81935 - Aesthetics for the City

Learning outcomes

The subject of the course is the study of phenomena such as the "anesthetization of everyday life", "widespread aesthetics", the "aesthetics of goods" and of their places, the "industrial arts", and the role of the aesthetic-cultural component in urban analysis and transformation. At the end of the course the student becomes able to: practice the knowledge of the main philosophical and social elaborations on the contemporary city and on the contemporary images, cultures and urban lifeforms; pay particular attention to the contribution that the various forms of expression have provided to the formulation of the experience of places and the understanding of urban phenomena; critically read and analyze the urban landscape and complex sites within it.

Course contents

The course focuses on the conceptual frameworks to define urban aesthetics starting from some exemplary theoretical and descriptive constructs of individual cities, metropolises or megacities and, in the same perspective, deepens a series of elements and categories for the experience and analysis of the city, its forms and cultures. During the course, there are two to three intermediate exercises, if possible in the field, and a final exercise, which will use different media, such as writing, video, photos, drawing, depending on the opportunity. The lessons and exercises are divided into ten thematic blocks, which are indicated below with the bibliography which follows:

1. Introduction to the course.
What is aesthetics? How can aesthetics be defined for the city?
Summary of the analyzes by Georg Simmel on Berlin and the Italian cities, by Walter Benjamin on Paris, the capital of the 19th century and by Georges Perec on the infrordinary and the relationship with places and space.
What do "dwelling" and "building" mean? The perspectives of Richard Sennett and Giorgio Agamben.
Images of cities: the myth of transparency and the dysfunctionality of the hyperfunctional in Playtime by Jacques Tati.

2. Elements of the city: the home.
The chimeric house: Marcel Aymé, Passe-muraille and Maison Basse; Roland Topor, The tenant. Horizontal living and vertical living: Francesco Pecoraro, Lo stradone.
Images of the city: vision, analysis and comment on The tenant by Roman Polanski.

3. Categories of city aesthetics: Porosity.
The Naples of Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis and the megacities of Richard Sennett. Porosity as a transversal notion to the philosophical experience of the Italian city in Theodor W. Adorno, Siegfried Kracauer, Ernst Bloch and Alfred Sohn-Retel.
City images: Rome. The inverted city of Remoria (Valerio Mattioli) and the metropolitan “paese” (Massimo Canevacci). Vision, analysis and comment on Federico Fellini, Rome and Gianfranco Rosi, Sacro GRA.

4. Elements and categories of city aesthetics: the window, the shop window, the wall, the underpass, the street, the bridge and the door.
City images: the cinema of the big city, Berlin. Symphony of a great city by Walter Ruttmann and René Clair, Paris qui dort.
Field exercise I.

5. Elements of the city: the square and the hyper-place (the Times Square case).
City images: the cinema of the big city, Dziga Vertov, The man with the camera and Alberto Cavalcanti, Rien que les heures.
Field exercise II.

6. Categories for the aesthetics of the city: walking. Walkscapes: Dadaist visit, surrealist walking, letriste and situationist drift. Slowing of perception, generative grammar of the legs and world as an apparition.
City images: Jirō Taniguchi, The man who walks.

7. