Atmosphere is the new “environment”. The complexity of the “big event” of architecture

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to inquire ourselves about the environmental aspects that engage the architectural process on the understanding that they involve much more than physical context. The context has an atmospherical component that embodies psychological, technological and cultural parameters. The atmosphere goes beyond the concept of environment. It includes the synergies generated precisely in the limit of building and context, the facades: the blurred environmental boundaries where dialogue starts, as Venturi’s “talking architecture” suggested. We might need to determine those specific factors and review them from the atmospherical perspective. For this purpose, we will focus our analyses in a specific case of study, that exemplifies the relevance of the environmental in the widest sense, what we define as the amtospherical. We are referring to the design of Rem Koolhaas (OMA) for the IIT McCormick Tribune Campus Center in Chicago. We might need to understand the historical, physical and psychological context, to reach a sort of dialogue between past, present and future. The materialization of a project is a long term “big event”, and the inputs are very different from each other. All the factors that engage this big event might vary in each case, depending on the nature of the project. In this specific case, it is undeniable that the historical approach is a previous condition, as well as the conceptual and even emotional position of Rem Koolhaas in relation to the figure of Mies van der Rohe. There are some other environments we might need to consider before reaching a full understanding of this atmospherical condition, including the global political and social situation and even the internal circumstances of the office in charge of the project in that precise moment. Of course, the physical environment becomes a fundamental issue, as well as the positioning in relation to the implementation of technologies in architecture, environmental considerations and the conceptual strategies followed. All those intricated and complex issues define the atmosphere that wraps the architectural act. Architecture, as life, is complex, and complexity is never boring.