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Aesthetic Space: the Visible and the Invisible in Urban Agency

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Aesthetic Space: the Visible and the Invisible in Urban Agency Aesthetic Space: The Visible and the Invisible in Urban Agency THÈSE NO 6445 (2017) PRÉSENTÉE LE 16 MAI 2017 À LA FACULTÉ DE L'ENVIRONNEMENT NATUREL, ARCHITECTURAL ET CONSTRUIT LABORATOIRE CHÔROS PROGRAMME DOCTORAL EN ARCHITECTURE ET SCIENCES DE LA VILLE ÉCOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FÉDÉRALE DE LAUSANNE POUR L'OBTENTION DU GRADE DE DOCTEUR ÈS SCIENCES PAR Mirza TURSIĆ acceptée sur proposition du jury: Prof. B. Marchand, président du jury Prof. J. Lévy, directeur de thèse Prof. M. Jakob, rapporteur Prof. L. Matthey, rapporteur Dr L. Pattaroni, rapporteur Suisse 2017 Acknowledgements First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor Prof. Jacques Lévy for his continuous support, motivation and thoroughness. His incisiveness and intellectual acuity were fundamental throughout the research and writing phases of this thesis. I thank him for teaching me that one should not find their way, but invent it. Additional thanks go to Prof. Bruno Marchand, Prof. Michael Jakob, Prof. Laurent Matthey and Dr. Luca Pattaroni for their participation on my thesis committee. Their feedback and ideas remain an invaluable inspiration for my future scientific activities. My sincere thanks also go to Prof. Ognjenka Finci, Prof. Lemja Chabbouh Akšamija and Prof. Adnan Pašić for their crucial support at the very beginning of my academic odyssee. I recognize that this research would not have been possible without the Swiss government, from which I received a three-year excellence scholarship through the Federal Commission for Scholarships for Foreign Students (FCS). I am particularly grateful to Karin Delavy-Juillerat and Nathalie Miazza for their unfailing support from my very first day at the EPFL. I am sincerely grateful to those who accepted to be interviewed and generously shared their time and experience for the purposes of this project. This work would not have been possible without their participation. I acknowledge my deep gratitude towards Prof. Boris Beaude, Dr. Ogier Maitre and Dr. Patrick Poncet for taking time to discuss my ideas and enlightening me on various aspects. A very special thanks also go to Kelly Harrison for the important role she played in this thesis. I thank my fellow Chôros colleagues for their continuous help and support, for the stimulating discussions and for the unrepeatable working atmosphere. I thank all of them, especially Farzaneh Bahrami, Dr. Ceyda Bakbasa, Dr. Manouk Borzakian, Dr. Elsa Chavinier, Dr. Jean-Nicolas Fauchille, Dr. Luc Guillemot, Dr. Shin Koseki, Carole Lanoix, Dr. Barbara Laurent-Lucchetti, Dr. Véronique Mauron Layaz, Thibault Romany, Jade Rudler, Dr. Monique Ruzicka-Rossier, Lucas Tiphine, and Lei Yan. I would also like to thank my colleagues at the EPFL’s Architecture and Sciences of the City Doctoral School for our conversations, courses and excursions. A special thanks to Dr. Michael Doyle for his help with English and to Sandra Bottà, our lucky star. Outside of the lab, plenty of people kept me happy in Lausanne. I am lucky to have met Basile Perret, Elma Hadžikadunić, Senad Hasanović and Susi Hasanović and I thank them for their friendship and unyielding support. A special thanks also go to Marianne Cabi-Akman and Robert Cabi-Akman for backing me for years. I thank Virginie Roy-Kotrčová for her help with interview transcriptions and to Marie- Noëlle Wurm for her outstanding work as a proofreader. I cannot forget my dear friends in Tuzla and Sarajevo who celebrated my every accomplishment. A very special thanks go to Lejla Tahirović, Peđa Kurtović and Tarik Musakadić. Last but not least, I thank my parents and my brother for their unconditional love. Without them, I would never be where I am today. Lausanne, 30 April 2017 2 To my parents To my brother 3 Abstract Recent "turns" in social sciences, namely the visual, qualitative, actorial or spatial turns, all indicate a rising interest in individuals. Since the aesthetic dimension always nourishes and informs individuals’ spatialities and their decision-making processes, my research explores how the subjective realm of the aesthetic has proved itself able to generate conditions that lead to action, and consequently influence other dimensions of society, especially in the ethical, political or legal realms. My systemic approach is grounded in the relational theory of space, the phenomenological study of the imagination, and the theory of urbanity. Hence, I investigated both urbanity and beauty as some of the most intriguing and interesting emergent (and not resultant!) phenomena of the urban system — where urbanity belongs to its objective realm and beauty to its subjective realm. It is essential to recognize that humans, unlike