Description
Book SynopsisInterest in sensory atmospheres and architectural and urban ambiances has been growing for over 30 years. A key figure in this field is acclaimed German philosopher Gernot Böhme whose influential conception of what atmospheres are and how they function has been only partially available to the English-speaking public. This translation of key essays along with an original introduction charts the development of Gernot Böhme''s philosophy of atmospheres and how it can be applied in various contexts such as scenography, commodity aesthetics, advertising, architecture, design, and art.
The phenomenological analysis of atmospheres has proved very fruitful and its most important, and successful, application has been within aesthetics. The material background of this success may be seen in the ubiquitous aestheticization of our lifeworld, or from another perspective, of the staging of everything, every event and performance. The theory of atmospheres becoming an aesthetic theory thus r
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Part I. Theory: Aesthetics and aesthetical economy
1. Atmosphere as a fundamental concept of a new aesthetics
2. Atmosphere as an aesthetic concept
3. The art of the stage set as a paradigm for an aesthetics of atmospheres
4. Kant’s aesthetics: a new perspective
5. On beauty
6. On synaesthesiae
7. Contribution to the critique of the aesthetic economy
Part II. Aesthetics of nature and art
8. Aesthetic knowledge of nature
9. Nature in the age of its technical reproducibility
10. Body, nature and art
11. Nature as a subject
Part III. Architecture
12. The atmosphere of a CITY
13. Atmosphere as the subject matter of architecture
14. Staged materiality
15. Architecture: a visual art? On the relationship between modern architecture and photography
16. Metaphors in architecture–a metaphor?
Part IV. Light and sound
17. Acoustic atmospheres
18. Music and architecture
19. The great concert of the world
20. Seeing light
21. The phenomenology of light
