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VCJ0010.1177/1470357215582305Visual Communication

visual communication
editorial

Designing Atmospheres: introduction to

Special Issue

TIM EDENSOR
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

SHANTI SUMARTOJO
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Melbourne, Australia

In this special issue, we focus on the ways in which atmospheres are designed
by a range of affective and sensory engineers. The contributions take the visual
as a springboard for considering the relationships between such designed
atmospheres and those who are cast into their midst, revealing how they play
out differently at public ceremonies, art events, shopping malls, tourist sites
and in domestic settings. Atmospheres, according to Gernot Bhme (2008: 2),
imbue everything, they bathe everything in a certain light, unify a diver-
sity of impressions, and moreover, are distributed yet palpable, a quality of
environmental immersion that registers in and through sensing bodies whilst
also remaining diffuse, in the air, ethereal (McCormack, 2008: 413). As Bille
et al. (2014: 2) point out, when we become aware of the atmospheres that sur-
round us, we may not know whether we should attribute them to the objects
or environments from which they proceed or to the subjects who experience
them. And though Bhme (2008: 3) considers powerful atmospheres to be
something which can come over us, into which we are drawn, which takes
possession of us like an alien power, he also insists that they are intermediate
phenomena, belonging neither in the world out there nor in the individual
person. Accordingly, while an atmosphere might be a certain mental or emo-
tive tone permeating a particular environment, attuning the mood of an indi-
vidual, it may also merge with how an individual feels (Bhme, 2002). More
emphatically, Bhme (2008: 2) asserts that atmospheres, without the sentient
subject are nothing. The properties of an atmosphere are thus captured in
the intersection of the objective and the subjective.

SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC:
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Vol 14(3): 251265 DOI 10.1177/1470357215582305
 In some instances, a particularly powerful atmosphere seems to more
persuasively enrol the subject than in others. Thus we may acknowledge that
while the indeterminate, spatially extended quality of feeling (Bhme, 1993:
118) of atmospheres can suffuse all spatial contexts, in some spaces this is
more affectively, emotionally and sensually profound than in others. This may
depend on the skill of the designer of atmospheres but also on the particular
qualities of the spaces, materialities, media and elements that are manipulated
through design. It is also essential to take account of the social, historical, cul-
tural and political contexts in which atmospheres emerge and dissipate, and
the attunement of some to become absorbed within them. This attunement
foregrounds the key roles of subjects in co-producing atmospheres in various
ways: designers depend upon their acceptance of the feel of an atmosphere,
but can never be sure whether a crowd or group will charge the atmosphere
with unwanted or unexpected tones or play the roles envisaged. Similarly,
particular conditions a blackout, sudden rainstorm or newsflash that may
utterly transform an atmosphere cannot be anticipated. We are emphasiz-
ing that though the articles in this issue investigate how atmospheres are pro-
duced through particularly effective design, often in highly skilful and absorb-
ing ways, it is crucial to avoid the inferences of mute attunement that have
plagued recent theories and have thereby downplayed the role of participants
in anticipating, being primed for and co-producing atmospheres.
This is partly a consequence of theories that have privileged the affec-
tive qualities of atmospheres. Certainly affect defined as a sense of push
in the world a notion of broad tendencies and lines of force (Thrift,
2004: 60) is a key element of atmospheres. Claims that affect is distributed
amongst different configurations of objects, technologies and (human and
non-human) bodies to form different capacities and experiences of relation-
ality are useful in foregrounding understandings about how such actors and
energies are enrolled into affective fields that produce temporary configura-
tions of energy and feeling (Conradson and Latham, 2007: 238). However,
affect is not synonymous with atmosphere. Instead, atmospheres are multiply
composed out of phenomenological and sensual elements, and the social and
cultural contexts in which they are consumed, interpreted and engaged with
emotionally as well as affectively. Accordingly, the prominent term affective
atmosphere diminishes the more extensive, multiple characteristics of atmo-
sphere. By reducing it to its affective qualities, it suggests that an atmosphere
pre-exists the presence of those who are suddenly subsumed within its affec-
tive field.
Accordingly, we agree that conceptions of affective atmospheres infer
that space is a realm that precedes any individual body or subjectivity, and in
which cognition, interpretation and motivation are rather minor processes
(Rose et al., 2010: 338339). Such theories have tended to miss the social and
cultural contexts of affective formations and thus neglect how affective experi-
ence is a cumulative, and therefore historical, process of interaction between

