G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University

Antoine Picon

Atmosphere: in architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture, the term is usually associated with impressions that resist analytic investigation. Through the detailed study of a series of seminal projects, from 18 th -century Rousham Garden to modernist Chandigarh, and from Renaissance Villa d’Este to contemporary realizations such as the Geometric Hot Springs in Chile, Silvia Benedito brilliantly demonstrates that atmospheres can actually be described and interpreted with great precision. In a time of environmental anxiety, her call for a paradigmatic shift centered on the atmospheric opens new and important perspectives for the design disciplines.

Professor and the Director of the Office for Urbanization at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University

Charles Waldheim

Atmosphere Anatomies reconsiders atmosphere as design media. Silvia Benedito’s timely text recalls the origins of sensibility as a unique form of human cognition and social construction. Her book offers a profound challenge to our contemporary understanding of climate as abstract, ubiquitous, and disembodied. Benedito proposes a practice of precise microclimatic design based on empirical evidence derived from historical cases found across a range of cultures and climates. Benedito’s extraordinary drawings illustrate the material properties, thermal performance, and embodied experience attendant to these diverse landscapes.

Alice Rawsthorn

It is rare—and always thrilling—to discover a book that makes us think differently about architecture, by helping us to understand hitherto inscrutable aspects of it.

Landscape Architecture Magazine

Elissa Rosenberg

An ambitious collection of essays that proposes a new framework for understanding landscape design.