Neue Sinnlichkeit: Postcritical Issues Regarding an Architecture of Sensuousness

Author(s): Erik Wegerhoff

Source: Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and
Criticism , Vol. 13, No. 2 (Winter 2016), pp. 119-137
Published by: University of Minnesota Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/futuante.13.2.0119

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1. Vals’s gneiss as natural rock, as depicted in the 1996 AA publication Thermal Bath at Vals. On the right is Mohsen Mostafavi’s
introduction. Thermal Bath at Vals: Peter Zumthor. Architectural Association, Exemplary Projects 1 (London: Architectural
Association, 1996), 4–­5.

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Erik Wegerhoff
Neue Sinnlichkeit
Postcritical Issues Regarding
an Architecture of Sensuousness

In 1983, the municipality of Vals in Switzerland bought a ther-

mal bath complex, which was located on its territory, but had
until then been run by private investors. The latter had not only
constructed an indoor and an outdoor pool with an artificial
wave machine but also a whole cluster of vaguely late modern-
ist buildings betraying their 1960s construction date, some
standing up to ten stories high. These structures consisted of a
hotel, apartment blocks, and facilities to bottle mineral water.
The rising expectations of the spa guests, the clear need to
renovate the baths, and the municipality’s worries about its
main source not just of mineral water but also of jobs lead the
municipality to take over the business. In 1986, the architect
Peter Zumthor won an architectural competition for a new hotel
and bath complex. Over the next six years, the client reduced
the job to the design of new baths only, and Zumthor revised
his design from the ground up. The new building opened in
December 1996.1
While the account related above may be the story as the
municipality saw it,2 it is not the story as the architectural world
saw it. Contributions to architectural discourse may be made
in buildings as well as in texts (or in other media), as built
statements such as the Centre Pompidou clearly demonstrate
(which so obviously signaled France’s effort to retain its posi-
tion as an international center for artistic creation even in the
post–­World War II era). As I will demonstrate in this article, for
architectural discourse, the baths at Vals were less a swim-
ming pool than they were the first material contribution to the
recent debate on an architecture that primarily appealed to
the senses. Vals heralded a movement in architecture that I
am terming “Neue Sinnlichkeit” (New Sensuousness). Neue
Sinnlichkeit is, in many ways, the sensuous counterpart to the
rational Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). Aimed at creating
buildings that appeal to a full sensory and bodily perception —
i.e. architecture that can be smelled, tasted, heard, and felt
as much as seen — ­Neue Sinnlichkeit, vaguely theorized by
a diffuse group of architects and architectural thinkers from
about 1990 onward, has so far made appearances under the
term of “atmospheres” and has recently enjoyed growing at-
tention.3 The term Neue Sinnlichkeit however better captures
Future Anterior
Volume XIII, Number 2 a core aspect of this atmospheric architecture that has so far
Winter 2016 gone all but unnoticed (and, more importantly, uncriticized):4

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 By addressing sensations and sentiments, Neue Sinnlichkeit
appeals to the irrational as Neue Sachlichkeit addressed the
rational. Since atmospheres by their nature are felt rather than
intellectually defined, being perceptible but never quite grasp-
able, Neue Sinnlichkeit is not least about evading, if not even
eluding, intellectual and critical engagement with architecture.
The movement set out as an escape from postmodernism’s
concept of architecture as sign, symbol, and “language”
(as propagated by such figures as Robert Venturi or Charles
Jencks)5 by shifting attention away from overly complex mean-
ing to a direct physical engagement with buildings. But the
cost of this shift was its anti-­intellectualism, which can be seen
as another version of postcriticality: architecture is meant to
be felt physically and emotionally rather than engaged with
or even questioned intellectually.
The German philospher Gernot Böhme developed some of
the key notions of an aesthetic of atmosphere and an architec-
ture appealing to a bodily and full sensory perception.6 Within
the field of architecture proper, though, the discourse was lead
by figures whose positions will be explored in greater depth
here: Peter Zumthor and his baths in Vals; the role of the Archi-
tectural Association in London in stylizing Zumthor as the head
of a new movement, with the baths as its built manifesto; the
influential academic teacher and architect Miroslav Šik; and
the Finnish architect and writer Juhani Pallasmaa.

Vals’s Contribution to Discourse

If, to make a contribution to discourse, any building relies on
its dissemination through media such as texts and images, this
holds particularly true for the baths at Vals. Indeed, Vals is an
exceptional case in terms of the way the reception of the build-
ing actually preceded its completion. In mid-­February 1996, ten
months before the building was inaugurated, the Architectural
Association in London staged an exhibition dedicated solely to
this project. Opening with a lecture by Zumthor on the evening
of February 15 and running until March 22, the show would
move on to an architectural gallery in Zurich toward the end
of the year, and then to Lucerne.7 Its effect would hardly have
been as lasting as it was, though, had it not been accompanied
by the book Thermal Bath at Vals: Peter Zumthor.8

The Architectural Association’s Book on Vals

Due to its early publication date, the book was confronted with
the peculiar challenge of having to represent an unfinished
building while at the same time portraying an architecture of
exceptionally high-­quality finish. The solution to this problem
would inflect the reception of the baths in Vals ever since. The
necessarily limited perspective presented in the initial pub-

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 lication was transformed into a purposely eclipsing one. The
building was portrayed as Mohsen Mostafavi, then chairman of
the Architectural Association (AA) and the mastermind behind
both the book and the exhibition, wanted it to be seen. Such
matters were certainly not dealt with casually, as is empha-
sized by the book’s telling series title, Exemplary Projects 1.
Mostafavi had come to the AA as its chairman only the preced-
ing year, and the book was intended to indicate the direction in
which he wished to take the school. This meant an architecture
of clean-­cut, black-­and-­white drawings, a strong emphasis on
materiality, and, not least, an architecture that appealed to and
was a product of the senses— ­and not the intellect.
The stage on which such an architecture was to emerge
is established in the opening of the book: a two-­page pan-
orama of an undefined alpine mountainscape, layers of jagged
silhouettes in fading tones of grey. If the material —­stone —­is
thus introduced at its most sublime, the following pages repeat
the theme on a much closer scale. Around interspersed texts
by Mostafavi and Zumthor, the local gneiss of which the baths
are built is shown in its various stages of processing: as natural
rock (Figure 1), as freshly hewn blocks (Figure 2), as rough slabs
forming shingles of Vals’s old roofs, as blocks being sawn and
sanded, stacked, and eventually as the (now famous) walls of
Zumthor’s bath (Figure 3).9 Set in between these depictions
of the material is a series of highly abstract figure–­ground
patterns, which make the building look as if the mountain is
dissolving into a series of carefully set squares. The layout of
the baths is elucidated in the following section of the book
through proper architectural plans, sections, and elevations on
a closer scale. However, these drawings also contribute to the
theme of representing the building as well as the surrounding
topography as one continuous, black mass. The book culmi-
nates in several detail drawings, which convey a general fasci-
nation for Swiss detailing rather than what such drawings are
usually meant to do, i.e., provide specific information about
the construction of a building. The German technical terms are
not translated and are often cut off. The book concludes with
another double-­page photograph, one third of which offers an
unfocused view of Vals at the bottom of its valley, the rest a
sharply focused pile of stone slabs in the foreground.
The publication thus forms a narrative about the impor-
tance of the local material and craftsmanship. But it is more
than that. The expansive breadth of the panorama, and even
more so the subsequent extreme close-­ups, mystify the mate-
rial, the place, and the construction process. Zooming in to
such an extent makes it impossible to understand the true
setting of the baths, their spatial layout, or their construc-
tion. How manipulative the images are is evidenced by what