252 Visual Communication 14(3)

human beings and place (Kobayashi et al., 2011: 873). Moreover, Wetherell
(2012: 22) points out that conceptions of affect are not well served by divid-
ing representation from the non-representational, marking out the former as
the province of consciousness and deliberation, and the latter as the prov-
ince of the unconscious and the unconsidered. To reiterate, affects, sensations,
materialities, emotions and meanings are all enrolled within the force-field
of an atmosphere (Bille et al., 2014; Edensor, 2012), and though each of these
terms might be fruitfully conceptualized separately, we contend that atmo-
spheres are phenomena that blur the boundaries between them. In exploring
atmospheres, such boundaries should be amorphous and elusive (Bondi and
Davidson, 2011: 595).
In this introduction, we want to explore the extent to which designers
purposefully shape and maintain different atmospheres, particularly through
their visual aspects. But we also investigate the degree to which people modify
and co-create the atmosphere, rather than merely considering them as passive
figures with little agency to constitute their own sensory experience. We dis-
cuss how particular settings are atmospherically charged by designers in the
service of power, primarily in reproducing spaces of state and commercial sig-
nificance, to stabilize the meanings and feelings of place and maintain an even,
consistent atmosphere. We then explore how other design practices, notably in
the production of festive events, invite a greater scope for the co-production of
atmosphere by participants. Finally, moving away from professional designers,
we account for the vernacular and domestic design practices through which
people produce comfortable atmospheres of homeliness and identity.

P ower and A tmosphere

Though apparently nebulous for those suddenly in their midst, Bhme (2008:
4) shows how designers set the conditions in which the atmosphere appears,
creating tuned spaces with tones, hues and shapes, and it is no stretch to
identify the multiple ways in which spaces of all kinds are managed so as
to produce a particular feel, mood or ambience. Indeed, the production of
atmosphere is a longstanding concern of the design professions, and archi-
tects have long been explicit about its importance (Borch, 2014; Griffero, 2014;
Pallasmaa, 2014; Zumthor, 2006). Similarly, at fairgrounds, the combination of
loud music, the calls of stall-holders, flashing lights, lurid art, distinctive food
smells, and swirls of movement from surrounding thrill rides are longstanding
design features that, combined with the surge of bodies, screams of delight and
fear, and the throb of animated chatter and laughter produce a thick, potent
atmosphere. At more modest sites such as cafes and pubs, lighting, tempera-
ture, music, dcor and ambience are devised to attract and retain customers.
Yet the ways in which designed atmospheres close down or open up meanings
and practices to improvisation, contestation, interactivity and experimenta-
tion vary widely.

Sumartojo and Edensor: Designing Atmospheres: introduction to Special Issue 253

 Designed atmospheres are particularly apparent at large-scale ceremo-
nies, military parades, national rituals or sporting occasions. At grand sport-
ing events, for example, the visual cues of massed team colours combine with
music and the singing of anthems to prime the audience to anticipate the
forthcoming action and engage in partisan support. By contrast, the highly
choreographed, tightly scripted procedures (Connerton, 1989) that character-
ize invented traditions (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983) independence days,
rituals of remembrance, investitures and coronations induce a more sober
collective intensity that marks the import of the occasion on those present,
their stillness and silence adding to the potency of the event that is signalled
by the careful arrangement of participants, prominent uniforms and insignia,
and the display of nation symbols. As a particularly notorious example, the
Nuremberg Rallies, an extraordinary attention to stage management, includ-
ing powerful amplified oratory, architecture, military drill and illumination
(Edensor, this issue) and the choreography of huge masses of people generated
a disciplined yet frenzied atmosphere.
Many ceremonial, state-produced, highly designed events (Sumartojo,
this issue) retain their power despite appearing somewhat archaic in the ways
in which they mobilize mass expressions of emotion and affect. In fact, the
contemporary design of atmospheres, according to Bhme (2013: 45), is
superseding the production of spectacular events such as these with the pro-
duction of immersive spaces within which subjects and objects are bathed:

The spaces generated by light and sound are no longer something per-
ceived at a distance, but something within which one is enclosed It
becomes clear that what is at issue is not really visual spectacles as
was perhaps believed by practitioners of the old scenography but the
creation of tuned spaces, that is to say, atmospheres.

