responsabili: Augusto Cusinato

visiting professor: Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, full professor

The Westminster Law & Theory Centre, Westminster Law School, University of Westminster, London, UK

presenza: 1 mese - da marzo ad aprile2014

durata: 12 mesi 


termine previsto: 31 dicembre 2014


finanziamento:  7.000,00 euro


tipologia: call 2013 Dppac

fonte finanziamento: call 2013 Dppac – Linea di finanziamento 2 “Sostegno dell’attrattività internazionale”

background concepts

The study of atmospheres as an urban affect that involves bodies and spaces is increasingly becoming central in the way humans interact with their milieu. Atmospheric research was initially confined to architectural theory (Böhme, 1995; Schmitz, 1995; Anderson, 2009), but is now becoming pivotal in interdisciplinary theory (Sloterdijk, 2009), geography (Thrift, 2008), critical geology (Woodard, 2013), management (Borch, 2008), psychology (Brennan, 2004), law (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2013), politics (Choy, 2011), and so on. Atmospheres are inclusive spheres of influence, which affect bodies in preconscious ways.

The creation and maintenance of an atmosphere relies on participating bodies entering a space that is amenable to the specific atmosphere. This means that atmospheres are neither exclusively ambiental, nor exclusively corporeal, but emerge precisely at the meeting point between the body and the space around it. At the same time, however, atmospheres can control the way we feel and act by setting up corridors of compulsion (e.g., consumerist practices such as supermarkets), repulsion (e.g., atmosphere of homelessness), addiction (e.g., virtual environments), or inclusion and exclusion (e.g., political atmospheres of citizens versus phenomenological spaces, determined by a relation between the perceiving subject and the perceived object).

Rather, they have become politically and legally engineered architectures that encroach upon fundamental rights of citizens. This means that concepts such as territory, property, right of movement, right of passage, access to resources, ecological safety and so on, are potentially subjected to prior political and legal engineering that finds its expression in specific urban planning arrangements. In other words, atmospheres are put in the service of spatial injustices, excluding people from spaces, while at the same time dissimulating themselves as pre-conscious choices, such as personal taste, cultural preferences, class choices and so on.

content of the project

Through a research on accepted psychological, cultural, economic, political and legal practices as mirrored in urban planning and architecture, the project will begin to sketch the specific mechanisms with which atmospheric engineering dissimulates itself as corporeal and spatial affect, which an individual body finds hard to resist. Against such atmospheric manipulation, a concept of spatial justice emerges. Spatial justice can no longer be seen merely as better resource access or more participatory regional democracy as Harvey (1973) or Soja (2010) have talked about. On the contrary, spatial justice is a tool of resistance and at the same time creativity (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2010) that has regenerated urban environments in nontraditional ways in terms of economy, innovation, spatial arrangements, property practices, ecological tendencies and so on. Rather than the usual top-down approaches, spatial justice promotes an organic yet organised urban planning of affective co-habitation, where differences and conflicts are not fazed out but integrated in the wider urban fabric.

form of the project

This is a theoretical and applied project that aims to bring together theorists and practitioners working on atmospheres and spatial justice (two fields of knowledge that have not yet talked to each other). The applied aspect will invite international practitioners from architecture, urban planning, psychology and law to comment on specific urban case studies where spatial justice practices have been implemented and the kind of atmospherics that have been both resisted and generated. The theoretical aspect will attempt to

construct a synthesis of an atmospherics of spatial justice in terms of its philosophical and generally theoretical credentials. The dissemination and funding of the proposed events and publications will also benefit from the existing structures of The Westminster Law & Theory Centre, with its extensive UK, US, Australian and international network.

descrizione del progetto didattico

- an international PhD seminar with doctoral participants from Italy, the UK and other European countries on the topics of urban planning, spatial justice and atmospheres, organised with the help of the Doctoral School at IUAV, thus giving the opportunity to local doctoral students to take initiatives vis-àvis international events and to publish on the online journal of the Westminster Law & Theory Centre Non Liquet.

- some lectures at the Doctoral School and Graduate and post-Graduate

Courses, planned with Iuav Professors.