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2. Vals’s gneiss as freshly hewn blocks,
as depicted in the 1996 AA publication
Thermal Bath at Vals. On the right is
Zumthor’s seminal project description
and one of his figure–­ground patterns
of the baths. Thermal Bath at Vals: Peter
Zumthor, Architectural Association,
Exemplary Projects 1 (London:
Architectural Association, 1996), 8–­9.
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is missing: there are no photographs of machinery (such as a
concrete mixer), no images of the construction site, no images
of Vals other than the old roofs atmospherically gleaming in the
sunshine, no images of the 1960s context.
These images of the book are a perfect reflection of
Zumthor’s project description, Stone and Water, which was
published for the first time in Thermal Bath at Vals and subse-
quently became canonical. The description has been echoed
in almost every critique of and publication on the baths ever
since:
Mountain, stone, water, building in stone, building with
stone, building into the mountain, building out of the
mountain, being inside the mountain— ­our attempts to
give this chain of words an architectural interpretation,
to translate into architecture its meanings and sensuous-
ness, guided our design for the building and step by step
gave it form. 10
What such an architecture of “sensuousness” means is
clarified by Mohsen Mostafavi’s short introduction. This is
headed by a quote from Wim Wenders, which begins with the
words “I’m no great theorist” and continues with the assertion
that the essence of cinema is to “show things as they are.”
The text then reaffirms the view of the baths that the photo-
graphs construct: “the relating of ‘things’ . . . is at the core of
Zumthor’s architecture,” and “materials are the characters in
Zumthor’s architecture,” which is called “a haptic architec-
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3. Vals’s gneiss stacked (left) and in the
form of Zumthor’s now famous stone
walls (right), as depicted in the 1996
AA publication Thermal Bath at Vals.
Thermal Bath at Vals: Peter Zumthor,
Architectural Association, Exemplary
Projects 1 (London: Architectural
Association, 1996), 18–­19.
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ture.”11 The message becomes clear: architecture — ­not just
that of Zumthor’s baths, but exemplary architecture —­is made
of things, “things” here being synonymous with “materials.”
The overarching implication is that there is no more to material
than its material nature: a stone is a stone is a stone. This is
illustrated in the photographs that show the same stone se-
quentially, from the side of a mountain, via its being quarried
and worked on, up until, as it were, its return into the mountain
in the form of architecture. Materiality indicates architecture’s
gravitas; it takes the place of intellectual ballast, of theory.
There is, however, a further dimension to this book, one
that is expressed more in the photographs and in Zumthor’s
words than in those of Mostafavi. If Mostafavi talks rather mod-
estly about the “haptic” qualities of Zumthor’s architecture,
the designer himself indulges in the building’s sensuality and
physicality, and in its relation with the human body:
Right from the start, there was a feeling for the mystical
nature of a world of stone inside the mountain, for dark-
ness and light, for the reflection of light upon water, for the
diffusion of light through steam-­filled air, for the different
sounds that water makes in stone surroundings, for warm
stone and naked skin, for the ritual of bathing.12
One sentence here relates the sensual qualities of
architecture —­light conditions enticing the eye, the aural quali-
ties of water, the sensible warmth and wetness —­to its “mysti-
cal nature.” While, for Mostafavi, the materials remain things
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 free from intentions, for Zumthor, materials create mysticism.
This mysticism somehow seems to emanate from the mate-
rial and it is, as will be shown, to a large extent identical with
what other authors come to call “atmosphere.” That the book
is not just about clean-­cut drawings and hard materials but
about atmosphere becomes clear by the fact that the book
itself constructs the very same mysticism by purposely leaving
information out. And it is here that the architect’s and the edi-
tor’s views meet again. What is unintelligibility by mystification
for Zumthor is the no-­theory paradigm for Mostafavi. In other
words, architecture does not need to be understood; architec-
ture is felt. Although their intentions differ, for both Zumthor
and Mostafavi, architecture is held to be in the realm of the
senses, not in the intellect.

AA Histories
What Mostafavi intended becomes apparent in the context of
the Architectural Association’s history. Under the direction of
Alvin Boyarsky, the AA reached its peak of fame in the 1970s
and 1980s, with such teachers as Bernard Tschumi and Elia
Zenghelis, and such graduates as Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas,
and Peter Wilson. It was, however, also criticized for its splendid
isolation from practice. Students at the AA produced “a lot of
paper architecture,” and a lack of “substance” was masked
by “an intellectual torrent of words accompanying each new
project,” as Peter Blundell-­Jones put it in an article only a year
before the end of the Boyarsky era.13 Alan Balfour, who took
over and directed the school for four years in the early 1990s,
later also criticized the school’s detachment from practice
and “too much self-­indulgent phantasy.”14 Mostafavi’s anti-­
intellectualism and turn to hard material was thus a reaction
against the AA’s earlier institutional history. Exhibiting and
publishing the “exemplary project” of Vals started a whole new
movement, as is also reflected in David Chipperfield’s review of
Zumthor’s lecture in the AA Files, where he enthuses over the
Swiss architect’s series of “physical ideas.”15 What a physical
idea may be remains at Chipperfield’s discretion, but one could
hardly find a term that better marks the shift from an intellec-
tual to a sensuous design ideal.16

Zumthor’s Sensual Mysticism, 2003–­2006

The emphasis on a building’s materiality, its all-­embracing
sensory perception, and intentional gaps in the narrative would
eventually mature into full-­fledged sensuous mysticism, as
becomes evident in Zumthor’s lecture “Atmospheres: Architec-
tural Environments, Surrounding Objects.” Held at a provincial
but high-­brow literature festival in north Germany in 2003, the
text was published as a book in 2006.17 Peculiarly, the lecture