Here, the visual is a starting point for multi-sensory attempts to shape

how spaces feel. Several authors attribute such designed atmospheres to
neo-liberal endeavours that aim to intensify the commodification of space
(Hudson, this issue). The experience economy (Pine and Gilmore, 1999) puts
emphasis on an intensified aestheticizing of space whereby consumption, lei-
sure, tourism and even work sites are themed, scrupulously maintained and
highly regulated to avoid sensory and semiotic ambiguity. Such attempts also
foreground dynamics of power, control and the manipulation of space, recall-
ing Thrifts (2004: 68) observation that affect can be engineered at public
events through design, lighting, event management logistics, music, perfor-
mance. In such reconfigured aesthetic regimes, McKim (2012) argues, the task
of animating public spaces increasingly devolves to designers and transforms
the ways in which they work. McKim implies that the designer becomes com-
plicit in the production of spaces of intensified commercialism and the conse-
quent diminution of other, non-commercial qualities and practices.

254 Visual Communication 14(3)

 Thibaud (2014: 24) suggests that increasingly, explicit strategies to
sensibilize inhabited space transform the media through which we experience
the world, the sounds, odours, lights, colours, temperature and air quality that
shape the conditions under which we apprehend place. As he asserts, urban
design no longer just focuses on objects but also what is between the objects.
Thus designers attempt to produce affective tonalities, exemplified in such
qualities as a soothing sonority, lively square or heavy odour. Like Bhme,
Thibaud focuses on the design of the elements, including visual elements that
devolve upon and flow through a particular space to produce a tuned realm
rather than a concentrated spectacle. He further contends that the particular
sensory and affective tones produced are not designed to over-stimulate those
passing through or provoke them into over-excitable, potentially disruptive
behaviour inimical to a carefully cultivated atmosphere, since contemporary
urban design displays a dual concern with producing a festive spirit while
integrating law and order:

The designers of shopping malls are well aware of this, doing every-
thing they can to establish a merchant ambiance playing carefully
prepared background music, maintaining a constant average tempera-
ture, with even lighting for optimal showcasing of products, strict con-
trol over the rules of behaviour and ways of being, direction of pedes-
trian streams and spatial layout of merchandise. (Thibaud, 2014: 5)

This kind of carefully devised, toned-down atmosphere is exemplified in

Healys (2014) discussion of the design of shopping malls, where the thermal
control of air is part of a regulatory management that bespeaks of a wider
biopolitics. The monotonous temperature, he argues, contributes to an atmo-
sphere, supplemented by visual design, lighting and modes of moving people
that induces a disorientated, somewhat languid corporeal sensibility. He fur-
ther asserts that this condition produces an involuntary vulnerability through
which shoppers, lulled into a state of distraction, are cajoled into spending by
a plethora of visual blandishments and carefully designed pathways that guide
them to designated sites and restrict somatic improvisation. This depiction of
a pacifying urban design chimes with Trevor Boddys (1992: 123124) depic-
tion of what he terms the analogous city in which a new urban prosthet-
ics incorporates incessant whirring, mechanical breezes, vaguely reassur-
ing icons, trickling fountains and low murmurings that filter out troubling
smells and winds. This, Boddy suggests, inculcates in inhabitants a toned-
down bodily expression so that there is never a clenched fist, a passionate kiss,
a giddy wink, a fixed-shoulder stride, as those moving through such spaces
co-produce the muted atmosphere.
The intensification of designing regulated, commodified atmospheres
is exemplified in the redistribution of English Bonfire Night atmospheres.
Currently, commodified pyrotechnic displays have transformed a popular

