CALL FOR PAPERS: Ethics & aesthetics of architecture & the environment

July 11th-13th 2012 – Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

The subject of aesthetics is often taken as dealing with questions of mere beauty, where the word ‘aesthetic’ is colloquially interchangeable with beauty and liking. Someone might, for instance, explain their liking the look of a particular object on the basis of its ‘aesthetics’. Interestingly, even within the specialised architecture discourse, the aesthetic is largely discussed on the basis of an object’s appearance. Yet, the aesthetic is not limited and should not be limited merely to the way things look. Any philosophically informed aesthetician, will contest this limited view, saying something along the lines of ‘the aesthetic is everything’. The aim of this conference is therefore in part to address this discursive limitation in architecture and related subjects by broadening the aesthetic discourse beyond questions relating to purely visual phenomena in order to include those derived from all facets of human experience.

In taking on the aesthetic in manner that pushes its considerations beyond the realm of mere beauty, questions of ethics often arise. Indeed Wittgenstein is quoted as saying, “ethics and aesthetics are one and the same” (1921: §6.421). Questions as to why, for instance a building’s form takes the shape it does, not only raises the more conventional aesthetic questions but also questions about what purpose or meaning the building serves beyond purely visual stimulation. Does the form for instance relate somehow to a social ideal or economic ideal? And if so, is this ideal something that its inhabitants subscribe to or are even aware of? In an effort to draw thinkers’ attention to the ethical role architecture plays as well as the ethical function architects play, the second part of this conference call addresses this often overlooked dimension of architecture.

Calling both philosophers and architects to grapple with questions regarding the ethical and aesthetic qualities of architecture, the hope is to propel the discourse beyond the limitations of a purely visual understanding of the architectural experiences. Such questions might include:

what is/ought to be pleasurable architecture and environmental experience?

how do/ought our experiences impact the aesthetics of architecture and environment?

how do/ought we appreciate architecture and environment?

how does/ought the ethical and aesthetic inform the understanding of architecture and environment?

what is/ought to be a good architect?

what is/ought to be a good architecture?

how does/ought architecture embody societal and cultural ethical codes?

Paper Abstracts should clearly address one of the highlighted themes above and be no more than 500 words.

Additionally please see the conference’s strand pages for more information about the Ethics and Aesthetics of Landscape and the Ethics and Aesthetics of Professional Practice as well as the Posters page for more information regarding poster submissions. Please see each strand’s themes and submission guidelines (same deadlines apply through out).

References:

Wittgenstein, L. (1921 ) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Abdingdon: Routledge.

Deadlines:

Abstracts: 28 October 2011

Notification of Acceptance: 06 January 2012

Full Papers: 30 March 2012

Early Registration: 30 April 2012

Organising Committee: Dr. Carolyn Fahey and Kati Blom

Advisory Board: Prof. Andrew Ballantyne, Dr. Ian Thompson, and Dr. Nathaniel Coleman

Administrative Support: Karen Livingston, Kim McCartney and Anne Fry

http://ispaconference.wordpress.com/

50th Anniversary of the Society for the Arts, Religion and Contemporary Culture‏: schedule for meetings

The creation of light. From http://www.sarcc.org/

The group will celebrate this history with two gatherings, slated for Thursday, May 12, and Friday and Saturday, November 11 and 12. Save these dates if you can be in the NYC area.

Details:

Thursday, May 12, 7pm A Wine Cellar Conversation: An ARC Tradition

Theopoetics and Poets: Scott Holland and poetry readings

Apt. at 120 E 81st St., NYC.

Friday, November 11, 8pm Saint Peter's Lutheran Church, 54th and Lexington, NYC

Birthplace of ARC in 1961

Aardvark Jazz Orchestra Concert--Mark Harvey, Director

Specially Composed Works

Saturday, November 12, 9am-5pm Exhibition, conversations and performances--Saint Peter's

Tobi Kahn, Nessa Rapaport, Ena Heller (MOBIA, NYC), Terry Dempsey (MOCRA, St. Louis), and many others.

