ENVIRONMENTAL

ENVIRONMENTAL
AESTHETICS
AESTHETICS
Code
Code1580
1580

DR. NOMANA ANJUM

ALLAMA IQBAL OPEN UNIVERSITY
ISLAMABAD
RECAP
Unit 1: Introduction to Environmental
Aesthetics
1.1 Background of Environmental
Aesthetics as field of study
1.2  Short history
1.3  Origin of the Aesthetics impulse
1.4  Value of senses in the interpretation of
environment
Unit no. 1 is the introductory unit that introduces
the background and history of Environmental
Aesthetics as field of study.
Unit 2: Theoretical framework for
Environmental
Aesthetics. (Humanist, Experimentalist,
Activists, Planners)
2.1 Humanist Approach to Environmental
Aesthetics
2.2  History of Landscape taste.
2.3  Types of Landscapes
(Mountains, Wilderness, Middle Landscape,
Land gardening, Townscape)

Unit no. 2 outlines the theoretical framework for

“Environmental Aesthetics” and covers the Humanist
approach to the subject.
 2.1 Humanist Approach to
Environmental Aesthetics

Of the four approaches to environmental

Aesthetics, the humanist approach tend to be
the most contemplative.

Humanists are critical observers of human nature,

landscape and interactions between the two.
Their concern is with the life of mind; with the
contemplation, rather than the manipulation, of
environments and human behaviour.
 2.1 Humanist Approach to
Environmental Aesthetics

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerald Manley Hopkins

 Humanists are
critical observers
Nazia Shakoor of human nature
 Humanists are
critical observers of
Nazia Shakoor
human nature
Humanists are
critical observers
of human nature
 Humanists are
critical observers of
Nazia Shakoor human nature
 2.1 Humanist Approach to
Environmental Aesthetics

Humanist have a strong leaning towards the

past.

It is believed that one’s individual aesthetic

appreciation is strongly influenced by
one’s cultural background, which one
cannot help but absorb unconsciously as
one grows up.
 2.2  History of Landscape taste.

The Medieval World

The Renaissance
The Eighteenth Century
The Romantic Movement
Modern Times
 2.2  History of Landscape taste.
The Medieval World
The medieval times (400BC) evolved the concept
that humankind and nature are dualistic, two
separate entities, and hence the loss of human
respect for nature that has had such serious
ecological consequences.
Nature, to medieval people was disturbing, vast, and
fearful. The landscapes of that time are consisted
of villages and fields, the large houses surrounded
by walled gardens. Beyond the walls , beyond the
village, lay enormous swatches of forests…and
forests were regarded with horror and dismay.
The Medieval World
 2.2  History of Landscape taste.
The Medieval World

In medieval art we find little landscape.

The environmental emphasis in medieval art lies
on the city, a place of order and virtue, perhaps
a forerunner of the heavenly city. The only
pleasant natural scenes are of gardens, but
these again are highly ordered and geometrical.
Beyond the city life lies the wilderness, full of
mischief and evil, a place of dragons and
sprites.
 2.2  History of Landscape taste.

The Renaissance
By late medieval the fear of nature disappeared and
allowed depiction of birds and plants,

Nature appeared as a pastoral symphony of tranquil

water, grazing sheep, cropped sward and simple
country pleasures….Nature was seen as a source
of joy and contentment, scaled down to wholly to
human dimensions, improved, ordered and
tamed, and bent only to human needs.
The Renaissance
 2.2  History of Landscape taste.
The Eighteenth Century
The 18th C is considered as the turning point in the
history of environmental aesthetics.

During the 18th C the European landscape

improvement movement became dominated by
English theorists and practitioners. Increased
urbanization and Industrialization, the effects of
the Scientific Revolution, improvements in
travel, the decline in religion were the factors
for this unprecedented change.
 2.2  History of Landscape taste.

The Romantic Movement

The movement developed in the late 18th and early 19th

C. It had roots in the picturesque, in the sublime and
in the development of science, for many of the
painters were well versed in botany, zoology,
geology and meteorology.

Romantics were vitally concerned with learning to see.

Among the best known Romantic poets and painters
are Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge,
Constable and Turner.
Romantic Movement
 2.2  History of Landscape taste.
The Romantic Movement
I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
Wordsworth
 2.2  History of Landscape taste.
Modern Times

Romanticism was killed by the modern over

development of Science and Technology...the
notion of divine, moral nature could not
survive…the invention of camera made the
lanscape painting redundant.