Sumartojo and Edensor: Designing Atmospheres: introduction to Special Issue 255

 festival into expertly produced spectacles, replacing the back garden and waste
ground venues at which families and neighbours built bonfires and staged
their own modest communal displays. The numerous small atmospheric
pockets of convivial activity that defamiliarized and enchanted homely spaces
have been replaced by commercial events that produce large-scale, less inti-
mate atmospheres.
Strikingly, Degen et al. (2015) explore how other design practices
construe virtual atmospheres in the marketing and imagining of place. They
explain how artfully complex layering processes are organized in the manufac-
ture of computer-generated images to visualize future urban redevelopments.
The envisaging of a soon-to-be regenerated swathe of Dohas historic centre
shows how visually representations of atmosphere have become a mainstream
commercial practice of architectural and urban branding. In these images,
they point out the intense luminosity of light and colour, suggestions of move-
ment via blurred figures, varied and playful activities, convivial social interac-
tion, and the use of first-person perspectives to stimulate vicarious embodied,
sensual experience. Though they attempt to elicit an imaginative immersion
in these simulated spaces, Degen et al. critically note that the representations
resonate with western-centric, (post)colonial norms about the feeling and
meaning of place.
Notwithstanding the remarks by Thibaud and Bhme that spectacular
spaces are being replaced by those which are atmospheric, certain critics con-
ceive of this aesthetic intensification as signifying an intention to bedazzle the
public and constrain their ability to perceive the real conditions that under-
lie their enslavement as workers and consumers. This chimes with Debords
(1967) notion of the society of the spectacle in which spectators passively
behold seductive, extravagant displays organized by capital and the state that
have colonized and replaced authentic life. For instance, in writing about the
popular spread of nuit blanche events as exemplars of what he terms the atten-
tion economy, in which shops, museums and galleries are opened at night and
city centres used to stage concerts, art installations and dance, Diack (2012:
11) contends that such events are dominated by an extravaganza of electronic
and digital media (and) a pull towards machine-like states of attention,
objectification, and endurance.
In a broader context, Quinn (2010: 271) points to the array of culture-
led urban regeneration strategies such as nuits blanches, asking whether cul-
tural substance becomes replaced with cultural spectacle increasing homo-
geneity and declining creativity. Her question resonates with Guy Juliers
(2005: 874) depiction of urban designscapes as a collection of brand design,
architecture, urban planning, events and exhibitions that articulate shared
tastes and produce an aesthetic consent. Emerging out of international urban
networks, these schemes exemplify how the shared tastes and judgements of
members of the creative class impose generic designs on places and, hence,
particular kinds of atmospheres.

256 Visual Communication 14(3)

T he C o - C onstitution o f A tmosphere
The examples above foreground the ways in which atmospheres can be
designed in highly organized and pervasive fashion, perhaps providing a
situational affective context that lays down root textures and motivations for
movement and feelings (Adey, 2007: 439) and activating predisposed rou-
tines, emotions and movements (p. 444). In soliciting a range of sensory
apprehensions, affective and emotional responses and habitual, unreflexive
performances, such designs express power. Yet it is essential that we do not
construe subjects within such atmospheres as entirely passive.
Firstly, responses to atmospheres are contingent upon the historical
and cultural contexts that condition their effects. For instance, the ecstatic
atmosphere that suffused the huge post-war celebrations that marked the
end of the Second World War in Londons Trafalgar Square was engendered
through a populace primed to experience release from the long years of war
and deprivation, combining sentiments of national unity, timelessness and
stability for public consumption (Sumartojo, 2014: 65). The excitement
that produces the anticipatory atmospheres that pervade town centres in
British cities on Saturday evenings is conditioned by cultural expectations
and habits, as is the convivial and nostalgic expectations that feed into the
atmosphere at Blackpools two-month long illuminations (Edensor, 2012).
Moreover, more immediate circumstances the changing weather, the qual-
ity of light or darkness, the time of day as well as the general or national
mood (Carlson and Stewart, 2014) also play their part. Atmospheres are
always subject to transformation through upsurges in intensity or unex-
pected events, and they wax and wane, are in continual flux and epitomize
the flow of experience as a dynamic process comprising different consecu-
tive phases (Thibaud, 2011: 207).
Secondly, the inapposite or ineffective staging of atmosphere can be
inimical to immersion and co-participation by those for whom it is designed.
For instance, the attempts by Manchester City FC to stoke up what was at
the time believed to be a weak atmosphere in their new Etihad Stadium led
them to play pre-recorded chants across the speaker system. Fans were embar-
rassed and disdainful of measures that failed to understand fan culture and
highlighted their own deficiencies in producing a fervent match atmosphere
(Edensor, 2014a).
Thirdly, it is also crucial to acknowledge that particular atmospheres
may be experienced in widely different ways, depending on cultural values,
prior experience and personal background. The apprehension of especially
stimulating, fearful, enticing and convivial atmospheres may depend upon
familiarity or openness to encountering realms at variance to the usual, com-
mon sense experience of the world. For instance, some may feel claustropho-
bically oppressed or overwhelmed by the atmosphere of a packed mall, while
the clamour of noise, light, colour and movement enthralls others. At the fair-
ground, the heady mix of loud noises, swirling movements, the disaggregation

