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A personal inquiry into architecture and atmosphere — into Vipassana, temples, and the invisible experience of space

Short answer: probably but not through beauty or function alone. What seems to matter is atmosphere: the sequence, threshold, light and material of a space, combined with the presence of the people who use it over time. The rest of this piece is an architect’s attempt to work out what that actually means.

After completing a ten-day Vipassana course, I began noticing something I had previously ignored.

Not buildings themselves.
But my response to them.

Vipassana trains attention toward bodily sensation. With practice, one becomes more aware of subtle changes happening within the body, sensations that might normally remain unnoticed. After the course, I found that this awareness did not remain confined to meditation.

It followed me into spaces.

I began noticing that certain places made me feel calmer. Some made me more alert. Some felt heavy or uncomfortable. And some old temples produced a feeling that I still find difficult to describe precisely.

The language people often use is simple: good vibrations, positive energy, a different aura.

As an architect, however, I find myself asking a different question.

What exactly are we experiencing?

Is it architecture?
Is it memory?
Is it light, sound, material and proportion?
Is it the behaviour of the people around us?
Or can a place, through years of ritual, attention and human presence, acquire a particular atmosphere of its own?

I do not claim to have an answer.

But I believe the question is worth asking.

Sid, Principal Architect at Green Hat Studio, a boutique architecture and interior design studio in Pune, India.

Beyond Aesthetics and Function

Architecture is often discussed through two dominant lenses.

The first is aesthetics.

How does the building look? Is it beautiful? Is the composition interesting? Are the materials refined?

The second is function.

Does the building work? Is circulation efficient? Are the rooms properly sized? Does the programme make sense?

Both are essential.

But I increasingly feel that they are incomplete.

A building can be beautiful and still make us uncomfortable.

A building can be perfectly functional and still create anxiety.

A hospital, for example, may perform its technical function exceptionally well while producing an atmosphere of fear. The smell, lighting, sounds, waiting areas, uncertainty, machinery and emotional condition of the people inside all contribute to the experience.

Before a doctor says anything, the architecture and environment have already begun communicating with the body.

Now consider the opposite.

An old temple may contain relatively simple elements. The deity may not be monumental. The interior may be dim. The materials may be worn by centuries of use.

Yet when we enter, something changes.

Our pace slows.
Our voice becomes quieter.
Our attention shifts.

Sometimes we sit without feeling the need to do anything at all.

Research into sacred architecture (Beyond the Faith: Spatial Explorations in Contemporary Sacred Architecture) increasingly treats this experience as an embodied and multisensory phenomenon rather than something produced only by religious symbols. Light, shadow, material, movement, ritual, thresholds and sensory atmosphere can all contribute to experiences of contemplation and stillness.

This, to me, is the real subject worth studying: architecture and atmosphere together, and how one quietly shapes the other.

A Small Temple Can Feel Larger Than a Monument

I have experienced this personally in old Shiva temples.

Some are not visually overwhelming. The idol may be relatively small. There may be no spectacular architectural gesture demanding attention.

And yet the space feels different.

This is important.

It suggests that architectural impact is not always proportional to physical size.

A huge space can feel empty.
A small space can feel immense.

The difference may lie partly in how the experience is constructed.

Traditional temples often create a sequence rather than presenting everything immediately.

There is an approach.
A threshold.
A transition from the ordinary world.
A gradual movement inward.
Changing light.
Changing sound.
Changing enclosure.
Finally, the garbhagriha.

The journey itself becomes part of the experience.

Studies of Hindu temple architecture have similarly examined how spatial sequencing and architectural strategies can help separate the devotee from the surrounding world and progressively focus attention toward the sanctum.

Perhaps this is one of the great lessons architecture can learn from sacred spaces.

Experience does not begin when you arrive.

It begins before you enter.

The Body Understands Space Before the Mind Explains It

We often think that we experience architecture through our eyes.

But the body is reading much more.

How bright is the light?
How harsh is the sound?
How cool is the stone?
How enclosed is the space?
Can I see an exit?
Where does my attention rest?
How quickly am I moving?
Am I exposed or protected?
Do I feel that I understand where I am?

Temple architecture is particularly interesting because many traditional spaces engage several senses simultaneously. Sound, fragrance, material, temperature, movement and visual sequence can all become part of the experience. Research on the neuroscience of architecture supports this: functional imaging studies show that built spaces trigger measurable emotional responses before any conscious aesthetic judgment is formed.

This matters because architecture may influence us without requiring conscious interpretation.

