Aesthetic Investigations https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/ <p>The aim of the journal <em>Aesthetic Investigations</em> is to develop contemporary debates in the philosophy of aesthetics, and initiate new ones—and to do this from any available angle. We are open to any contributions, but to generate new discussions we also issue specific calls.</p> Dutch Association of Aesthetics en-US Aesthetic Investigations 2352-2704 <div class="item copyright"> <p>Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:</p> <p>Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a <a title="Creative Commons License" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Creative Commons Attribution License</a> that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. <strong>Note: </strong>up to volume 4 issue 1, an incorrect copyright line appears in the PDFs of the articles.</p> <p>Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.</p> <p>Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See <a href="http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html" target="_new">The Effect of Open Access</a>).</p> </div> Growing Up with Mies and Saarinen https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/13758 <p>Paul Guyer interviews his cousin Laure van Heijenoort, who as a teenager lived for several years with her parents in one of Mies van der Rohe's Lafayette Park townhouses in Detroit and attended school at Eliel Saarinen's Cranbrook campus.&nbsp; She reports on her experiences of living and study in both, experiences still vivid to her and now to a broader audience.</p> Paul Guyer Laure van Heijenoort Copyright (c) 2023 Paul Guyer, Laure van Heijenoort https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-08-30 2023-08-30 6 1 69 79 10.58519/aesthinv.v6i1.13758 Tourism & the Built Environment https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/14958 <p>This paper explores the differences in ‘affect’ between Gehry’s blossoming beacons, whose visibility in the landscape lends them the role of beckoning flowers and the comparable invisibility of Floriade Expo 2022, whose horizontality granted it a subtlety that has thus far failed to elicit any of the thrill associated with the 'Bilbao Effect', even though it proffers an unparalleled botanical paradise. Thus far, it seems that people find biodiverse parks less impressive than buildings, even though thousands of people have worked tirelessly to ensure its <em>viability</em>. One year later, however, people are revaluating flower shows' ecological costs.</p> Sue Spaid Copyright (c) 2023 Sue Spaid https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-08-30 2023-08-30 6 1 80 90 10.58519/aesthinv.v6i1.14958 Taking up space https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/14950 <p>One of the many innovations with which performance art can be credited is its revolutionary approach to space-making and inhabitation. Its reanimation of objects, events and bodies takes up space as a material presence, which incidentally engenders a conceptual problem. Philosophical aesthetics has had a lot to say about our relationship with the built form, but this work has not been brought to bear on performance art and the ways this artform complicates such relationships. This paper addresses this void by exploring two dimensions of what architect Daniel Libeskind has called ‘the space of encounter’—the physical and the ethical.</p> Rossen Ventzislavov Copyright (c) 2023 Rossen Ventzislavov https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-08-30 2023-08-30 6 1 91 99 10.58519/aesthinv.v6i1.14950 Oana Șerban, After Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Aesthetic Revolutions (2023) https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/15314 <p>N/A</p> Sue Spaid Copyright (c) 2023 Sue Spaid https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-08-30 2023-08-30 6 1 100 104 10.58519/aesthinv.v6i1.15314 Introduction to the Special Issue on Philosophy and Architecture https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/15315 <p>(This is the Guest Editor's introduction)</p> Paul Guyer Copyright (c) 2023 Paul Guyer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-08-30 2023-08-30 6 1 1 4 10.58519/aesthinv.v6i1.15315 Urban Ruins and the Neo -Picturesque Landscape https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/12089 <p>While classical ruins are seen as tourist destinations, contemporary or industrial ruins are dismissed as disused sites. In this paper I argue for the preservation of urban (or contemporary) ruins. I focus on one specific case, that of the Miami Marine Stadium in Miami, Florida USA. Since the 1990s the stadium has been derelict, a canvas for graffiti artists and a home to skateboarders. In 2018 the City of Miami decided to revamp the stadium and reopen it as a concert and sporting venue. The current design-development plan has sanitized this urban ruin, robbing it of its past. I will situate the debate about rehabbing contemporary ruins within the growing literature of the neo-picturesque, specifically neo-picturesque landscape design. I believe that urban ruins such as these have a place in the modern city and will suggest some paths forward for these neo-picturesque ruin beauties.