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 was printed in exactly the words that Zumthor spontaneously
formed in his ad-­libbed speech.18 One can hardly help be-
ing reminded of the Gospel —­the Evangelists famously also
recorded exactly what had been whispered into their ears. As
shall be seen, this is neither an accidental nor an exaggerated
comparison. With this seminal lecture, Zumthor’s architectural
approach had found its primary term —­atmosphere —­and the
Neue Sinnlichkeit one of its manifestos. To the architect, “atmo-
sphere” means nothing short of an equivalent to architectural
quality, as he set out to tell his audience.19 The elusiveness of
atmosphere is then evoked in a carefully orchestrated praise
of materiality, sensuousness, emotions, and intuition. “Qual-
ity architecture to me is when a building manages to touch
me,” Zumthor begins.20 This touch is as much a literal, physical
touch as it is a metaphorical one.21 Zumthor describes physical
relationships of the human body to a building and to its mate-
rials, as well as of materials to one another.22 Strangely, as hap-
tic as all of this is, the experience of the building is ultimately
evasive. Some kind of alchemy occurs when humans, materi-
als, and emotions collide —­so at least says Zumthor, calling
this the “Magic of the Real.”23 This magic slips even from the
architectural sorcerer’s grasp. For hardly a word features more
often in the lecture than “secret,”24 and Zumthor underlines
that all of this remains inexplicable by consistently admit-
ting that he “doesn’t” know: again and again, one reads such
phrases as “I have no idea why that is so” or “I don’t really
know much about it . . . but it’s there all the same.”25 This, of
course, is not meant to tell us that he really “doesn’t” know
(otherwise, he would not have integrated these thoughts into
his lecture), rather, it is meant to imply that there is a higher
power directing these phenomena.
Whether or not such a degree of mysticism is still in line
with the interests that characterized the AA in the 1990s and
made it foster the Swiss architect is questionable. But the
institution and the designer shared a common motivation that
drove them to this sensuous turn that I call Neue Sinnlichkeit:
they were searching for a way out of postmodern architec-
ture via an engagement with sensory and bodily perception.
Zumthor reflects on his origins in the introduction to the
five-­volume edition of his complete works published in 2014.
Speaking of the Swiss architecture scene in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, he recalls:

We spoke about the image-­quality of architecture, its

sensuous nature, its body, its capacity to create moods.
Aldo Rossi, who was at the time teaching in Zurich, opened
my eyes to a new perspective on the history of architecture
and the architecture of my own biographical memory. 26

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4. Oculus of the Bruder Klaus Chapel,
Wachendorf, Germany, clearly
resembling baroque depictions of the
Holy Ghost in rays. A similar image
illustrates Zumthor’s mention of “the
first transcendence,” in Peter Zumthor,
Atmosphären: Architektonische
Umgebungen, die Dinge um mich
herum (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006),
62–­63.

In spite of the influence of Aldo Rossi, whose impact as a

highly influential educator at the Eidgenössische Technische
Hochschule differs quite significantly from his own designs,
Zumthor’s ideas would have appealed to the Architectural
Association in the mid-­1990s.27 Here, too, the search was for
a way out of the late postmodern and deconstructivist echoes
that haunted the impasse at which the school found itself. Tell-
ingly, in his review of the Zumthor lecture and exhibition, Chip-
perfield praises Zumthor as “an architect who so thoroughly
dismisses the superfluous narrative of so much contemporary
architecture.”28 In other words, Zumthor leaves behind the se-
miotics, or postmodern chattiness, once so praised by Charles
Jencks as the “language” of architecture, or by Robert Venturi,
Denise Scott Brown, and others as “symbolism.”29

Miroslav Šik’s Emulation of Atmospheres, 1987

Zumthor and the Architectural Association were not alone on
this sensuous path out of postmodernism. Similar strategies
were manifest in the work and writings of such figures as the

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5. Fire Station in Zurich, design by
student Silke Hopf in the ETH studio
lead by Miroslav Šik, 1986, from Šik,
Analoge Architektur (Zurich: Boga,
1987). Silke Hopf, Feuerwehrstation
in Zürich, 1986.
Czech-­Swiss architect and educator Miroslav Šik, based at
ETH, or the Finnish architect and writer Juhani Pallasmaa, both
of whom can be identified as further protagonists of Neue
Sinnlichkeit. Šik can claim a certain primacy in an architecture
of moods and atmospheres. Already in the mid-­1980s, then an
instructor in design studio at the ETH in Zurich, Šik encouraged

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 his students to “present in architectural forms that which
makes the peculiar atmosphere of an urban environment.”30
Proclaiming an “Analog Architecture” (Analoge Architektur) in
an exhibition of student work in 1987, Šik called upon his fol-
lowers to “atmospherically emulate” the existing architecture
and city — ­i.e., to design in close analogy to what’s there, a con-
cept clearly based on Aldo Rossi’s idea of the città analoga.31
Noncriticism was thus ennobled to the status of a method. The
results are somewhat gloomy, highly detailed, and hyperrealist
pencil drawings so homogenous they could almost have been
designed and drawn by one person. The projects (such as a fire
station or a car dealership) emulate late-­nineteenth-­century
industrial architecture or peripheral interwar modernism;
Erich Mendelsohn’s Luckenwalde hat factory (1921–­1923) in
particular seems to have left a mark. That all of the drawings
are completely devoid of human beings and almost always
portray an urban situation in exceptional lighting conditions
(afternoon sun or night) lends them an uncanny aura. They are
meant to be felt, and it seems that the absence of humans is
expressly intended to provoke an emotional reaction in the
beholder. Even though the projects are obviously addressing
the beholder’s eye —­in spite of their apparent realism, they are
not (corpo)real — ­the architecture’s appeal to all the senses is
foregrounded in Fabio Reinhart’s contribution to the opulent
slipcase with texts and drawings that accompanied the exhibi-
tion. The drawings, writes Reinhart (then Šik’s colleague at the
ETH), make him think of his old mother who, after she had lost
her eyesight, increasingly relied on, and sharpened, her other
senses, opening up completely new, unexpected dimensions
of perception: sensations of sounds and scents, warmth and
touch.32 Even if inspired by Rossi, this constitutes an emotion-­
laden tirade against the postmodernists, whom Šik terms “the
ancients,” predicting that one day, his new way of designing
will “supersede postmodern irony.”33 While the exhibiton and
the whole movement surrounding Šik’s “Analog Architecture”
may not have had the impact his manifesto-­like tone promises,
his viewpoint found traction. Not only was Šik made a full pro-
fessor at ETH in 1999, the list of students participating in the
1987 exhibition partially reads as a who’s-­who of contemporary
Swiss architecture.34