Sumartojo and Edensor: Designing Atmospheres: introduction to Special Issue 257

 of the senses on thrill rides, the suggestion of incipient loss of control and the
suspension of ordinary conduct is irresistible for many attendees but alarm-
ing for others. Accordingly, particular atmospheric intensities can privilege
certain participants who are already attuned, as Borch (2014) acknowledges,
in discussing the architectural design of atmospheres.
Being receptive to a particular atmosphere, Duff (2010: 881) claims,
is largely an expression of the social ties that form its foundation, by previ-
ous experience, and familiar emotions and sensations that produce feelings
of belongingness or otherwise. In this sense, Thibaud (2011: 209) refers to
how the pervasive quality of a particular situation gets inside us and ori-
ents us towards particular actions and expressions. More overtly, Bille et al.
(2014: 4) claim that the staging of atmosphere is a way of being together,
of sharing a social reality. Thus atmospheres have a specificity to which we
are attuned through cultural socialization and modes of perception (Bohme,
2013). Accordingly, we want to both acknowledge this cultural attunement
and accentuate the ways in which people modify and create atmospheres,
rather than merely considering them as passive figures, mutely attuned and
uncritically receptive.
Two of the articles in this issue approach the co-constitution of
atmosphere in museum (Turner and Peters) or commemorative settings
(Sumartojo). Here, the experience of space is shaped by a strong foreknowl-
edge of narrative that primes people to anticipate certain atmospheres that, as
Anderson (2009: 80) insists, mix together narrative and signifying elements
and non-narrative and asignifying elements in site-specific ways. Such histo-
ries are signalled through visual representations in museum displays, architec-
tural elements, text and lighting. The look and feel of stone, brick, glass, earth
or water also engender responses that link emotion and memory with visual-
ity and materiality, as in the cool, damp wall of a prison cell at a heritage site
(Turner and Peters, this issue). All the contributions to this issue show how the
visual aspects of experience are important in shaping atmosphere, but only in
combination with a range of other sensory, subjective and narrative elements.
Thus, the visual cannot be separated from how spaces sound and
smell, their temperature, the movement of air, or the presence of other peo-
ple, as Pallasmaa (2014) insists in his discussion of architectural design. Just
as Ingold (2005: 97) remarks in his discussion of weather, It is just as much
auditory, haptic and olfactory as it is visual; indeed in most practical circum-
stances these sensory modalities cooperate so closely that it is impossible to
disentangle their respective contributions. Extending this, sensory aspects are
inseparable from site histories and the personal memories of visitors.
Accordingly, as we have been arguing, design does not adequately
account for atmospheres. One setting that offers greater potentiality for a
wider range of social, affective and sensory engagements is the festival, a type
of event that takes numerous forms from the sacred to the carnivalesque, but

