Emilio Ambasz, Residence-au-Lac: Atmosfere, emozioni e realtà virtuale

Architectural research has recently started to interact with neuroscientific knowledge by integrating their theories and through experiment-based investigations to study how we perceive, feel, and interpret the world we inhabit. Architects play a crucial role in this interdisciplinary challenge: they design the experimental stimuli to spatially situate the task to be performed and elicit a response (conscious or nonconscious). Capable of confining physical space into a whole and independent form and limiting the number of affecting variables, rooms are the privileged testing ground. This paper analyzes the room employed in a virtual reality experiment exploring atmospheric perception. There are three key points: [1] we discuss the architectural precedent (the renovation project of the Residence-au-Lac lobby developed by Emilio Ambasz in the early Eighties on the shore of Lake Lugano); [2] scoring real-time questions and memory-informed assessments, we examine the emotional experience lived in a virtual environment that reinterprets this project; and [3] we compare the participants’ appraisals to the architect’s intentions and critics’ reviews to see if atmospheric impressions resonate with design expectations. Spoiler: the virtual simulation inspired by Ambasz’s room was effective at irradiating an oneiric atmosphere and evoking pleasant, serene, and uplifting feelings — as imagined by its creator, praised by critics, and hypothesized by the experimenters.