The triumph of science and technology and their

scorn for mystical thinking cut off the spirit of
the age from both art and religion.
 2.2  History of Landscape taste.
Modern Times

As Western societies developed the tools

for making over the earth, the ‘feel’ for
harmony between humankind and nature
was lost in the frantic exploitation of
‘resources’.
 2.3  Types of Landscapes
(Mountains, Wilderness, Middle Landscape, Land gardening,
Townscape)

Mountains
Classical, medieval and early Renaissance
painters and poets either ignored mountains
or had an active hatred for them.

Mountains were seen as the homes of

hobgoblins, spirits, and dangerous beasts, a
feeling which persisted even in Switzerland
until the 16th C.
 2.3  Types of Landscapes
(Mountains, Wilderness, Middle Landscape, Land gardening,
Townscape)

Mountains
It was believed that earth had once had
smoothness, regularity, uniformity, proportion,
roundness and symmetry….Sin had resulted
in its becoming rough, irregular, craggy, irregular,
craggy and asymmetrical.

The change to a positive view of mountains came

about through science and new religious
ideology.
 2.3  Types of Landscapes
(Mountains, Wilderness, Middle Landscape, Land gardening,
Townscape)

Mountains

Gradually people became aware that mountains

create useful harbours and generate clouds and
rain. New concepts of 17th C argued that the
existing earth was God’s doing, and therefore
that variety and diversity were good in
themselves. It was also considered to be
presumptuous to apply the theories of classical
aesthetics to God’s work, as if theologians were
aware of God’s aesthetic criteria.
Mountains
 2.3  Types of Landscapes
Wilderness

Wilderness is a qualitative term which

involves wild, uncultivated, unspoiled
land inhabited by wild creatures, and
where humans are merely visitors.
Wilderness is more of American concept
than the European.
 2.3  Types of Landscapes
Wilderness

A change in landscape consciousness came

about in the US in the early 19th C.

Wilderness was then seen as an earthly version

of sacred order and perfection, where
humankind was best able to achieve
transcendence.
Wilderness
 2.3  Types of Landscapes

The Middle Landscape

Between mountain and wilderness on the one

hand, and garden and city on the other, lies the
middle landscape of agrarian enterprise.

Classical poets almost universally celebrated a

wholly cultivated, pastoral, tamed nature, where
the beautiful was strongly related to the useful.
 2.3  Types of Landscapes

The Middle Landscape

Preference for the middle landscape also had

deep Biblical roots. The old testament has
positive references to sheep rearing and the
joy of raising the crops.

Other historic preference include the delight in

gardens and the folk history of Medieval
Europe.
 2.3  Types of Landscapes

Landscape Gardening

Landscape gardening forms a bridge between, on the

one hand, genuine nature transformed for economic
purpose, and on the other, works of art such as
paintings, poetry, and even cityscapes.
The landscapes garden is nature transformed into an
idealized conception of landscape form.

In ancient and medieval times, the garden was seen as

“a paradise”.
 2.3  Types of Landscapes

Townscape

The landscape of built environment in cities is

referred as townscape. On the one hand,
cities have long been regarded as
humankind’s greatest work of art. On the
other hand, modernist urbanism has often
exalted the artificiality of the city. The
extreme is Le Corbusier’ s dictum: “The city
is the subjugation of nature by man; it is a
human action against nature”
 2.3  Types of Landscapes

Townscape

It is believed that city design and zoning

policies have three major goals. In
addition to social and economic
efficiency and biological health, the city
should provide its citizens with a
“continuously satisfying aesthetic and
sensory experience”.
Townscape
 National Contrasts in Landscapes
English and American Contrasts

The English taste of landscape is more of

countryside…

They like open, rolling grassy downs

complete with sheep, prefer rounded trees
with broad leaves and bushy tops.
 National Contrasts in Landscapes
English and American Contrasts

The medieval cities such as York are loved by the

tourists for its layout, irregular shaped
marketplaces, alleys, courtyards, intimate
complex townscape. However, it is not possible
under modern town-planning standards.

In contrast the American landscape is one of

immense size, too large scale…landscape are
limitless, endless, vast and huge.
English and
American
Contrasts

American

English
Discussion
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