Dialogue

Atmospheres: Mapping Ambiances to Design Spaces for Affect

Presented by Yasmine Abbas, Strategic Designer and Assistant Teaching Professor, Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

What is an architectural atmosphere? How can we represent, design, and fabricate spaces of affect? In this presentation, Dr. Abbas will share her current research on building atmospheres, their representation through the experimental process of mapping ambiances led at architecture schools in France, Japan, and the United States, and the potential for computational design.

Dr. Yasmine Abbas is a French architect (DPLG 1997) and strategic designer. Her research explores mobility, digital culture and augmented place-making, with current focus on fabricating atmospheres, generative mapping, cartography and the computational design of ambiance. She is the author of Le néo-nomadisme : Mobilités. Partage. Transformations identitaires et urbaines (2011) and co-editor of Digital Technologies of the Self (Abbas, Y. & Dervin, F., 2009). She received a SMArchS from MIT (2001) and a Doctor of Design from Harvard University (2006) for her work investigating neo-nomads, researching strategies for the design of living environments across contemporary conditions of expanded physical, digital and mental mobilities.