The subject of atmosphere has preoccupied me since my childhood, because I have always found it exciting to put rooms and people in certain moods.
We are all familiar with the phenomenon that when we enter a room, we either feel comfortable or not. Noises, music and sounds very quickly create a mood that strongly influences us. The sound of the sea, a jackhammer, birds chirping or lounge music evoke a range of emotions and memories in us. Bad acoustics literally get on our nerves when it is too loud, when people are talking normally, when there is reverberation or everything is swallowed so that you have to speak twice as loud. Depending on the place, we look for appropriate situations in order to feel comfortable.
Whether we feel hot, cold or comfortable is determined by the temperature and the climate in the room.
We often only notice how it smells when it stinks or is too intense. Smells are subtle because they go directly into the limbic system, where they are strongly associated with memories. That’s why we love the smell of freshly baked biscuits that our mothers or grandmothers made for us.
Surfaces, materials and colours also have a subtle effect, but are also felt through haptics in addition to visual perception. We can understand how a glass table feels in comparison to a wooden table just as easily as a couch made of leather or velvet. When materials appeal to us, we want to touch them and literally grasp them. We notice very quickly whether colours harmonise in a room. However, it is not decisive whether we primarily like it, but what feelings it triggers. A soft beige can be brought to life by a bright pink, but a restrained grey can create a very gentle effect. This is also reflected in the structure of the surface: is it rough or smooth, deeply grained or profiled? What is important here is balance, which should calmly include accents.
For me, the most important factor in creating atmosphere is light.
Light makes the room and the entire architecture visible. Details can be emphasised or hidden and the whole room can be immersed in a pleasant atmosphere. In my opinion, light is the most important factor in interaction with architecture. The two masters in conception and implementation are the architects Peter Zumthor and Tadao Ando. Both work with natural and artificial light to create a specific, usually very soft lighting situation within their architecture. Even cool materials like concrete appear warm and soft.
ATARA lighting objects that work with sunlight and LEDs can bring even more naturalness into a room by introducing real sunlight. This is achieved by means of a suntracker on which lenses are mounted that transport the sunlight via the phenomenon of total reflection by means of fibre optics. A light object is docked in the interior, which is then illuminated with sunlight. In this way, we can perceive inside what is happening outside in the sky. Gleaming white light becomes reddish in the morning or evening, a passing cloud changes the light intensity and can be sensed. This creates a dynamic in the interior that cannot otherwise be perceived and bathes the room in sunlight. If it is too hazy or even dark, the system switches to LED so that the ATARA light object can shine.
For this purpose, ATARA design has developed its own interface so that its light objects can always give off light.
ATARA light objects thus create an unprecedented atmosphere through real sunlight, materials adapted to the room, their size and shape, which are realised by hand. Sunlight technology thus meets individual design as high-tech and thus creates a pleasant tension in the room. Anyone who has ever felt real sunlight in the interior wishes they could see and feel it every day to have a good atmosphere in the room.
LICHTINSTALLATION: LIGHT\TRACE No. 9