Juhani Pallasmaa’s Multiplication of the Senses, 1994–­2012

In 1994, at the same time Zumthor was working on the baths at
Vals, the Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa united with Steven
Holl and theoretician Alberto Pérez-­Gómez for a special issue
of the Japanese journal a+u entitled Questions of Perception:
Phenomenology of Architecture. It is here that Pallasmaa pub-
lished his essay “An Architecture of the Seven Senses.”35 Not

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 just the unexpected increase in the number of senses (conven-
tionally five) makes this a seminal contribution to the discourse
discussed here: Pallasmaa counts seven by adding “skeleton
and muscle” to eye, ear, nose, skin, and tongue.36 The essay’s
relevance and topicality was confirmed by Pallasmaa’s highly
successful little book The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and
the Senses.37 Much of what Pallasmaa writes in the mid-1990’s
anticipates Zumthor’s 2003 lecture. Beginning with a critique
of twentieth-­century architecture’s tendency to address vi-
sion alone, especially the technological vision of the camera,
Pallasmaa continues: “Every touching experience of architec-
ture is multi-­sensory.”38 Once again, then, “touch” is meant
both as a haptic and an emotional experience, one that is
informed by an interplay of all the senses. One may suspend
the obvious question if a building can actually be tasted in
favor of understanding this as a call for an über-­sensory archi-
tecture and an extreme version of empathy. For with “skeleton
and muscle,” Pallasmaa means nothing other than a bodily
response to not just a building, but also to the actual bodily
effort exerted by its builder and designer:

As the work interacts with the body of the observer

the experience mirrors these bodily sensations of the
maker. Consequently, architecture is communication
from the body of the architect directly to the body of the
inhabitant.39

Pallasmaa’s postulations are directed at, or rather against, both

modernism and postmodernism. While the a+u issue, accord-
ing to its three editors, turns against “deconstructive theory,”40
Pallasmaa’s 2012 book criticizes the primacy of sight as “an
evident bias in the architecture of our century.” His focus is on
the twentieth century, and his accusation of the “detachment
and alienation” that supposedly results from this focus on sight
reads almost as a classic critique of modernism.41 But criticizing
the primacy of vision can also be understood as a critique of
image-­and sign-­enamored postmodernism.

The Senses, Atmosphere, and Incomprehensibility

Zumthor’s, Šik’s, and Pallasmaa’s sensual approaches to
architecture around 1990 were not without predecessors, of
course. As early as 1957, in his book Experiencing Architecture,
the Danish architect and writer Steen Eiler Rasmussen propa-
gated the idea that architecture should require perception with
(albeit not necessarily also with the design for) all the senses.
Sentences such as “It is not enough to see architecture;
you must experience it” and chapter titles such as “Hearing
Architecture” underpin a phenomenological perspective on

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 architecture that thinkers such as Christian Norberg-­Schulz
would later develop into a conservative cultural critique and, as
it were, a translation of Heidegger for architects, from the late
1960s onward.42 The concept of atmosphere, however, was new
to what is here termed Neue Sinnlichkeit, the sense-­centered
reaction to Postmodernism. If atmosphere is “haunting those
that try to escape it and eluding those that chase it,” as Mark
Wigley put it in an early article on the phenomenon —­quite
tellingly published in one of the last issues of the postmodern
flagship publication Daidalos43 — ­it is, in spite of its elusive-
ness, the key characteristic of the movement, the effluvium of
hard architectural material. On the one hand, atmosphere’s
inability to be represented is an argument for Neue Sinnlich-
keit’s propagators: of course one cannot picture atmosphere,
it has to be experienced. On the other hand, and more prob-
lematically, it does surface in architectural representations
as some kind of vapor, mist, or even more difficult, blurring.44
While the Architectural Association’s book on the baths at
Vals was characterized by its limited perspective, the German
philosopher Gernot Böhme, whose seminal publications have
paralleled Neue Sinnlichkeit (albeit the architects rarely refer
to him directly), repeatedly highlights photos that are out of
focus as the best representations of architecture.45 Whatever
one may think of unfocused architectural photography, what
becomes clear is that incomprehensibility is at the very core of
the whole movement. The observer is not meant to understand,
be this because of a photo that is out of focus or because of
the nonintellectual nature of an architecture that can only be
perceived sensually and emotionally. Incomprehensibility,
however, eventually incapacitates the recipient, as some com-
mon themes of Zumthor, Šik, and Pallasmaa suggest.

Common Themes: Childhood, Nostalgia, and Christian Motifs

The historical and political points of reference of Neue Sinn-
lichkeit can be seen by more closely examining some other
themes these architects share. These common themes are not
formal in nature, for the formal properties of the structures vary
enormously even within the work of a single architect. But the
pictures they paint of a perfect world of sensuousness show
astounding resemblances.
One common theme is the idealization of childhood. When
Šik’s ETH colleague Fabio Reinhart describes the situation of his
aging mother as a prime example for a sensuous perception of
the world, he does so from a son’s perspective. This becomes
even more obvious when the little story culminates by applying
his mother’s words to him to the experience of architecture:
“You, being an architect, you can make something from that.”46
Pallasmaa and Zumthor actually relate their childhood memo-

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 ries as introductions to a sensuous awareness of one’s environ-
ment, and it is in this context that smell plays a particular role.
“The strongest memory of a space is often its odor,” writes Pal-
lasmaa, and “I cannot remember the appearance of the door to
my grandfather’s farm-­house from my early childhood, but . . . I
recall especially the scent of home that hit my face as an invis-
ible wall behind the door.”47 Similarly, Peter Zumthor told the
German architectural critic Manfred Sack about the key experi-
ence of visiting his aunt’s house when he was little. Allegedly, it
was there that he learned to perceive materials: “the mild glow
of a waxed oak floor,” “the sound of pebbles under one’s feet,”
“the scent of wood, the touch of a faucet.”48
On a more general level, this focus on childhood memories
produces another common theme, that of vague nostalgia and
archaisms. Zumthor carefully disseminated the idea that his
baths in Vals were actually older than the surrounding build-
ings.49 As the plans show and the photographs in the book
suggest, the project is not meant to be read as architecture
but as a part of the ancient mountain. Zumthor was thus the
source of a topos that was echoed in countless reviews of the
project. Mostafavi found the baths to appear “as if they have
been there for ever”; “maybe even older than the surrounding
nature” enthused Martin Tschanz in the journal Archithese;
“metastorico” wrote the critic Dietmar Steiner in Domus.50 If
archaisms are the specialty of Zumthor, Pallasmaa is the chief
nostalgic of the movement. “The contemporary city has lost its
echo,” he laments, alluding to the aural qualities of architec-
ture, and the smell of algae for him turns a fishing town “into
the image of the lost Atlantis.”51 Nostalgia and childhood
memories are conspicuously often linked to olfaction and
unite in a passage on the impact of scent in architecture:

