January 12, 2021. Places transmit a psychological ‘temperature’ which we ‘feel into’, known by the German word ‘stimmung’, meaning atmospheric mood, often associated with music and the state of an instrument once it is tuned.

Atmosphere as it relates to architecture is a harder concept to wrap ones arms around, to define, due to its nature of being nebulas, of the moment and from the roots of the word, “vapor-ball”, something that is understood to be “intangible, highly subjective to the individual, and often described through metaphors” (E. Canepa 2019).

But we certainly know it when we see it. . . and we know what it says about the organization or people that inhabit the building; what they value.