Close study of singular aspects of building culture remains the mainstay of good architectural scholarship. Through detail, universals can be revealed. This is the case with Tim Altenhof’s Breathing Space: The Architecture of Pneumatic Beings, published by Zone Books in March this year (distributed by Princeton University Press), the subject of the latest A is for Architecture Podcast episode. 

Breathing Space is an elegant exploration of the role of breath – breathing – in the development of buildings, and the way consciousness of the human lung has shaped architectural design, not least in the emergence of analogies between buildings and bodies. 

Our discussion of a little of Tim’s book focuses on the concept of ‘respiratory modernism’, examining how architecture engaged with the body, air and atmosphere in response to wider social, scientific and political concerns around health and the modern city. How were these ideas communicated to the public? And how does this thinking around breathing, bodies, environment and habitation come to us now, in this age of ultramodernism?

Tim is Tim Altenhof is an architect and senior scientist at the University of Innsbruck. He can be found at work, on his own website and on Instagram. The book is linked above.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

Image credits: Main: Luckenwalde Dye Works © Tim Altenhof (2023), Author photo: © Bengt Stiller. 

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