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Fog, a phenomenon or architecture

Fog is a collection of liquid water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earths surface. Fog is low-lying and its moisture is often generated by a lake, nearby marshes or the ocean and reduces visibility to less than 1 km. The foggiest place in the world is Grand Banks, the island of Newfoundland and the meeting place of the cold Labrador Current from north and much warmer Gulf Stream from the south. Here you will have more than 200 days of fog. During a whole year in Denmark, we only have an average of 74 days with fog,.

Fog can form suddenly and, and can dissipate just as rapidly, and its thickness is determined by the altitude of the inversion boundary. Fog normally occurs at a relative humidity near 100%. This can be achieved by either adding moisture to the air or dropping the ambient air temperature.

I see fog as an artificially landscape, which covers its surroundings in its own atmosphere. It creates unique transient atmospheres or ambiances, which inspire architecture.

The mass of the fog can be enormous and covers whole cities or simply just be small clouds flying by. The fog is dense enough to be illuminated by light that passes through gaps in a structure or tree, but thin enough to let a large quantity of that light pass through to illuminate points further on.

It can be seen as an architectural material, which has the ability to alter our understanding of space and place, as well as call attention to the relationship between architecture and environment.

From distance, fog has a bit of mysteries appeal and somehow it makes your body either wants to go investigating or just avoiding it. Being in the middle of it, feels like being excluded from what is going on outside. Here you can listen to sounds from the outside, but only see silhouettes of whom the sounds come from. You loss the sense of orientation, which makes you, feels like being in your own little bubble.

The sounds will also become a bit more vague and starts to feel like having your ears stuffed.

Another reaction from your body is getting the feeling of an extra layer of skin. In this case a wet skin, which will cover your body like clothes. Being in the middle of fog will make you a bit wet or moistly.

Using fog as architecture

If you ought to make a sum up of the phenomenon fog and its relation to coverings and the body, you soon will see some similar sign.

Fog will appear either in a solid mass, which shuts its arms around you, or like light clouds, which passing by. The relation reminds me a bit of clothes, which like the fog covers your body totally.

In a way you can say that you somehow are dressing yourself in architecture.

Fog appears almost like a low-lying cloud, a solid mass from the outside and a chilled, blurred and moistly inside, which steals the body’s normal orientation senses.

Inside you maybe don’t have any form boundaries, which might help you back on track and your vision will get distracted.

This leads to a different and more bodily navigation, where you suddenly starts to use your hearing sense and also starts to look for colours, which will appear in the dark. Both of them will help you navigating, whether it is a loud sound or some bright colours leading the way.

In the end the architecture is a bit temporarily, because the fog will properly disappear by time or you will find a way out from it. By that you only get to wear artificial clothes, which temporarily will serve as another layer skin. This also means that you have to create something, which also can be used when the fog is gone. Fog can also be illuminated from the sun and reflections from here would make a better way of orientation.

A first conclusion of keyword from fog and architecture will be disorientation because of the distraction in your senses.  The next will be sound, which you are more depended on, simultaneously while you feel the sounds a bit more vague. The next is light, reflections, shadows and colours. The last is fog as a landscape or making of its own world with endless space without any boundaries, and how to use that space for the citizen/user and bring those in focus.