The Faculty of Architecture / Architecture (English taught)
5th Year, sem 2, 2024-2025

IT-16E | Aesthetics

Compulsory Course | Hours/Week: 2C | ECTS Credits: 2

Department:

History & Theory of Architecture and Heritage Conservation

Course Leader:

lect. Ștefan Vianu

Teaching language:

English

Learning outcomes:

The purpose of this course is to present the fundamental concepts on aesthetics (of architecture) as seen from a theoretical but also historical perspective. As the different movements of modern and contemporary art and architecture have a historical nature, the theoretical perspective consists in a critical overview that aims at underlining the relevance of some fundamental concepts of the past that help us better understand the art and architecture of the present.

Content:

Introduction. The two basic questions of aesthetics. The two fundamental meanings of art: I. “Aesthetics” and “sensible knowledge” II. Art is Knowledge: mimesis. The aesthetical pleasure and the aesthetical judgment. – Art in the philosophy of the spirit – The critique of the aesthetical judgment. Architecture as a world opening. Art and modernity – “The death of art?” – The “kitsch” phenomena – The beginning of modernism, the departure from art: Loos – Avantgarde Movements (– Expressionism – The meaning of abstraction: “Abstraktion” and the cosmic dimension of art. Abstract art or “the spiritual in art”. – In-sensing (Einfühlung): the space with a spirit – The Phenomenological Method: the imagined space – The critique of a culture centered on the visuals ant synesthetic architecture. The metical and poetical foundation of inhabited space. – The place: genius loci and the concept of atmosphere.

Teaching Method:

Lectures

Assessment:

Final essay

Bibliography:

BACHELARD, The poetics of space, Boston, 1994
BENJAMIN W., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction : Illuminations, New York, 1969
BOLLNOW, Human space, London, 2011
FRAMPTON K., Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Thames & Hudson, 2007
GADAMER H.-G., Truth and method, New York, 1989
HEIDEGGER M., The Origin of the Work of Art: Of the Beaten Track, Cambridge, 2011
NORBERG-SCHULZ C., Genius loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, Rizzoli, 1991
PALLASMAA, The eyes of the skin, John Willey and Sons, 2005
PEREZ-GOMEZ A., Attunement: Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science, The MIT Press, 2016
ROBINSON S., Nesting: Body, Dwelling, Mind, William Stout Publishers, 2011
ZUMTHOR P., A feeling of history, Zürich, 2018