sound, and touch. Bridging across disciplines of architecture, engineering, phenomenology and perceptual psychology, this book informs the design of buildings and neighborhoods that reclaim the role of the body and all the senses in creating memorable experiences of place and belonging.

Aesthetic Economy is a theory of the recent development of capitalism in our national economies. Basic needs are easily satisfied and, as a result, most commodities are no longer intended for consumption, but for the staging of our lives. That is, they are used to produce atmospheres. Applications of the theory are found wherever staging is performed: in commodity aesthetics, in marketing, as well as in the sphere of production. As to technology, we find a turn from useful to joyful technology. And the technology of entertainment has become a huge part of the general economy. Similarly, a further horizon of Aesthetic Economy is to be seen in the aestheticization of politics, the staging of sporting events and the management of culture.

Healing Places has the pleasure to invite you to The Body, the Mind and the City, a series of 5 symposiums that will take place between June and July 2017 at Post-Office. Together with spatial designers, scientists, tech developers, artists and designers, we will explore the relationship between the human body and physical space. These transdisciplinary discussions will also investigate how space design and technology can affect our physiological and psychological condition, change our sensory perception and behaviors.

This volume approaches the issue of ambient sound through the ethnographic exploration of different cultural contexts including Italy, India, Egypt, France, Ethiopia, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, and Japan. It examines social, religious, and aesthetic conceptions of sound environments, what types of action or agency are attributed to them, and what bodies of knowledge exist concerning them. Contributors shed new light on these sensory environments by focusing not only on their form and internal dynamics, but also on their wider social and cultural environment.

In this book, Tonino Griffero introduces and analyzes an ontological category he terms “quasi-things.” These do not exist fully in the traditional sense as substances or events, yet they powerfully act on us and on our states of mind. He offers an original approach to the study of emotions, regarding them not as inner states of the subject, but as atmospheres, that is as powers poured out into the lived space we inhabit.

Les contributions attendues exploreront les potentialités de l’enquête sur les phénomènes d’ambiances : les propositions d’articles rendant compte d’enquêtes ethnographiques ou sociologiques originales et inédites seront privilégiées. Il s’agit d’interroger l’efficacité concrète des ambiances en privilégiant l’observation méthodique des pratiques « en train de se faire » et la description située. Comment prendre appui sur les gestes des praticiens des ambiances pour dégager ce que leurs conditions d’émergence ont de précis, voire d’exact ? Comment rendre compte de l’importance des ambiances dans les descriptions ethnographiques, et à quelles conditions ?

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.