VIRTUAL London.

Abstract

We encounter variegated atmospheres in our urban inhabitance: the friendly atmosphere of a neighborhood, the vibrant atmosphere of a street market. If atmosphere, as phenomenologist Gernot Böhme maintained, is the primary ‘object’ of perception, then it certainly underlies the vitality and livability of the city as it shapes the subjective experience of urban reality that is shared by citizens. What constitutes different urban atmospheres? Who has control over their production? How can citizens actively negotiate the urban atmospheres they inhabit? Contributing to the growing body of literature on atmosphere in the recent decade, this paper draws from Henri Lefebvre’s theorization of space and time to propose an analytic framework for unpacking the production of urban atmospheres. I first outline debates and controversies between post-humanist and phenomenological articulations of atmosphere, and argue for a processual understanding of atmosphere as always emerging from specific configurations of human, objects, emotion, practices and symbolic meanings. Then, I elaborate how Lefebvre’s open-ended, three-dimensional formulation of space triad and rhythmanalysis enables us to account for the indeterminate nature of atmosphere and its production through the interaction between environmental materiality and embodied subjectivity. To conclude, Lefebvre provides us with a materialist phenomenology which could articulate both lived varieties and spatio-temporal contingencies implicated in the production of urban atmospheres, hence allows us to understand what elements have to configure for urban atmospheres to emerge and become perceived, and envision potential ways to intervene in those elements and thereby (re)shape the future.