Specifying Ambient Worlds: Architecture, Music and Minimalism

2017 | Home & Garden

Specifying Ambient Worlds is structured around convergences and resonances between architecture and theory, sound and space, sense and affect, and all things ambient. It brings together a selection of historical inflection points, singular examples, and oblique strategies for designers to work from, such as Mies' architecture, airport typology, and the increasing significance of mobility studies and sensory studies for expanding contemporary design practice. The book clearly defines the 'ambient' as a concept and condition necessary for architectural excellence, and these specific works are used to maintain clarity and credibility in the exploration of atmosphere, ambience, and affect imbedded in the spatial logic of late modernity. It situates the lure of the ambient within the architectural thought and method of advanced modernity in a desire to augment the musical claims of the Ambient Century. This qualitative analysis of instances, principles, and concepts illustrated by architectural and sonic works is not the end, but the means to get to speculative and projective design strategies and methods, without being proscriptive or formulaic.

Thomas Mical (Author)