ABSTRACT
Architecture consists of three fundamental entities—space, time and matter—played within human consciousness. Space, time and matter have their own degrees of freedom controlled by architect’s consciousness that sway users’ consciousness. Architecture is fundamentally the creation of controlled places and spaces, through the use of walls, columns, arches, beams, ceilings, surfaces, textures, lights, shadows, shades, music, noises, perfumes, and odors. Nowhere is this more evident than in the architecture of public-use spaces. The casinos, the malls, the stadiums, the commercial malls, the courthouses, the schools, the hotels, the theaters and the museums are all environments carefully orchestrated to orient, to disorient or to reorient the visitors and inhabitants, or to make a specific pitch effective. In these environments, the total exclusion of the sensory stimuli generated by the external reality of the world means that patrons are dependent on manufactured cues for their behavior. Eliminating all external stimuli prevents random reactions. As virtual modes become more sophisticated in providing an approximation of tactile environments into which we can lose ourselves, so does atmospheric architecture.
