When we think of science, we often picture test tubes, formulas, diagrams, and boxes—frames that contain, categorize, and attempt to represent the world. Yet some topics are highly complex and resist being reduced to simple visualizations. They demand effort to be made legible—and remain no less compelling for it, waiting to be explored and articulated through alternative means.
This is where design enters into dialogue with research, forming a contemporary and productive interface. This Mood Atlas investigates the domain of student housing—not in the conventional sense of statistics on dwelling types or reports on rental prices, but rather by addressing what lies between such figures. It renders visible those experiential, affective, and atmospheric dimensions that usually remain hidden beneath quantitative accounts. The atlas approaches space as a layered and multi-dimensional concept that extends beyond physical form, conceiving it instead as a complex system of overlaps, tendencies, and ambiguities.
For this reason, the medium of mapping is particularly suited to the visual articulation of the topic. Maps possess the capacity to spatially situate elements and to register simultaneity through layered structures. Student living is here subjected to a process of operationalization: broken down into its many components—objects and furniture, rooms and people—before being overlaid with moods and intensities. These granular elements are then recomposed to form a new image. They are organized according to an overarching topographic logic, positioned between near and distant zones and oriented around six poles. Following a diagrammatic rationale, they are complemented by metaphorical labels that delineate regions and provoke new associations. What emerges is a field of tensions concerned with temporality and affect.
The material for the Mood Atlas was gathered through qualitative design research methods. Cultural probes enabled deep insights into the everyday lives of ten students—whether living in shared flats or with partners—each maintaining a distinct relationship to their domestic environment. This approach was supplemented by interviews, excerpts of which appear throughout the atlas in the form of quotations.
Maps remain open and interpretive. This Mood Atlas invites exploration, discovery, reflection, and renewed ways of seeing.
Master’s Thesis Project 2025
Supervised by: Prof. Konstantin Haensch, Prof. Franziska Junge
