This study critically explores the role atmospheric experience could have for the livability of modernist architectural environment. Atmospheric experience and the wider domain of experiential...Show moreThis study critically explores the role atmospheric experience could have for the livability of modernist architectural environment. Atmospheric experience and the wider domain of experiential engagement with one’s (architectural) living environment have long been omitted from positivist discourse, heritage, and policymaking, despite its fundamental significance for human existence. Atmospheric experience is defined as the affective and embodied experience of a spatial environment which impacts subjective notions of wellbeing, a sense of belonging and meaning making. In turn, subjective wellbeing is a significant dimension of overall livability. In this study, New Phenomenology as defined by Schmitz (1999) and Sørensen (2015) informs the theoretical discussion and subsequent methodology and analysis. This study therefore seeks to contribute to a re-evaluation of phenomenology as a scientific approach with a significant contribution for understanding holistic experiential phenomena as part of human existence. This informs the conceptualization of a preliminary model of embodied significance of heritage (the affective judgement of embodied experience), which is tested on the empirical case of the modernist village Nagele, the Netherlands. Consequently, this study presents a new conceptual avenue for a more holistic approach of the value and significance of heritage, which considers atmospheric experience on equal footing regarding the dominant cultural-historical and socio-economic values of heritage in current policy and practice. Atmospheric experience is operationalized as neighborhood satisfaction in relation to subjective wellbeing. Insights from interviews, archive material and secondary literature demonstrated that the preliminary model could serve as a critical tool to incorporate and translate subjective, inter-subjective and shared experience in discussions regarding heritage value, wellbeing, and livability. It is argued that atmospheric value creates more sensitivity for the holistic nature and complex lifeworlds of dwellers of modernist heritage sites. A model is necessary to transpose phenomenologically informed findings and discussion to the (positivist) paradigm of policy and practice.Show less