What a delight to move from one realm of odour to the

next, through the narrow streets of an old town! The scent
sphere of a candy store makes one think of the innocence
and curiosity of childhood; the dense smell of a shoe-
maker’s workshop makes one imagine horses, saddles
and harness straps and the excitement of riding; the
fragrance of a bread shop projects images of health, sus-
tenance and physical strength, whereas the perfume of a
pastry shop makes one think of bourgeois felicity.52

The scene described here is not urban, though, at least not

in terms of the contemporary city. Rather, it evokes the illus-
trated pages of a children’s book set in a small country town at
Christmas time; one may also think of an Advent calendar or a
baroque Neapolitan nativity scene.
This is no accident, for eventually the mysticism so central

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 to the representations of, and talk about, architecture from the
outset of Neue Sinnlichkeit develops into astoundingly Christian
motifs. Zumthor’s constant insistence that even he “doesn’t”
know and the implication that there must be a higher power is
mirrored in the nine points into which he divides his lecture.
Nine is an incomplete number, the one missing for the perfect
ten stands for that which he cannot know. This may seem a bit of
a daring interpretation, but it is evident in the fact that Zumthor’s
talk is not actually divided into nine but twelve points. He adds
the last three, however, at the last minute, excusing himself
for “three short appendices.”53 When he talks about the first of
these, however, it is no longer called an innocuous appendix but
a “transcendence.”54 What do imperfect humans (nine points)
lack for perfection (ten or twelve points)? They lack the one
who knows, or The Holy Trinity (three points). One hears similar
tones in Pallasmaa. Sound to him has an integrative quality in
architecture, but the kinds of sounds he uses as examples reveal
something about the kind of community of which he is thinking.
Lonesome “in the dark depths of a cathedral,” the “sound of
the organ makes us realize our affinity with the space,” accord-
ing to Pallasmaa. The same holds true on an urban scale: “The
sound of church bells through the streets makes us aware of our
citizenship.”55 Citizenship, or Christianity?

A Postcritical Return to the Premodern

The idealization of childhood, a vague nostalgia, the seemingly
archaic references to an entirely Christian society, and Christian
belief as the underlying principle of architectural thinking —­
what unites all these themes is a retrospective outlook. Post-­
postmodern sensuousness steps back into premodern times,
a premodern society, and premodern thinking. In the realm of
Neue Sinnlichkeit, architecture is felt and nothing other than
felt. The praise of childhood as the formative years when one
learns to actually appreciate architecture implies turning any
recipient of architecture into a child. A careless, worry-­free, full
sensory perception is to replace critical reflection, questioning
in fact any kind of intellectual engagement with architecture.
The ideal user of sensuous architecture does not ask questions,
indeed, does not have to ask questions as he or she instantly
understands. This, at least, is the way Peter Zumthor imagines
it in a central passage of his 2003 lecture:

We perceive atmosphere through our emotional sensibil-

ity —­a form of perception that works incredibly quickly . . .
We will not want to think for very long every time, in every
situation whether or not we like something . . . Something
inside us tells us an enormous amount straight away. We
are capable of immediate appreciation, of a spontaneous

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 emotional response, of rejecting things in a flash. That is
very different from linear thought, which we are equally
capable of, and which I love, too: thinking our way through
things from A to B in a mentally organised fashion.56

Analogous to this, Miroslav Šik postulates an archi-

tecture “approachable already in its first perceptions . . .
without lengthy instructions in professional deciphering.”57
Immediate emotional response, immediate understanding —­
Neue Sinnlichkeit is an architecture where any distance is
lost. If this is so, if “architecture is communication from the
body of the architect directly to the body of the inhabitant,”
as Pallasmaa states, then the critic is squashed in between.
For in the ideal picturebook world of sensuousness, there is
no room for questions. Fabio Reinhart raves about the “indul-
gability for architecture” (“Genussfähigkeit der Architektur”)58
his mother had acquired. Thus one is left to indulging, nothing
else. Anti-­intellectualism is the basso continuo that underpins
the whole discourse about an architecture for the senses,
from Mostafavi’s ominous quotes (“I’m no great theorist”) via
Chipperfield’s “physical ideas,” and Pallasmaa’s similarly cryp-
tic expression “sensory thought”59 to Zumthor’s “We will not
want to think for very long every time.” No wonder Pallasmaa
calls touch, so central for all involved in this debate, “the un-
conscious of vision.”60 A conscious, and thus critical, engage-
ment with architecture is not intended. In this context, the
mystifying gaps in the 1996 AA publication acquire yet a dif-
ferent meaning, not only enshrouding the baths, their location
and their creator with an aura of magic but actually withdraw-
ing the project from potential criticism. Neue Sinnlichkeit is,
after all, yet another kind of postcriticality. It is not the post-
criticality that (certainly not by chance) also developed in the
mid-­1990s, as a reaction to the overwhelming predominance
of French postmodern philosophy in American East Coast archi-
tectural circles. It also has little to do with Dutch Pragmatism,
OMA, and other architectural firms that are often associated
with postcriticality.61 The Neue Sinnlichkeit variety of postcriti-
cality is simply concerned with preventing a cognitive approach
to architecture. Never mind if all this were just the architects’
dream. But it is remarkable that the recent growth of scholarly
interest in architecture’s sensuousness has spawned contribu-
tions that are invariably characterized by affirmation and an
almost complete lack of critique.62 If an architecture that gener-
ates atmospheres is questioned at all, this happens because
of its manipulative potential on behalf of the wrong political
powers.63 But the problem lies elsewhere. The lack of critique is
at the very heart of the whole movement. For Neue Sinnlichkeit
triggers reflexes, not reflection.

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 Biography
Erik Wegerhoff is lecturer at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture
at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His dissertation, supported by the Bibliotheca
Hertziana and the Gerda Henkel Foundation, examined textual as well as architec-
tural reinterpretations of the Colosseum after antiquity; it was published as Das
Kolosseum: Bewundert, bewohnt, ramponiert. Erik is working on his second book
project about architecture, tectonics, velocity, and the automobile and has recently
edited a small volume on the automobile road as narrative architecture, entitled On
the Road / Über die Straße.

