An atmospheric approach to urban aesthetics
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| 2018-06-12
Usually, our aesthetic experience in urban environment is
oriented towards the picturesque tradition which focuses
on the visual image of an aesthetic object as well as its
form-related qualities. In this respect, the elements of
the urban environment are visually selected, highlighted
and combined. A unified urban space is thus split apart.
However, what aesthetically appeals to us in a city should
not be solely related to its pictorial image, due to the fact
that our relationship with environmental conditions primarily
exists in a multi-sensually perceptible way which is essentially atmospheric. Here, the term atmosphere has gone
beyond the physio-meteorological scope and become an
aesthetic concept which was initially developed by German
scholars in the past decades. As the primary sensuous
reality constructed by both the perceiving subject and the
perceived object, atmosphere is neither a purely subjective
state, nor an objective thing, but essentially a quasi-thing
pervaded by a specific emotional quality. As a ubiquitous
phenomenon, atmosphere forms the foundation of our life
experience. It is impossible to free ourselves from its power.
In this respect, urban scenes which we experience cannot be
reduced to a pictorial image as well. Rather, they are atmospheric phenomena which are primarily grasped through a
co-present body-being. Starting from this point of view, the
central focus of urban aesthetics should therefore not be
on the question of how to see and assess the physical form
and spatial structure of a city, but on how to perceive their
characteristics through the whole body, namely of how we
are bodily disposed in urban space.
LEER
