From History to Architectural Imagination: A physical ambiences laboratory to interpret past sensory experiences and speculate on future spaces

Abstract

The built environment offers an impressive corpus of spatial typologies on which architects and users may build their knowledge based of ambiences. This corpus primarily consists of existing buildings originating from a wide spectre of historical backgrounds, but it could also include past ambiences. A physical ambiences laboratory has recently been developed, built, and inhabited to compare existing and past ambiences, but foremostly speculate on future ambiences. It consists of a full-scale, adaptable structure that allows for the experience of architectural typologies, and enables spatial transformations through time. Building the adaptable structure in an outdoors environment aims to connect the theory of ambiences with the actual complexity of experiencing on a site, which cannot be adequately approached with digital simulation. The definition of an ambience therefore involves complexity because of the changing nature of the environmental conditions that generates it, such as light, wind, sun, and sound, creating varying distribution patterns of natural fluxes. This research-creation project recognizes that the people-environment issue constitutes an essential basis to the creation of genuine genius loci. The research suggests that adaptive opportunities and reinterpretation of existing ambiences could ultimately translate into new spaces to experience environmental delight for responsive inhabitants.