Notes
I thank Anna Minta of the Catholic University of Linz, Austria, for granting me the
possibility to elaborate on some of the ideas expressed in this article for the first
time at a lecture in November 2015 at the Institute of Art History at the University
of Zurich, Switzerland. Rachel Danford has Americanized my Germanic English
with admirable sensitivity, and I thank my colleague Dietrich Erben as well as the
reviewers and the editors of this issue of Future Anterior for their important critique
and input.
1
“Der harte Kern der Schönheit,” in Ds Tschiferli 23 (Summer 1992): 4–­19. Irma
Noseda, “****Hotel Therme in Vals,” in Archithese 16, no. 6 (November/December
1986): 29–­32.
2
See “Der harte Kern der Schönheit,” in the municipality’s tourist magazine Ds
Tschiferli (1992).
3
See, most recently, the special issue of Oase 91 (2013): Sfeer bouwen / Building
Atmosphere, ed. Klaske Havik, Hans Teerds, Gus Tielens. See also Christian Borch,
Architectural Atmospheres: On the Experience and Politics of Architecture (Basle:
Birkhäuser, 2014).
4
For an exceptionally critical account, see Ákos Moravánszky, “My Blue Heaven: The
Architecture of Atmospheres,” AA Files 61 (2010): 18–­22.
5
Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-­modern Architecture (London: Academy
Editions, 1977). Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from
Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1977).
6
Gernot Böhme, “On Synaesthesiae,” Daidalos 41 (September 1991):, 26–­36;
Gernot Böhme, Atmosphäre: Essays zur neuen Ästhetik (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1995, extended edition 2013, English translation published under the
title The Aesthetics of Atmospheres, London: Routledge, 2016); Gernot Böhme, Ar-
chitektur und Atmosphäre (Munich: Fink, 2006, revised edition Munch: Fink, 2013).
7
Thermal Bath at Vals: Peter Zumthor, Architectural Association, Exemplary Proj-
ects 1 (London: Architectural Association, 1996), 72. Martin Tschanz, “Das Thermal-
bad in Vals,” in Archithese 26, no. 5 (September/October 1996): 34–­35. Manfred
Sack and Peter Zumthor, Drei Konzepte: Thermalbad Vals, Kunsthaus Bregenz,
“Topographie des Terrors” Berlin (Basle: Birkhäuser, 1997) [exhibition catalog,
Architekturgalerie Luzern, September 28–­November 2, 1997].
8
Thermal Bath at Vals: Peter Zumthor.
9
Ibid., 2–­4, 8, and 14–­21.
10
Peter Zumthor, “Stone and Water,” in Thermal Bath at Vals: Peter Zumthor, (1996),
10. Original German (published on the occasion of the exhibition in Lucerne): “Berg,
Stein, Wasser– ­Bauen im Stein, Bauen mit Stein, in den Berg hineinbauen, aus dem
Berg herausbauen, im Berg drinnen sein– ­wie lassen sich die Bedeutungen und die
Sinnlichkeit, die in der Verbindung dieser Wörter steckt, architektonisch interpre-
tieren, in Architektur umsetzen? Entlang diesen Fragestellungen haben wir das
Bauwerk entworfen, hat es Schritt für Schritt Gestalt angenommen.” Peter Zumthor,
“Thermalbad Vals,” in Drei Konzepte (1997), 11.
11
Mohsen Mostafavi, “An Architecture of Stillness,” in Thermal Bath at Vals, 6.
12
Peter Zumthor, “Stone and Water,” in Thermal Bath at Vals: Peter Zumthor, 10.
Original German: “Und das Gefühl für die mystischen Eigenschaften einer Welt aus
Stein im Innern des Berges, für Dunkelheit und Helle, für Lichtreflexe auf dem Was-
ser und in dampfgesättigter Luft, für die verschiedenen Geräusche des Wassers in
einer Umgebung aus Stein, für warme Steine und nackte Haut, für das Rituelle des
Badens—­die Freude, mit diesen Dingen zu arbeiten, sie bewusst einzusetzen, war
von Anfang an da.” Peter Zumthor, “Thermalbad Vals,” in Drei Konzepte, 11.
13
Peter Blundell-­Jones, “Blosses Bildwerk? Zur Ausstrahlung der Architectural Asso-
ciation in London,” in Archithese 19, no. 5 (1989): 78. Original German: “ [ . . . ] eine
Menge Papier-­Architektur [ . . . ] oft scheint hinter dem intellektuellen Wortschwall,
der jedes neue Werk begleitet, kaum Substanz zu stehen.”
14
Kenneth Powell, “Atlantic Crossing: Alan Balfour Reflects on His Chairmanship,”
Architects’ Journal, August 24, 1995: 20.