258 Visual Communication 14(3)

characteristically transforms the often utilitarian functions of everyday set-
tings into spaces that invite a suspension of rigid performative public con-
ventions and ordinary perceptions. The staging of festivals, with a range of
attractions, music, installations, floats and dramatic performances draws
diverse crowds of people together in a shared atmospheric event that fosters
conviviality (Edensor, 2014b). The festive openness to social and sensory
engagement may be fostered within a skilfully designed programme of events
and transformed space. However, such designs cannot necessarily determine
how diverse people shape space affectively and creatively, or combine to form
a temporary sense of communitas (Nowicka and Vertovec, 2014). This seduc-
tion of people into a convivial disposition towards others and towards more
uninhibited, expressive, playful behaviour in public space signals how festivals
solicit what Woodyer (2012: 319) calls a prioritising of the non-cognitive and
more-than-rational conduct that intensifies the festive atmosphere.
The use of lights, colours, rituals, installations and sound can both make
familiar places strange and strengthen affective belonging. Designers can re-
enchant familiar realms, disrupting ordinary apprehension (Bennett, 2001),
kindling a sense of wonder through which the world is made newly-present
to us (Evans, 2012) so that we attend more intently to the previously over-
looked or undervalued. In discussing night festivities, Fisher and Drobnick
(2012: 36) contend that the liminal atmosphere of what could be called the
nocturnal carnivalesque defamiliarizes the city as well as opens it up to alter-
native interpretations and possibilities. In this issue, focusing on illumination,
Edensor discusses how Ron Haseldens Fete and Ryochi Ikedas Spectra gener-
ate different kinds of festive atmospheres. Critically, on such festive occasions
the atmosphere is co-produced by participants who have a greater range for
expression than in the regulated commodified realms discussed above. Other
events that are equally atmospherically charged but rely more on their design
and staging by participants include raves, flashmobbing, happenings, demon-
strations and mass cycle rides.

A tmospheres o f T he M undane
As well as public designs, vernacular creativities, ranging from the festive to the
mundane, produce rich atmospheres. The role of non-professional designers
in generating atmospheres is especially pertinent to the production of domes-
tic environments. Mason and Muir (2013: 615) explore how festive design and
homely rituals annually sustain the atmospheres of family Christmases. Key
ingredients include the tree, decorations, emptying stockings and unwrapping
presents, pulling crackers, feasting and playing games to constitute a dense
procession of embodied and material practices, happenings and stimuli.
In annually reproducing a sensational, affective and convivial environment
designed to mark specialness, such events are engaged with, imbibed and
remembered, through full sensory and embodied registers.

Sumartojo and Edensor: Designing Atmospheres: introduction to Special Issue 259

 More mundane endeavours to reproduce domestic atmospheres
include the Danish preoccupation with using candles and other low lighting to
induce hygge, a sense of cosy conviviality (Bille, 2014). By contrast, a Japanese
homely aesthetic installs bright illumination as well as large pieces of furni-
ture to enable family-centric harmonious togetherness, and by extension, a
bright atmosphere as well as discrete spaces that promote individual pri-
vacy (Daniels, 2014: 4). Alternatively, as Vannini and Taggart (2015) discuss,
off-gridders in Canada generate homely atmospheres out of more sustainable,
DIY light and heat technologies. In this issue, Pink, Mackley and Morosanu
demonstrate the ongoing improvisational work through which domestic
media technologies are deployed to produce the shifting atmospheres of a
family home.
In drawing attention to these mundane, homely atmospheres, it is
vital to acknowledge that most familiar everyday settings are apprehended
unreflexively as part of the everyday inhabitation of place. A festive atmo-
sphere draws us into its orbit precisely because of its infrequency, either
through the rekindling of old stirrings or through its peculiar but enticing
promise. Conversely, as Pink et al. show, domestic atmospheres form part of
the unnoticed background of everyday life that is maintained, stabilized and
monitored through unreflexive habits that may only become apparent when
disrupted by unusual affective or sensory intrusions or experienced after a
period of absence.
These designed elements of the everyday form part of what Carlson
and Stewart (2014: 114) refer to as the experiences of self and society that
are attuned to the contingent sensoryaestheticconcrete materials at hand.
This is exemplified in Stewarts depiction of the atmosphere of 1950s America:
the mood work of the good life lent texture, tone and sensuous design to the
labours of ordinary living and coalesced into energies and trajectories that
modelled a life by enacting it in minutely designed systems of living. An atmo-
sphere that combines common sensory and affective orientations towards
the good life, modernity, domestic convenience and technical advancement
amongst other things, fosters the shaping of emergent designed environ-
ments. The words, sensibilities, matter, and tones (p. 116) that express such
emergent practices extend trajectories of industrial and managerial design to
homely arrangements. In Stewarts case, a socialmaterialtechnological vor-
tex that filled lives in with matter, sense and sheer detail, was composed by life
with gadgets and the cushioning of houses, the romance of popular culture,
a landscape transmogrified from farms and agribusiness to strip malls and
big box stores (p. 118). Here we gain a sense of the pervasiveness of everyday
design and the extent to which it shapes the atmospheres of mundane life. In a
different vein, Adey (2014) points to the constellation of institutions, materi-
alities, people, and techniques that contribute to the inescapable atmospheres
of security that increasingly prevail across urban life.

