Spatial strategy Scenography and atmospheric research
Excerpt from the book article “The Language of Space”, in: Architektur WAHRnehmen ed. Abel/Rudolf, transcript Bielefeld 2018
Every change in the state of our body is involuntarily evaluated by the emotional centers of our brain in a fraction of a second. However, it takes us more than a second to see, hear, touch, taste or smell what it is, which is why we always perceive rooms in an inner mood. Our emotional mood in the perception process is reflected in the atmosphere of the room situation. Due to our empathy, rooms still have an effect on people even when we look at them in the form of pictures or films. Empathy increases with immersion, which is why paintings, photographs, films or spatial stagings often move us more than the reality of our lives. One indicator of the aesthetic effect of immersion is the fascination we experience in the process of perceiving a spatial situation.
Moods have a vital function for human survival, as they activate reflexes, drives and instincts and promote spontaneous emotional reactions:
- warn of danger through feelings of fear and activate flight reflexes
- indicate food offers through appetite and activate food intake
- Draw attention to species conservation offers through desire and activate seduction strategies
- strengthen combat readiness through aggression and activate attack strategies
- Increase motivation to act and activate activities through motivation
- induce relaxation through tiredness and activate readiness for sleep
- Create friendliness through trust and activate partner search
- evoke compassion through pain and activate assistance
As a rule, people have their emotional reactions under control to the extent that they can suppress spontaneous action reflexes, but this is far less successful with involuntary emotional reactions. The emotional effects of a room situation can therefore be read quite well from people’s gestures and facial expressions. If you ask, people can often express their mood quite precisely. Due to the atmospheric effects of spatial situations on our emotional mood, it is impossible to perceive a spatial situation in an unbiased and value-neutral way. It doesn’t matter whether we are in a real or imagined space. What matters is the suggestive power of the visual worlds, soundscapes, stories or music. This knowledge is very useful for architects, planners, clients, investors and other planning participants when they need to understand and evaluate competition results, initiate and moderate opinion-forming processes or make and take responsibility for decisions in the design and planning process. The atmosphere of a room shapes the first impression, triggers spontaneous emotional reactions and influences the value judgment, which is strengthened by rational arguments and is difficult to revise.
We perceive space with all our senses, which is why it is important for the analysis of aesthetic effects how a room looks, how colors and light appear, how it feels, how it sounds, smells, tastes, behaves or influences our actions. The atmosphere of a room situation is made up of all sensually perceptible events. Unintelligible noises, tones, sounds, fragments of speech, fragments of music, smells, colors, light, reflections, mirroring, transparencies, movements or touch are usually processed unconsciously. We only notice them when they attract our attention or when we pay attention to them. Even if atmospheric features are missing, we immediately sense the unfamiliar emptiness, as rooms suddenly seem artificial and alienating. In film production, atmospheres are therefore designed and produced with great effort for each individual scene. All levels of spatial perception that can be depicted on film are carefully staged. In scenography, the spatial strategy of atmospheric staging is used for the design of theater performances, exhibitions, trade fairs or events. In scenography, people, objects, actions, lighting moods, color themes, language and sound are professionally designed and staged in relation to the aesthetic effect and content function of the whole.
Atmospheric effects are often neglected in contemporary urban planning and architecture. This is problematic because every walk, drive or flight over landscapes and settlement areas has a strong atmospheric effect on people, shaping their emotional mood and influencing their behavior. The atmospheric quality of squares, streets and buildings increases when they are staged for people’s actions in terms of perspective, dynamics, haptics and sound, which can very often be observed in the urban design and architecture of the pre-modern era. The soundscape of historic urban spaces includes people who spend time there, meet, work, argue, have fun and exchange ideas. Particularly important buildings were often arranged in the visual axes and at the corner points and emphasized through their form, materiality and surface design. This enables easy orientation and creates identity. Particularly important squares were often enhanced by water features and fountains, which are central elements for people, regardless of whether they are spending time there or looking at the people gathered there. We perceive running water as part of the soundscape and as a tactile refreshment, even if we don’t feel the cool water directly on our bodies. The materials of historic squares, streets and paths were often made from the natural stone of the surrounding area, which conveys regional identity and is also sustainable, as natural materials age very slowly and “gracefully”.
On the other hand, today there are often infrastructures for motorized traffic, whose dirty grey, foul-smelling, often patched asphalt surfaces create neither a quality of stay nor an identity. Even more problematic is the design of the buildings, which often turn away from the noisy, dirty public traffic area. The unadorned, unstructured façades laid out in a grid, the hidden, anonymous entrance situations or the small window openings framed by thick plastic frames, which often let little light into tiny interior spaces. The visual feel of historic façades is often characterized by plaster surfaces that are structured and personalized by textures, mineral paint coats or ornaments and murals. This gives houses, neighborhoods and cities their character and quality of stay for people, whether they are residents or visitors. On a walk through historic and modern neighborhoods, the different spatial strategies and their consequences for people can be empirically observed and systematically evaluated. Today, the aesthetic appeal of cities, neighborhoods and individual properties is an important location factor for companies and employees, with social, cultural and economic consequences for every community. We should therefore begin to apply the spatial strategy of scenography to the urban planning and architecture of our time, especially as there are already some successful examples. A return to traditional formal languages would merely be a sign of a lack of will to deal with the quality of human spatial perception and to apply the spatial strategies that follow from this.
The spatial strategy of scenography focuses on the atmospheric effects of all perceptible spatial situations on the emotional mood and behavior of people. People should immerse themselves in situations and experience the content presented in a sensory way. Through the power of experiences, they should be motivated and moved to do and learn something specific. The aesthetic effect of atmospheres can highlight the value of events, such as the opening ceremonies of major sporting events or the appearance of important holders of power in a secular or spiritual context, such as the Pope’s sermon at Easter, the Hajj in Mecca, military parades or summit meetings. The staging of exhibitions and museums primarily serves educational purposes, while trade fair presentations by companies pursue an economic benefit. All perceptions are associatively linked and are activated at the moment of experience.[1] For this reason, colors can appear fresh, stimulate the appetite or cause nausea. Atmospheres have an emotional effect as they attune our entire body to the spatial experience, which has an impact on changes in hormone levels and metabolic functions such as heartbeat, breathing, appetite and motivation. The atmosphere of a room determines the intensity and quality of our experience.[2] Light falling through a window onto a well-chosen reading place can be more important for the perception of space than the size of the room or the height of the ceiling. In the perception of space, what exists outside of us merges with what we make of it in our imagination or through our actions. For humans, nothing is simply there, because in order to perceive something, to understand and comprehend it, we have to acquire the meanings and the potential for action of the object or circumstance in mostly time-consuming, repeated exploration processes. This leads us to the discursive analysis of the linguistic structure of space.
[1] Axel Buether; Die Bildung der räumlich-visuellen Kompetenz: Neurobiologische Grundlagen für die methodische Förderung der anschaulichen Wahrnehmung, Vorstellung und Darstellung im Gestaltungs- und Kommunikationsprozess, Burg Giebichenstein 2010
[2] Gernot Böhme; Atmosphere: Essays on the New Aesthetics, Suhrkamp 2013
Lecture at the Bauhaus University Weimar
in the Bauhaus Masters series
Gabriel Dörner
Tue, 20.11.18 19.00 Room HP05
Van-de-Velde-Bau, Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 7
