Atmosphere Questions

1. How does Peter Zumthor talk about the "Magic of the Real" and explain how this compares, in terms of the subtleties, to Michael Benedikt's "Architecture for Reality"?

Zumthor talks about the “magic of real” being a feeling when experiencing a space. When people walk through that space they have some kind of feeling either positive or negative and that feeling is the reality of that space. Zumthor talks about different senses and how those senses affect that reality. In Benedikt’s the reality is on a personal level and how the reality is physically affected.

2. Material Compatibility, Temperature of a Space and Levels of Intimacy are some conditions that both Peter Zumthor, in “Atmospheres”, and Richard Serra, in “Weight and Measure”, make a point of articulating when consider space. Where in their explanation of these overlapping conditions are they similar and where do they differ?

Both Zumthor and Serra talk about a space that affects the person and the person affecting the space. Zumthor says that every material has a temperature and that temperature can effect the experience. For example steel has a much cooler temperature than a material like wood that would give a different temperature to the space. Both Zumthor and Serra talk about scale and how that scale affects the experience. Zumthor talks about the size and width of a threshold and how different thresholds affect how people move through that space and experience that threshold.

3. Zumthor looks towards experiential conditions when creating architecture, what are other methods architects use when generating architecture and what is the corresponding building?

4. For Zumthor at the end of the day, after figuring use, sound, place, light and the other listed conditions, if the coherence isn’t beautiful the process is started again. Beauty is simultaneously subjective for the individual, as held “in the eye of the beholder”, and universally recognizable. Define your subjective understanding of what beautiful architecture is.

I believe that beautiful architecture contains multiple components that is pleasing to everyone. Not every component of a building will be compatible to every liking but beautiful architecture is useful, creative, and provides multiple uses for everyone. To my understanding to create beautiful architecture each component must be broken down and weighed as having the same importance as every other component of a building.