To promote atmosphere and sensation in the design of public spaces, I investigated microclimate design innovations in the Islamic Garden palaces of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, and drew out lessons that can help us create spaces of greater reflection and creativity today.
Role Writer, Researcher
For Harvard GSD2450 Meteorological Reveries (II)
Instructor Silvia Benedito
Date 2015
Service research, spatial design, content
How do you shape spaces to inspire greater reflection and creativity?
We live within an envelope of air that affects our wellbeing and shapes our perception of the world around us, but we frequently dismiss atmosphere and bodily sensation as considerations in designing our cities and public spaces. For a seminar on atmospheric design at Harvard Graduate School of Design, I investigated the Islamic garden palaces of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain to help advance atmosphere as a concept that can expand the ecological, physiological and humanistic scopes in design.
Having lived in Granada and visited the Alhambra several times, I was really interested in finding ways to connect the lineage of its design language to the unique human experience of the palaces.
Chapter 1: Political Climate
In this chapter, I situate the experience of the garden palaces within the longer lineage of cultural expressions used by Islamic political power.
Chapter 2: Designer’s Claims
In Chapter 2, I peel back the designers’ approaches to shaping territory, water, and space through explorations of unions between historical prototypes, such as between the chahar bagh and the Bedouin campground.
Chapter 3: Taxonomic Investigations
In Chapter 3, I investigate the thermodynamic forces at work in both summer cooling and winter warming through simulations using a digital elevation model of the landscape and original design drawings.
Chapter 4: Memory & Mediated Experience
In Chapter 4, I examine how the same surfaces, openings, and water manipulated for thermodynamic comfort in the Alhambra were simultaneously manipulated to inspire abstract reflection and creativity, which unlocked a new paradigm for the medieval world in which memory and mediated experiences of the landscape dictated new sense of connection between human beings and their surrounding environment.