</p> Elizabeth Scarbrough Copyright (c) 2023 Elizabeth Scarbrough https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-09-01 2023-09-01 6 1 5 18 10.58519/aesthinv.v6i1.12089 Architecture, Buildings, and Political Ends https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/12162 <p>It is not infrequently heard in architectural circles that architecture is an inherently political enterprise and pursuit, such that build structures are, correspondingly, inherently political objects.&nbsp; But does architecture, by its nature as practice or artifact, universally serve political ends?&nbsp; Taking ends of something <em>X</em> to be <em>political</em> iff <em>X</em> serves the projection of power by state or government, or advances policy-making, ideologies, or the body politic, it may be thought that</p> <p><strong>AP1.</strong> Architecture, in its products, always serves political ends.</p> <p>on the grounds that, roughly speaking, wherever one looks, one finds cases providing evidence that</p> <p><strong>AP2.</strong> Buildings (built structures, generally) always serve political ends, and</p> <p><strong>AP3.</strong> Buildings (built structures) are the only products of architecture.</p> <p>On the supposition that this fairly tracks the common view, I take for granted that the argument goes through if the premises are defensible.&nbsp; I propose, though, that neither AP2 nor AP3 are defensible, at least in the grand, universal fashion that they are offered.</p> Saul Fisher Copyright (c) 2023 Saul Fisher https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-09-01 2023-09-01 6 1 19 32 10.58519/aesthinv.v6i1.12162 Surplus of Form https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/14002 <p>Excess of matter in form designates the principle that underlies architecture. The surplus of form contains not only a constructive principle, but also an aesthetic principle that enables sensual experience. In the coupling of construction and sensual experience, the basic prerequisites for the aesthetics of architecture are thus named, but at the same time also the difficulties with which architecture is confronted within philosophical aesthetics. For Kant, it was precisely the object character that stood in the way of an architectural aesthetics as part of a general aesthetics. For him, only the architectural drawing, because detached from matter, construction, and function, could meet the criteria of the beautiful, and that only as a façade view and not as a ground plan or sectional drawing. With reference to Aristotle, Kant and Schopenhauer and an outlook on contemporary architecture, the essay outlines the principles of an aesthetics of architecture as it is to be developed out of the specific material conditions of architecture and has its starting point in the surplus of form.&nbsp;</p> Joerg Gleiter Copyright (c) 2023 Joerg Gleiter https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-08-30 2023-08-30 6 1 33 51 10.58519/aesthinv.v6i1.14002 Susanne Langer on Architecture https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/13571 <p><span class="PHONE"><span lang="EN-US">That human thought is essentially symbolic was Susanne Langer’s “new key” to philosophy.&nbsp; No approach might seem less promising for understanding our experience of architecture: apart from a few academics who have confused architectural drawing with architecture itself, most people think of architecture as comprising three-dimensional, physical objects built of wood, stone, steel, glass, and all sorts of contemporary composites, as real rather than symbolic as it can get. W</span></span>e should begin where she did, namely, by distinguishing what she called “discursive” and “presentational” symbolism.&nbsp;<span class="PHONE"><span lang="EN-US">Langer’s main point is not merely that architecture provides ethnic domains, but that it provides <em>images</em> of ethnic domains</span></span></p> Paul Guyer Copyright (c) 2023 Paul Guyer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-08-30 2023-08-30 6 1 52 68 10.58519/aesthinv.v6i1.13571 Architecture is Not Public Art https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/17077 <div class="page" title="Page 1"> <div class="section"> <div class="layoutArea"> <div class="column"> <p>In this ‘Editor’s column’, I question whether architecture is what we have come to call Public Art. It seems nonsense to say that architecture is not an art, when it is obviously something that people make for audiences, i.e. for other people who admire it. Moreover, architecture steers and influences people. Evidently, all of culture is by and for people and influences people. But when is culture art? Is design an art – is architecture?</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Rob van Gerwen Copyright (c) 2023 Rob van Gerwen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-08-30 2023-08-30 6 1 i viii 10.58519/aesthinv.v6i1.17077 Haunted houses https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/17083 Clinton Peter Verdonschot Copyright (c) 2023 Clinton Peter Verdonschot https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-08-30 2023-08-30 6 1 ix xv 10.58519/aesthinv.v6i1.17083 Corrigendum https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/17335 Clinton Peter Verdonschot Copyright (c) 2023 Clinton Peter Verdonschot https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-08-30 2023-08-30 6 1 xvi xvi 10.58519/aesthinv.v6i1.17335