We do not always stop and think:

The ceiling height has changed, therefore I feel different.

We simply feel different.

The body notices first.

The intellect arrives later.

That gap between sensing and naming is where architecture and atmosphere actually live.

Architecture and Atmosphere: Is Design the Whole Story?

This is where my own question becomes more difficult.

I do not think the experience of a temple can always be explained only through geometry, proportion, acoustics and materials.

Those things matter enormously.

But what about the people?

What about centuries of prayer?

What about thousands of people entering the same space with reverence?

What about silence, ritual, chanting, incense, repetition and collective attention?

Can human behaviour contribute to the atmosphere of a place?

I think this possibility deserves consideration.

Not necessarily in a supernatural sense.

A space is not experienced as an empty container.

The people within it are also part of its environment.

Their behaviour affects us.
Their silence affects us.
Their pace affects us.
Their emotional condition affects the atmosphere we perceive.

Research on sacred space and embodied psychology has increasingly explored this relationship between architecture, embodied practice and collective meaning. Some recent work argues that the experience of sacredness emerges through an interaction between spatial form, sensory conditions, movement, symbolism and the practices performed by people within the space.

This idea is particularly interesting to me.

Perhaps architecture creates the conditions.

And people activate them.

A temple may provide the threshold, proportion, darkness, enclosure, material and sequence.

But generations of people bring attention, ritual, memory and meaning.

The result may be an atmosphere that belongs to neither architecture nor people alone.

It emerges from their relationship.

A Space May Hold More Than Its Materials

We already understand, intuitively, that places hold memory.

An old home can feel different after someone important has left it.

A childhood classroom can produce an immediate emotional response.

A stadium can feel charged when thousands of people gather.

A memorial can make us quiet before we consciously understand why.

We do not usually think of these experiences as irrational.

We understand that space, memory, behaviour and emotion interact.

Perhaps sacred architecture operates at a deeper and more concentrated level of the same principle.

A place may accumulate meaning through repeated experience.

Not necessarily because the walls physically store emotion in some measurable way.

But because architecture, ritual, memory, expectation and human behaviour become inseparable in our experience of that place.

And perhaps that is why two buildings with similar dimensions can feel entirely different.

The architecture may be similar.

The atmosphere is not.

Architecture and atmosphere part ways exactly there — in what accumulates inside otherwise identical walls.

What Does This Mean for Architects?

I believe this question should make us more ambitious.

Not more mystical.

More observant.

We should continue designing for:

• function
• climate
• structure
• cost
• aesthetics
• sustainability

But perhaps we should also design for:

• attention
• calm
• anticipation
• comfort
• dignity
• memory
• belonging

Architecture and atmosphere are not separate briefs. They are the same brief, asked twice — once in the language of drawings, and once in the language of feeling.

A hospital does not have to feel frightening simply because illness exists within it.

An office does not have to keep people permanently alert.

A home does not have to be visually impressive at the cost of peace.

A public space does not have to overwhelm people to become memorable.

Architecture cannot guarantee happiness.

It cannot manufacture spirituality.

And it certainly cannot force every person to experience a building in the same way.

Our experiences are shaped by culture, memory, belief, mood and personal history.

But architecture can create conditions.

It can reduce friction.
It can guide attention.
It can slow us down.
It can provide refuge.
It can create moments where the mind has less to fight against.

And occasionally, that may be enough.

Perhaps the Deeper Question Is This

For a long time, architects have asked:

How will this building look?

Then:

How will this building function?

Both questions remain necessary.

But I am increasingly interested in a third:

How might a person feel while living in this space, day after day?

Not during the photograph.
Not during the opening ceremony.
Not when the architect explains the concept.

But on an ordinary Tuesday morning.

When they are tired.
When they are worried.
When they need silence.
When they want to sit near a window.
When they come home after a difficult day.

Perhaps the highest ambition of architecture is not always to create a building that demands attention.

Perhaps it is to create a place that quietly improves the quality of human attention itself.

That is the possibility I keep returning to.

And perhaps that is why certain old temples remain so compelling.

We may never fully agree on whether they contain positive energy, powerful vibrations, collective memory, carefully designed sensory conditions, or something else entirely.

But maybe we do not need to rush to reduce the experience to one explanation.

For an architect, the more important question may be:

What conditions can a space create that allow a human being to become more present within it?

That, to me, is a question worth designing for.

Green Hat Studio designs architecture and interiors across Pune with exactly this question in mind — how a space can hold a person at their most ordinary, most tired, most in need of stillness.