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 15
David Chipperfield, “Thermal Bath at Vals by Peter Zumthor,” in AA Files 32
(Autumn 1996): 72. “Each idea physically linked to the other, Zumthor works with
the project, intensely trying to understand what it wants to be, making explicit and
elaborating physical ideas. One idea stimulates another [ . . . ]. The rules develop
and physical ideas become evident.”
16
During his chairmanship, Mostafavi propagated not just Vals’s supposedly
nontheoretical architecture but also fostered publications with such telling titles
as “Architecture Is Not Made with the Brain,” which, published in 2005, became
Mostafavi’s bequest to the AA after his return to U.S. academia in 2004. Pamela
Johnston, Rosa Ainley, Clare Barrett, “Architecture Is Not Made with the Brain”: The
Labour of Alison and Peter Smithson (London: Architectural Association, 2005). The
title is a quote from Peter Smithson in conversation with Irénée Scalbert in 1994
(see page 29). On Mostafavi’s career, see “A New Dean Designs without Borders,”
Harvard Magazine, November/December 2007: 70–­71.
17
Peter Zumthor, Atmosphären: Architektonische Umgebungen, die Dinge um mich
herum (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006). The English version: Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres:
Architectural Environments, Surrounding Objects (Basle: Birkhäuser, 2006). The
book was published in numerous other languags, such as Spanish (2006), Italian
(2007), French (2008), Czech (2013), and Chinese (2014). Zumthor’s lecture was
thus made available to an almost global audience.
18
Brigitte Labs-­Ehlert, “Conversing with Beauty,” in Zumthor, Atmospheres, 9.
19
“The title ‘Atmospheres’ is generated by a question that has interested me for
quite some time [ . . . ]: what do we mean when we speak of architectural quality?”
Zumthor, Atmospheres, 11.
20
Ibid., 11. Original German: “Der Titel ‘Atmosphären’ leitet sich daher: Mich inter-
essiert [ . . . ] schon lange: Was ist das eigentlich: Architektonische Qualität? [ . . . ]
Architektonische Qualität, das kann sich bei mir nur darum handeln, daß ich von
einem Bauwerk berührt bin.” Zumthor, Atmosphären, 11. The English translation
uses the word “move” instead of “touch,” the latter however is much closer to the
German original.
21
“The body! Not the idea of the body— ­the body itself! A body that can touch me.”
Original German: “Der Körper! Nicht die Idee des Körpers— ­der Körper! Der mich
berühren kann.” Zumthor, Atmospheres, 23, and Zumthor, Atmosphären, 23.
22
The titles of the nine small chapters that make up the lecture— ­such as The Sound
of a Space, The Temperature of a Space, or Levels of Intimacy—­leave no doubt about
the physicality of architecture. Zumthor, Atmospheres, (2006), 29, 33 and 49.
23
Original German: “Die Magie des Realen.” Zumthor, Atmospheres, 19, and
Zumthor, Atmosphären, 19.
24
Some examples: “[T]he first and the greatest secret of architecture, that it collects
different things in the world.” “[A] grand secret, a great passion, a joy for ever.
‘Material Compatability’.” “This is the kind of work I love, and the longer I do it the
more mysterious it seems to become.” Zumthor, Atmospheres, 23 and 25. Original
German: “Und das finde ich das erste und größte Geheimnis der Architektur, daß
sie Dinge aus der Welt, Materialien aus der Welt zusamenführt.” “Großes Geheim-
nis, große Leidenschaft, große Freude immer wieder. ‘Der Zusammenklang der
Materialien.’” “Ich liebe diese Arbeit, und je länger ich sie mache, umso geheimnis-
voller wird sie irgendwie,” Zumthor, Atmosphären, 23 and 25.
25
On immediate emotional response to music: “I have no idea why that is so, but
it’s like that with architecture, too.” On the sounds of buildings: “I’ve no idea what
they are. Maybe it’s the wind or something.” On intimacy: “I don’t really know much
about it [ . . . ] but it’s there all the same.” Zumthor, Atmospheres, 13, 31, and 49.
Original German: “[N]ach zwei Sekunden ist das Gefühl da! [ . . . ] Und ich weiß nicht
warum. Und ein bißchen ist das auch so in der Architektur.” “Ich weiß nicht, was es
ist. Es ist vielleicht der Wind oder so.” “Ich weiß aber nicht so viel darüber [ . . . ],
aber es ist da.” Zumthor, Atmosphären, 13, 31, and 49.
26
Peter Zumthor, “Und von innen nach aussen, bis alles stimmt,” in Peter
Zumthor: Bauten und Projekte, vol. 1: 1985–­1989, ed. by Thomas Durisch (Zurich:
Scheidegger & Spiess, 2014), 9. Original German: “In den späten siebziger Jahren
bis in die Mitte der achtziger Jahre [ . . . ] war in der jungen Architekturszene der
deutschen Schweiz etwas geschehen, was auch mich erfasste und von dem ich bald
glaubte, ein Teil zu sein. [ . . . ] Wir sprachen über die Bildqualität der Architektur,
ihre Sinnlichkeit, ihren Köper, ihre Fähigkeit, Stimmungen zu erzeugen. Aldo Rossi,
der damals in Zürich lehrte, eröffnete mir einen neuen Blick auf die Geschichte der
Architektur und die Architektur meiner biografischen Erinnerung.”
27
On Aldo Rossi’s role as an educator and precursor of the movement that is here
termed Neue Sinnlichkeit, see Moravánszky, “My Blue Heaven.”
28
Chipperfield, “Thermal Bath at Vals by Peter Zumthor,” 72.
29
Jencks, The Language of Post-­modern Architecture. Venturi et al., Learning from
Las Vegas.

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 30
Original German: “In den architektonischen Formen dargestellt zu bekommen,
was die eigenartige Atmosphäre der urbanen Umgebung ausmacht,” Miroslav Šik,
“An die Seelenmaler,” in Analoge Architektur (Zurich: Boga, 1987), first unnum-
bered page.
31
The exhibition was held October 15 to November 28, 1987 at the Architekturforum
Zurich and then moved on to other cities. See the opulent publication with texts by
Miroslav Šik and Fabio Reinhart and reproductions of the drawings, Miroslav Šik,
Analoge Architektur (Zurich: Boga, 1987). Original German: “ahme [ . . . ] atmosphä-
risch nach,” Šik, “An die Seelenmaler” (1987), third unnumbered page. On Aldo
Rossi’s concept of the città analoga, see Carsten Ruhl, “Im Kopf des Architekten:
Aldo Rossis La città analoga,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 69 (2006): 67–­98.
32
“[Z]wei Erfahrungen [ . . . ] stehen in einem engen Beziehungsnetz zum Material,
das den Gegenstand dieser Ausstellung bildet. [ . . . ] Ich habe gesehen, wie die
Pupillen meiner Mutter trüb wurden und wie ihre Augen erblindeten, und mit diesen
Augen eröffneten sich neue unerwartete Dimensionen. [ . . . ] [Nun] versuchte meine
Mutter gegen das zunehmende Ausbleiben sichtbarer Botschaften zu bestehen,
indem sie ihre Aufmerksamkeit mehr den Tönen und Gerüchen, den Wärme-­und
Tastempfindungen zuwandte. Sie erkannte, andere Codes und mit diesen ihre
unerwarteten Dimensionen. [ . . . ] [So war sie] zu einem engeren Kontakt mit ihrer
konkreten physischen Natur gezwungen. [ . . . ] Den bei der räumlichen Wahrneh-
mung der Sehenden üblicherweise vernachlässigten oder doch untergeordneten
Sinnesreizen widmete sie eine neue und gesteigerte Aufmerksamkeit und erkannte
damit die partielle und konventionelle Natur des Sehens.” Fabio Reinhart, “Dieses
Vorwort richtet an den Leser einen zweifachen Wunsch— ­nichts sonst,” in Analoge
Architektur, third unnumbered page.
33
Šik, “An die Seelenmaler,” (1987), first and third pages: “die Alten,” “Der
feierlich-­fröhliche Ton des Realismus, den wir angeschlagen haben, wird— ­so hoffe
und wünsche ich mir— ­eines Tages die postmoderne Ironie genauso ablösen wie
den internationalen popper-­Stil der Tessiner.”
34
Students included Andrea Deplazes, Christian Kerez, Paola Maranta, and Quintus
Miller; see the list in Šik, Analoge Architektur. This, of course, is not to say that all
still design along Šik-­ian lines.
35
Juhani Pallasmaa, “An Architecture of the Seven Senses”, a+u [Architecture and
Urbanism], special issue: Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture,
ed. Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Pérez-­Gómez, July 1994: 27–­37.
36
Ibid., 30.
37
Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (London:
Wiley, 2012).
38
Pallasmaa, “An Architecture of the Seven Senses,” 30.
39
Ibid., 36.
40
Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Pérez-­Gómez, “Introduction”, a+u,
July 1994:, 4.
41
Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, 43.
42
Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Om at opleve arkitektur (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag,
1957); the quote is from the first English edition Experiencing Architecture (London:
Chapman & Hall, 1959), 33 and 232. Christian Norberg-­Schulz, Architecture: Mean-
ing and Place (New York: Rizzoli, 1988), which is a collection of essays published
since the 1960s; and Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture
(Rizzoli: New York, 1980).
43
Mark Wigley, “The Architecture of Atmosphere / Die Architektur der Atmosphäre,”
Daidalos 68 (June 1998): 18–­27 at 18.
44
See, most recently, Architectural Design 78, no. 3 (May/June 2008): special issue
Interior Atmospheres.
45
Most recently in a chapter of Böhme, Atmosphäre, 112–­33, especially 124.
46
“Du, der du Architekt bist, daraus kannst du was machen,” Reinhart, “Dieses
Vorwort,” third page.
47
Pallasmaa, “An Architecture of the Seven Senses,” 32. See also the slightly
extended version in Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, 58.
48
“Peter Zumthor nannte einmal als Schlüsselerlebnis dafür den Aufenthalt im
Hause einer Tante. Seitdem beschäftigt ihn: wie sich etwas anfasst (die Türklinken),
was man sieht (‘den milden Glanz des gewachsten Eichenholzes’), was man hört
(das ‘Geräusch der Kieselsteine unter den Füssen’, wie ‘eine Tür ins Schloss fällt’),
was einen anstrengt (‘die schwere Haustür’), was man riecht (das Holz), wie etwas
sich anfühlt (ein Handlauf, ein Wasserhahn, der von der Sonne erwärmte weiche
Asphalt), ob es hell (die Küche) oder düster ist (der Gang). Solche Erinnerungen
bilden gleichsam den Grundstock seiner architektonischen Stimmungen und Bilder:
das Haus–­eine Schule der Sinne.” Manfred Sack, “Über Peter Zumthors Art zu
entwerfen, also zu denken,” in Drei Konzepte, 75.

