»Air envelopes us in sensual effect. It can warm or chill us, it carries smell and sound; breezes stimulate the skin, and wind can literally move us; sometimes we can even taste the air.«

Malte Wagenfeld poses the tantalising question: how can air be a medium for design exploration and how can our experience of air environments be designed? How does a designer of air explore it, alter it, adjust it, feel it, smell it, walk through it, languish in it, gestalt it? How do we conjure a vivid ›inner imagery‹ to formulate conceptual models that grasp the dimensional complexity and temporal capriciousness of atmosphere? Lucy Irigaray (1999) even asks »is air thinkable?«

Being immersed in atmosphere is an experiential encounter like no other. As designers we struggle to draw atmosphere, we have no real way of notating the atmosphere, very limited means to describe its qualities through values such as temperature and humidity, and because it is so difficult to fully grasp its complexity and dimensional multiplicity - which is in constant flux – we have tremendous difficulty to fully articulate the experiential effect of atmosphere let alone envisage a new perceptual arrangement. The secret, Wagenfeld argues, lies in conceiving dynamic phenomena as being the design matter of air.

Malte will discuss a number of recent project designing dynamic microclimates including the installation »Outside_In« undertaken with Transsolar and »Aerosol« by Breathe Earth Collective which were part of his recent in installation »Dynamics of Air«.
He will also touch on the idea that his grandfather, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, also employed a form of phenomenology in his design practice, a phenomenology of the everyday.

About Dr. Malte Wagenfeld:
Malte Wagenfeld is a practicing Industrial Designer, curator, researcher, installation artist and academic whose explorative experiential installations, designs and texts have been internationally exhibited, distributed and published. As well as designing physical ›things‹ his research practice investigates how to design the ›immaterial‹, in particular the design of interior climates and immersive experiential environments, by exploring our sensory experiences of dynamic atmospheric encounters with air; breezes, humidity, temperature, sound, light and smell. Dr Malte Wagenfeld is Program Manager of the Master of Design Innovation Technology MDIT and Senior Lecturer of Industrial Design at RMIT University.

Time:
Tuesday 25, June
7 p.m.

Location:
Faculty of Art and Design
Van-de-Velde-Werkstatt, room 116
99423 Weimar