At the Edges of the Phenomenal, The Design of Architectural and Urban Ambiances as a Reconciliation Between Ourselves and the World

International audienceThe limits of sensory apprehension can take different forms: phenomena can be so tenuous that they do not necessarily reach consciousness; habit can bring them out as missing; they can also manifest only in a delayed manner, primarily through their sensory consequences; and finally, devices – such as a digital display – can bring them back into the realm of human perception. This paper first seeks to explore their integration into the lived ambiances, especially from the contemporary geophysical and climatological explanations. Then it questions how architecture and urban design can, through new attention to these limits of the phenomenal, contribute to the readability of the world and collective response-abilities at the time of the entry of humanity into the Anthropocene