6pm Gala Dinner--location tba.

Further details and registration information to be availagle later. Please call or write with any questions or concerns. See also their Facebook

<http://www.facebook.com/pages/Society-for-the-Arts-Religion-and-Contemporary-Culture/210026534421>

Delhi's Silent Witness

Illustration by arch. Matteo Pericoli.

What follows next, is a beautiful description of a busy street in Delhi, by Rana Dasgupta. From the New York Times, section ¨Windows of the World¨, published February 5th, 2011:

I have come to realize that I do not love solitude as much as I think. It is always with happy anticipation that I arrive in my study: alone, at last, to write! But once the door is closed I have a paradoxical sense of loss, as if I am cut off from my source. Is this why I spend such an unreasonable amount of time staring out the window?

The rampant energy of Delhi, this city of almost 20 million people, presses in on my leafy street. Most families around here arrived as refugees from the horrors of India’s partition in 1947. To protect themselves from such a thing ever happening again, they built solid rows of houses — which are nonetheless turning to vapor in the white heat of the city’s 21st-century economic boom. One of the houses in this drawing has already disappeared, to be replaced, inevitably, by another block of flats. In the top left you can see the steel zigzags of Nehru Stadium, centerpiece of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, whose preparations involved a stupefying scale of destruction and rebuilding around the city.

The street is always active. A young turbaned Sikh paces unceasingly on the balcony opposite, talking on his mobile phone. Migrant laborers working on the new buildings have built lean-tos around the corner; their wives forage for firewood downstairs while their children play with a ball nearby. Passing vegetable sellers sing their wares. Dogs bicker. An old man sits outside in the sun to get a shave from a barber. Neighbors argue over parking spaces.

The silk cotton tree at the center of my view, however, is mute. It saves its energy for the spring, when its vast, red, syrupy flowers will rain, indecently, over everything.

— Rana Dasgupta

Rana Dasgupta is the author, most recently, of “Solo.” Matteo Pericoli, an artist, is the author of “The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York.” This series inspired students in Boulder, Colo., to write and draw their own views from their windows.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/05/opinion/20110206_windowsoftheworld.html?ref=opinion

Driving in Delhi: a hazardous experience

Delhi. Picture: Alamy. For The Independent

"Not too fast. Mind the cows," says the instructor, trying to remain calm. "Yes, there are lots of cows in India."

We edge around the half-dozen hump-backed creatures merrily eating the contents of an overflowing rubbish skip. The wheels rattle, the car shakes. We pass a handful of shop-fronts, stray dogs and children before turning into what seems like an impossibly narrow back street. Surely we're not going to drive down there? "It's very narrow, very slowly," the instructor says unnecessarily. "Now go straight."

In India, driving is not for the faint-hearted. The roads are crowded and cluttered and filled with a rare energy. There is noise and dust and heat and honking and pushing. Barely anyone obeys either the traffic rules or else the most basic rules of common sense as they jostle for position. Sometimes it feels like Rollerball, the futuristic, full-contact "sport" that gave its name to the 1975 movie starring James Caan. Frankly, it is terrifying.

Yet it is only going to get worse. In economically buoyant India, a newly prosperous middle-class is taking to the roads like never before. Last year alone India's car fleet increased by at least a million as this new consumer class ditched its motorbikes and bicycles and opted to get behind the wheel of a car.(...)

If India is an awful place for driving, Delhi must surely be among the worst of the worst. The bursting capital of 16 million people has around 5.3 million vehicles. Every day another 600 legally registered vehicles join the throng, plus an untold number of illegal additions. During the evening rush, driving just a few miles can take several hours.

It is dangerous too. Rohit Baluja, president of India's Institute of Road Traffic Education, says each year there are at least 2,000 road traffic deaths in the city. Nationally, with 100,000 fatalities and one million injuries, he believes India has a worse record than any other country. "Such a position is worrisome and much needs to be done to reduce these figures," he says.