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 49
“[I]t pleased us to think that the new building should communicate the feeling of
being older than its existing neighbour, of always having been in this landscape,”
Zumthor writes in the 1996 AA publication, Zumthor, “Stone and Water,” 9.
50
Mostafavi, “An Architecture of Stillness,” 6. Tschanz, “Das Thermalbad in Vals,” 34.
Dietmar Steiner, “Bagni termali, Vals, Svizzera,” Domus 798 (November 1997): 27.
51
Pallasmaa, “An Architecture of the Seven Senses,” 31; Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the
Skin, 59.
52
Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, 58–­59.
53
Zumthor, Atmospheres, 63.
54
My translation. The English translation in this case does not reflect the original
German: “die erste Transzendenz hier.” Zumthor, Atmosphären, 63.
55
Pallasmaa, “An Architecture of the Seven Senses,” 31. Sacral and Christian themes
occur in Pallasmaa’s writings again and again. His examples for an architecture
that encloses silence, for instance, comprise solely sacred references: “Egyptian
temples,” “the silence of a Gothic cathedral,” “the last dying note of a Gregorian
chant,” and “the Pantheon.” Pallasmaa, “An Architecture of the Seven Senses,” 31.
56
Zumthor, Atmospheres, 13. I have slightly changed the translation to align it more
with the original German: “Atmosphäre spricht die emotionale Wahrnehmung an,
das ist die Wahrnehmung, die unglaublich rasch funktioniert [ . . . ]. Wir werden ja
nicht jedesmal, in jeder Situation irgendwie lang denken wollen, ob uns das gefällt
oder nicht [ . . . ]. Da ist etwas in uns, das uns sofort viel sagt. Sofortiges Verständ-
nis, sofortige Berührung, sofortige Ablehnung. Also anders als dieses lineare
Denken, das wir auch haben und das ich auch liebe, von A nach B mit dem Kopf,
und wo wir uns das dann alles zurechtlegen müssen.” Zumthor, Atmosphären, 13.
57
“ [ . . . ] die Analoge Architektur [ . . . ] die Welt der Architektur möge sich schon
bereits in den ersten Wahrnehmungen zugänglich erweisen [ . . . ] ohne Zuhilfe-
nahme von langwierigen Unterrichtungen im fachlichen Entziffern. Hier wird für eine
unmittelbar wirkende, anschauliche und allgemein verständliche Poetik plädiert.”
Šik, “An die Seelenmaler,” first page.
58
Reinhart, “Dieses Vorwort,” third page.
59
“The senses do not only mediate information for the judgement of the intellect;
they are also a means of articulating sensory thought.” Pallasmaa, “An Architecture
of the Seven Senses,” 30.
60
Ibid., 34.
61
See Robert Cowherd, “Notes on Post-­criticality: Towards an Architecture of
Reflexive Modernisation,” Footprint: Delft Architecture Theory Journal, issue Agency
in Architecture: Reframing Criticality in Theory and Practice (Spring 2009): 65–­76.
Sanford Kwinter, “FFE: Le trahison des clercs (and Other Travesties of the Modern),”
in Architectural Theory, Volume II: An Anthology from 1871 to 2005, ed. Harry Francis
Mallgrave and Christina Contandriopoulos (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008): 576–­79 (origi-
nally published in Any 24 [1999]).
62
See, for instance, Anna Barbara and Anthony Perliss, Invisible Architecture:
Experiencing Places through the Sense of Smell (Milan: Skira, 2006). Similar in
tone and enthusiasm is Architectural Design 78, no. 3 (May/June 2008): Interior
Atmospheres, guest-­edited by Julieanna Preston. In the editorial, Helen Castle
writes: “Misty, sculptural, tactile, theatrical and experiential, atmospheric interiors
represent a seismic shift for architecture. They celebrate a wholly Romantic sensibil-
ity, in which the emotional response overshadows the rational line and the sensory
dominates over the intellect” (5). See also the numerous publications by Gernot
Böhme since the 1980s: “On Synaesthesiae” (1991), Atmosphäre (1995/2013),
Architektur und Atmosphäre.The bottom line (and tone) of these may be summa-
rized in his sentence: “Atmospheres are tuned spaces or [ . . . ] spatially effused,
quasi-­objective feelings.” Original German: “Atmosphären sind gestimmte Räume
oder [ . . . ] räumlich ergossene, quasi objektive Gefühle.” Böhme, Architektur und
Atmosphäre, 16.
63
For powers, depending on your politics, read: Capitalism or, of course, Fascism.
Christian Borch is one of the very few who questions an otherwise wholeheartedly
hailed sensuousness. “[W]hen architectural atmospheres are created so as to affect
us through the senses, atmospheric design operates in ways that we barely recog-
nise consciously. Accordingly [ . . . ] the design of architectural atmospheres might
be seen as a subtle form of power, in which behaviour, desires, and experiences are
governed or managed without people being consciously aware of this.” Borch: “The
Politics of Atmospheres,” 62. Nonetheless, Borch propagates and favors a sensory
architecture, observing that “regrettably” not all architecture is designed with the
intention of creating atmospheres (7).

137
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