the components that create the natural systems, are capable of a particular sort of action due to their imaginative capacities that allow them to overpass the actual perceived world. The aesthetic dimension directly involves the human imaginative consciousness, which in turn activates the realm of the virtual, i.e., the realm that which exists only in a latent state, and does not appear visibly (fr. qui n'est qu'en puissance). While engaged in aesthetic experience, humans exhibit a particular sort of intentionality through which they bring to mind what is not visible through what is present and perceived. By making use of their lived body, individuals are capable to engage in a particular sort of imaginative play through which memories of the past, anticipations of the future and the actualized perceived present are conjured together, informing one another. Since every human intentional experience is spatialized, I investigated a particular spatial structure through which aesthetic experience occurs as such. I called this structure aesthetic space. In the last chapter, I investigate more precisely the influence of the urban environment on the way in which individuals’ aesthetic judgments evolve and mature. By considering the experience of modernity and the city as pivotal in the construction of individuals’ aesthetic sensitivities, I explore the spatial component of aesthetic judgments on some particular cases. I also focus on the importance of the urban public space, the lifestyle change, as well as on the period of childhood, which appear to be critical to the (aesthetic) development of individuals. Keywords: space, aesthetics, urban system, urbanity, city, imagination, experience, Switzerland. 5 Résumé Les nouveaux tournants en sciences sociales, et notamment le visual turn, le tournant qualitatif, le tournant actoriel, ou le tournant spatial, mettent tous un accent particulier sur l’importance de l’individu. Puisque la dimension esthétique nourrit et façonne la spatialité des individus et leurs processus de prise de décision, ma recherche explore comment la subjectivité de l’esthétique peut générer des conditions qui mènent à des action concrètes, et donc influencer d’autres dimensions de la société, en particulier les domaines éthiques, politiques et légaux. Mon approche systémique est fondée sur la théorie relationnelle de l’espace, l’étude phénoménologique de l’imagination, et la théorie de l’urbanité. J’ai donc étudié les concepts esthétiques et le concept d’urbanité, qui sont parmi les phénomènes les plus intrigants et intéressants qui puissent émerger (et non résulter !) des phénomènes du système urbain — l’urbanité faisant partie de son objectivité, et les concepts esthétiques de sa subjectivité. Il est essentiel de souligner que les humains, contrairement aux éléments de systèmes naturels, sont capables de mener des actions particulières grâce à leurs capacités imaginatives. Celles-ci leur permettent de transcender le monde actuel perçu par les sens. La dimension esthétique fait directement appel à la conscience imaginative, qui, à son tour, active l’espace virtuel, c’est-à-dire l’espace qui n’existe que dans un état latent — ce qui n’est qu’en puissance. Lorsqu’un individu vit une expérience esthétique, il démontre une sorte d’intentionnalité en faisant appel à ce qui n’est pas visible à travers ce qui est perçu et présent. En utilisant son corps vécu, il se livre à une sorte de jeu imaginaire, où les souvenirs du passé, les attentes futures, et la connaissance sur le présent actualisé, ont évoqués en simultané, se nourrissant les uns les autres. Puisque toute expérience humaine est spatialisée, j’ai décidé d’étudier une structure spatiale particulière où se manifeste l’expérience esthétique. J’ai appelé cette structure l’espace esthétique. Mots-clé : espace, esthétique, système urbain, urbanité, ville, imagination, expérience, Suisse. 6 Contents Acknowledgements 1 Abstract 5 Résumé 6 List of figures 11 INTRODUCTION: AN OPENING QUESTION 13 1 SOCIETY AS A MULTIDIMENSIONAL COMPLEX SYSTEM 19 Space, Time & Knowledge 20 Newton versus Leibniz 21 Absolute Space versus Relational Space: Being versus Order 24 Space of Knowledge and Knowledge of Space 25 Systemism as an Anchor for a Critical Social Theory 28 Intentionality of Collective and Individual Action 28 Can We Reject and Affirm Both Individualism and Holism? 30 Studying Human Agency 33 Adopting Systemic Approach 37 Emergent System Properties: More is Different 39 Humans and Self-organization 42 Space and Distance 43 Three Attributes of Space: Scale, Metrics and Substance 44 Distance as a Keyword 47 Place as a Distance Made Irrelevant 48 Spatiality As an Action that Produces Space 50 2 THE AESTHETIC DIMENSION OF SOCIETY 53 Art versus Aesthetics 54 The Aesthetic is Other Than the Artistic 54 Art as Experience 56 The Aesthetic 57 7 The Origin of Aesthetics
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