Imaging as Atmosphering

This essay argues that we may be witnessing the emergence of an “atmospheric turn,” part of a broader epistemological shift in the ways we perceive, represent, and design the world. Moving beyond the visual bias that has long shaped architecture and other image-based disciplines, it proposes a more embodied and multisensory perspective, in which atmospheres are understood in relation to situated and affective phenomena. Drawing on theories of affect and interaction, as well as on the fundamental contributions of sound studies, the essay emphasizes how sensory experience arises from the interplay of environments, bodies, memories, and more-than-human agencies. Within this framework, drawing, imaging, and surveying are reconsidered as practices that can engage with dimensions exceeding vision alone, including sound, smell, touch, and climatic conditions. The text therefore highlights both the limits and the potential of conventional representation, calling for the development of new strategies to represent atmospheric qualities by integrating subjective, embodied, and aesthetic forms of knowledge with analytical and data-driven methods.