Abstract
The main assumption underlying this article is that aesthetic categories and spatial practices are intrinsically connected. I argue that aesthetic experience and aesthetic judgment assume an importance for their high potential to activate the agency of urban actors. Any study of the evolution of urban space in Switzerland should account for the high importance assigned by different urban actors to aesthetic questions. As “small” actors engage in a production of their “aesthetics of existence” (term coined by Foucault in Polit Philos Cult Interviews Writ 1984:47–53, 1977), their actions play the fundamental role in the structuring of urban space. The aesthetic sensibilities in Switzerland have been developing in the particular spatial, social and historical conditions with the city image in a pivotal role.
Ph.D., 2017, “Aesthetic Space: The visible and the invisible in urban agency”, Supervisor: Jacques Lévy.
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Notes
- 1.
If we define urbanity as a combination of functional and sociological diversity and multidimensional density (built environment, flows, people, ideas), the compact city represents the highest gradient of urbanity (Lévy 1999).
- 2.
The cultural construction of the Alps emerged with writings of Romantics who “celebrated wild landscapes, (…) empty deserts, impenetrable forests, frozen ice wastes and, in particular, rugged mountains. (…) Orderliness and regularity were out; untamed wildness was in” (Beattie 2006, p. 125). Before the 18th century, the Alps were perceived as an inhospitable land and aesthetically dismissed (Senici 2005 p. 23). Under the influence of Romantic literature, firstly from England and then from Switzerland, there’s been a shift in a perception of the Alps. The writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau had a particularly profound influence on Western attitudes towards the countryside and mountain landscapes.
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Tursic, M. (2018). Aesthetics and Spatial Practices. Some Examples from Switzerland. In: Viganò, P., Cavalieri, C., Barcelloni Corte, M. (eds) The Horizontal Metropolis Between Urbanism and Urbanization. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75975-3_10
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