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POUR L'OBTENTION DU GRADE DE DOCTEUR ÈS SCIENCES 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

Aesthetic Space:

The Visible and the Invisible in Urban Agency

THÈSE N

O

6445 (2017)

ÉCOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FÉDÉRALE DE LAUSANNE

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

Suisse

2017
PAR

Acknowledgements

First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor Prof. Jacques Lévy for his continuous support, motivation and thor oughness. 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

2 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 wi th 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

3 To my parents

To my brother

5

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. KKeywords: space, aesthetics, urban system, urbanity, city, imagination, experience, Switzerland. 6

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 éthique s, 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.

MMots-clé : espace, esthétique, système urbain, urbanité, ville, imagination, expérience, Suisse.

7

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

8 The Origin of Aesthetics 58

The Kantian Method 59

Imagination 62

The Phenomenology of Imagination 64

Imagination and Freedom 68

The Double Intentionality of Aesthetic Judgement 70

The City as Aesthetic Object 72

3 URBANITY 75

The World is Spatial and Founded on Action 76

Inhabiting in the Society of Individuals 78

Urbanity as Phenomenon Emerging From a Combination of Density and

Diversity 81

The City As a Fundamental Concept For Critical Urban Theory 83

Measuring Emergent Phenomena 86

Some Hypotheses On the Aesthetic Dimension of Urban Agency 87

4 THE METHODOLOGY 89

Studying Subjectivity: A Spatial and Historical Analysis of Aesthetic

Judgment 90

Action and Discourse on Action 92

Us and Them 93

The Interviews and Selection of Participants 94

The Semi-Open Interview 95

A Photography as a Method 97

The Meaning of Photographs 100

A Punctum as an Analogon 103

Preparing and Conducting Photo-elicitation Interview: Theory as a Sampling Device 104

5 AESTHETIC SPACE 125

The Production of Aesthetic Space 126

Aesthetic Space Depends on Both Actuality and Virtuality of Aesthetic

Object 130

The Medial Character of Aesthetic Object 137

Emergence of Beauty and Aesthetic Emotions 143

The Aesthetic Dimension as a Component of Spatiality 149

The Aesthetic Character of Existence 155

Aesthetic Judgements as Unactualised Societal Choices 162

The Aesthetics of Everyday Life 168

The Aesthetic Network: A Topology of Aesthetic Places 170

9 6 THE AESTHETIC DIMENSION OF THE URBAN

ENVIRONMENT 174

Aesthetic Sensibilities in Switzerland 176

The Beginnings of Spatial Planning in Switzerland: The Legacy of the Romantics and the Modernists 177 Landscape as an Aesthetic Place Oscillating Between Pristine

Nature and Pure Artefact 185

Modernity and the Problem of Style 194

Aesthetic Judgement and the Gradients of Urbanity 206 Aesthetic Judgement Matures in the Urban Environment 217 Public Space is a Space Per Excellence Where our Aesthetic

Sensitivities Evolve and Mature 218

Childhood as a Critical Period 224

"Living Here and Not Elsewhere": The Aesthetic Dimension of the

Residential Choice 234

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