Cultivating Feelings
Cultivating Feelings

Summary/Abstract: As defined since modernity architectural aesthetics seems to have lost, at some point in time – perhaps along with postmodernity – its raison d’être. The ability of “taste” to decide whether the volumes and forms are “beautiful” or not, following (neo)Kantian theory, doesn’t seem to represent the privileged mode of accessing the profound meaning of architecture anymore, as Gadamer thought, half a century ago.1 Architecture does not address “aesthetic consciousness,” but our ability to understand the (historical) world we live in and which is opening to us – primarily through the very understanding of architecture. Thus, architecture as art represents an interruption of the rhythm of the “society of spectacle” (Guy Debord), a window opening to something else, transcending this society; the architectural work is not fundamentally seen as a “spectacular” object, society’s self-glorification product or an “iconic building” (Charles Jenks) – although a significant part of today’s architecture is conceived also for this purpose.

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