260 Visual Communication 14(3)

M ethods
An orientation towards the mundane hints at the range of methods that are
used to investigate atmospheres. In this issue, contributors use auto-ethnog-
raphies that closely attend to their own and others experiences of the sights,
sounds, smells, temperatures and movements of other bodies that help com-
prise atmospheres. This is woven together with material gathered from the
museums, memorials, shopping malls, homes and art installations that form
the empirical basis of the articles. This approach combines descriptions of how
designers intend people to experience space with first-hand accounts of those
atmospheres. Close attention to first-hand experience is also captured through
video footage of ongoing adjustments to home environments in Pink et al.s
contribution on mundane atmospheres.
Much less common is direct engagement with the visuality and mate-
riality of atmospheres. An example is Wagenfeld's (2008) investigation of
atmosphere by making it visible using ultra-fine water vapour and lasers to
slice cross-sections through the air, and by using photographs to demonstrate
how atmosphere, presence and materiality thereby become caught up in one
instance (Bille et al., 2014: 2). Treating atmosphere in this way aligns with
Bhmes definition of the presence of things not as their mere factual exis-
tence as subjects or objects, but in terms of the ways they make their pres-
ence perceptible: The dual understanding of atmosphere as a meteorological
phenomenon and a spatial experience of affect and materiality should most
often not be seen as distinct, but rather as feeding on each other (Bille et al.,
2014: 6). Such visualization, as Thibaud (2014: 3) notes, focuses on the in-
betweenness of atmosphere and highlights a potential shift from addressing
the ontology of the object to the ontology of the elements: whereas the object
is an entity for subjective perception, elements are dimensions through which
perception takes place or milieu. Thibaud states that the purpose of current
urban architecture is to transform not only a world of built objects and forms,
but also a world of air and perceptible atmospheres. In atmosphere, personal
memory and subjective experience come together with designed and regulated
environments through sensory perception. The visual is thus one gateway into
thinking about atmosphere, but it always solicits more-than-visual sensations
as well as the affective and emotional charge that lingers within a scene.

R e f erences
Adey, P (2007) Airports, mobility and the calculative architecture of affective
control. Geoforum 39(1): 438451.
Adey, P (2014) Security atmospheres or the crystallisation of worlds.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32: 834851.
Anderson, B (2009) Affective atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society 2(2):
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B iographical N otes
TIM EDENSOR teaches cultural geography at Manchester Metropolitan
University. He is the author ofTourists at the Taj(Routledge, 1998), National
Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Berg, 2002) and Industrial
Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality (Berg, 2005), as well as the edi-
tor of Geographies of Rhythm (2010) and co-editor of Spaces of Vernacular
Creativity(2009) andUrban Theory Beyond the West: A World of Cities(2011).
He is editor ofTourist Studies. Tim has written extensively on national identity,
tourism, industrial ruins, walking, driving, football cultures and urban mate-
riality, and is currently investigating landscapes of illumination and darkness.
Address: Geography and Environmental Management, Manchester
Metropolitan University, John Dalton Building, Chester Street, Manchester
M1 5GD, UK. [email: t.edensor@mmu.ac.uk]

264 Visual Communication 14(3)

SHANTI SUMARTOJO is a Research Fellow in the School of Architecture
and Design at RMIT University. She is the author ofTrafalgar Square and the
Narration of Britishness, 19002012: Imagining the Nation(Peter Lang, 2013)
and co-editor ofNation, Memory and Great War Commemoration: Mobilizing
the Past in Europe, Australia and New Zealand (Peter Lang, 2014). Her research
interests are in the constitution and experience of atmosphere, particularly at
commemorative sites; the effect of public art on urban space; and the role of
memorials in capital cities.
Address: School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476,
Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia. [email: shanti.sumartojo@rmit.edu.au]

Sumartojo and Edensor: Designing Atmospheres: introduction to Special Issue 265

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