Evocative atmospheres. Distortion and immersion through surface and ornament

This article examines how surface and ornament shape the atmospheric character of architectural interiors, and consequently the cognitive and emotional state of their occupants. Taking Andrea Pozzo's quadratura at Sant'Ignazio as a conceptual departure point, it proposes extended quadratura as a framework describing two related operations—distortion and immersion—through which surface interventions transform the perception of three-dimensional space. Contemporary practice, from Damien Gilley and Peter Kogler to Yayoi Kusama and Andrea Branzi's No-Stop City, demonstrates how graphic and visual techniques dissolve spatial limits from interiors to the urban scale. This distorting operation is read alongside a restorative one. In the Paimio Sanatorium, the La Sierra dental clinic, and Japanese sentō, surface-based evocation of an exterior elsewhere supports healing and wellbeing. Drawing on Semper's theory of dressing and Böhme's aesthetics of atmosphere, the article argues that distortion and immersion are not opposed strategies but instruments in the wider production of atmosphere. Its central claim is twofold: atmospheric conditions measurably affect the inhabitant's cognitive and emotional state, and spatial design must take seriously its capacity to shape that state through surface and ornament as active, constructive elements of architecture rather than mere decoration.