And yet at times there are few alternatives to a car. While Delhi's new metro system is efficient and clean, its geographic reach is still limited. And the city's bus services – the usual means of transport for the masses – are hugely inadequate and frequently deadly. There are often no pavements, even though millions of people still walk or cycle. Taxis often have no air-conditioning – a brain-searing setback when the summer mercury soars to 46C – and riding in a rickshaw feels like playing Russian roulette with five bullets in the chamber.

REFERENCE: 

Road hell: mind the cows! The Independent, January 15th 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/road-hell-mind-the-cows-770207.html

The geographical and sociological imaginations

Buenos Aires. Digital art, by Myriam B. Mahiques

¨The general pint should be clear: the only adequate conceptual framework for understanding the city is one which encompasses and builds upon both the sociological and the geographical imaginations. We must relate social behavior to the way in which the city assumes a certain geography, a certain spatial form. We must recognize that once a particular spatial form is created it tends to institutionalize and, in some respects, to determine the future development of social process. We need, above all, to formulate concepts which will allow us to harmonize and integrate strategies to deal with the intricacies of social process and the elements of spatial from.¨ (1973:27)

Cited by Edward Soja in his book ¨Postmetropolis¨. Page 107, chapter 4 Metropolis in crisis.

Japan: the psychology of recovery

Japan´s evacuees. NYTimes

A few days ago, my son asked me if it was crazy to go back to the place where one belonged, after a catastrophe. I told him everybody comes back, the feeling for own´s territory is so strong, it´s part of our lives. Without territoriality, we feel like nothing.

I was not mistaken in my answer, let´s read some excerpts from the great article by Benedict Carey:

¨JAPAN is in the middle of a catastrophe that transcends any talk of trauma and resilience, the easy language of armchair psychology. There is no reintegrating with friends and social networks now scattered or lost in the sea; there is no easy rebuilding of communities washed away, swallowed by the earth or bathed in radiation from ruptured nuclear plants.

Few can doubt that the country will eventually repair itself; that’s what people do, none more so than the Japanese. But some scientists say that recovering from this disaster will be even more complicated.

In dozens of studies around the world, researchers have tracked survivors’ behavior after disasters, including oil spills, civil wars, hurricanes and nuclear reactor meltdowns, as well as combined natural-technological crises, like what’s happening in Japan. One clear trend stands out: Mental distress tends to linger longer after man-made disasters, like an oil spill or radiation leak, than after purely natural ones, like a hurricane.(...) many people in Japan have begun to doubt the official version of events. “The mistrust of the government and Tepco was already there before the crisis,” said Susumu Hirakawa, a psychologist at Taisho University in Tokyo, referring to the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the leaking nuclear plant. “Now people are even angrier because of the inaccurate information they’re getting.” (...)

Japanese psychologists say, is that many of their countrymen will attempt to manage their anger, grief and anxiety alone. In the older generations especially, people tend to be very reluctant to admit to mental and emotional problems, even to friends; they’re far more likely to describe physical symptoms, like headaches or fatigue, that arise from underlying depression or anxiety.

Not that medicine can repair the deepest losses. The quake, tsunami and radiation have destroyed or defiled what may be the islands’ most precious commodity, land, dealing a psychological blow that for many will be existentially disorienting.

Helping each other in Japan. NYTimes

Iwate prefecture. NYTimes

Milk not delivered. NYTimes

Prayers in Japan. NYTimes

“In rural communities especially, there’s a very strong feeling that the land belongs to you and you belong to it,” said Kai Erikson, a sociologist at Yale who studied mining towns of the Buffalo Creek hollow in West Virginia, where more than a dozen towns were destroyed and at least 118 people killed when a dam burst in 1972, unleashing a wall of water as high as 30 feet that swept down the hollow. “And if you lose that, you’re not just dislocated physically, but you start to lose a sense of who you are.”

