"Even a Mundane Roadside" by fourth year environmental design student Garth Woolison. His photo was one of the winners of the Faculty of Architecture's annual Student Photo Competition.

Atmosphere in Action

February 7, 2014 —

Each year the Faculty of Architecture hosts an annual interdisciplinary symposium called “Atmosphere.” It poses a specific yet open-ended theme to draw researchers from multiple disciplines into a topically oriented exploration and exchange. The theme for Atmosphere 2014 is “Action.”

The symposium explores the less tangible aspects of design and experience: the ephemeral, social, situational, emotional, elemental, phenomenal and epiphenomenal conditions of our shared world.

Difficult to pin down, capture and express, “atmosphere” insinuates pervading qualities, which we — as designers and interpreters of our built and natural environment — strive to discover, generate and understand.

The Atmosphere Symposium brings together: distinguished international keynote speakers; peer-reviewed presenters from academic institutions across North America and around the world; representatives from Winnipeg’s local arts communities and professional associations; as well as professors and students from the five allied disciplines within the Faculty of Architecture: architecture, city planning, environmental design, interior design and landscape architecture.

Other academic units routinely take part in the Atmosphere Symposium, including the School of Art, the department of English, film and theatre in the Faculty of Arts, and the department of environment and geography in the Clayton Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources. Themes of previous symposia have included: “Ecology and Design” (2013); “Experiencing the Everyday” (2012); and “Mediated Cities” (2011).

>> Scroll down for more photos from the Student Photo Competition.

THE WINNERS