Rikuzentakata, Japan. NYTimes

A shelter in Japan. NYTimes

Read the full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/weekinreview/20psyche.html?ref=asia

What is ¨ethnoburb¨?

Whoever has lived in California long enough, will associate immediately some cities to ethnic groups, I´m not only talking about population, but food, advertising and so on. Sometimes I feel in Santa Ana like being in Mexico, or Westminster like being in Vietnam.... Here is an excerpt from the article by Timothy Egan, at The New York Times: ¨The rise of ethnoburbs¨:

The new narrative comes from the ethnoburbs, a term coined in a 2009 book by Arizona State University professor Wei Li to describe entire cities dominated by a nonwhite ethnic group. They are suburban in look, but urban in political, culinary and educational values, attracting immigrants with advanced degrees and ready business skills.

Monterey Park, just to the south of here, is considered the first suburban Chinatown. And with 61,571 people, it’s much more than a “town.” Now there are eight Asian-dominated ethnoburbs sprawling through a 25-mile stretch of the San Gabriel Valley. Here, you’ll find one of the largest Buddhist temples in the hemisphere, and a string of Boba drink shops, often called the Starbucks of the valley. (Boba is a drink flavored with small tapioca balls.)

Ethnoburbs are not limited to California. Bellevue, Washington, long dismissed by Seattle residents across the lake as a series of white bread cul-de-sacs and high-end malls, is now Washington State’s most diverse big city, primarily because Asians make up 27 percent of its 122,363 residents. Quincy, Mass., is going through a renaissance, driven in part by the 22 percent who are of Asian descent.

Well to the east of San Gabriel is the urban laboratory of Riverside County, the fastest growing in California, expanding by 41.7 percent in the last decade to 2.2 million people. In Riverside, where Home Depots are seeded throughout the land, whites are now a minority, at 36 percent of the population, and Latinos, with 45.5 percent, are the largest ethnic group.

Riverside County is a Latino version of Li’s smaller Asian ethnoburbs. Forget the stereotypes emanating from small-minded places like the Phoenix statehouse or any right-wing talk-radio station: In Riverside County, more than one in five businesses is Latino-owned, and median family income is well above the national average.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/rise-of-the-ethnoburbs/?src=me&ref=homepage

Read the book review:

http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/cart/shopcore/?db_name=uhpress&page=shop/flypage&product_id=5743&category_id=b3e6237d1b1b3b8594488ed1c40d0dfb&PHPSESSID=4fcf14d114ca9d3bb0cc1f1a22c05777

Thoughts on Japan´s nuclear power

Fukushima emergency, 2011. From wikipedia.org

Image from Dudley´s article

¨I hadn’t been previously aware of the extent to which Japan had invested in nuclear power: 55 reactors in 17 sites providing about a third of the nation’s electricity. When we think of the Japanese cityscape, throbbing with neon lights in every direction, it is sobering – and now, even sickening – to think of what the cost of such extravagence may turn out to be.

While beautiful, these displays entailed lethal risks that hardly crossed our minds. Yet, had a regime of greater conservation, renewables and efforts to reduce light pollution been a part of that country’s energy policy for decades, would it really have been necessary to to build 55 reactors? Would there even be reactors burning now at Fukushima?

I realize this is being highly speculative. And I certainly don’t mean to single out Japan for being uniquely profligate with its energy consumption. My own Canada clearly stands out shamefully in this regard, with our citizens ranking among the greatest per capita energy users in the world.

But Fukushima -- like the Deepwater Horizon blowout before it -- shows that our energy policy debates need to include the potential for global catastrophe in the balance sheets. Is maintaining our energy consumption as it presently stands really worth running such terrible and terrifying risks? Is all of the future to pay for our ability to run the lights all night long and power our "vampire" appliances?¨

Michael Dudley. From his article Fukushima, Earth Hour and Sacrifice

http://www.planetizen.com/node/48541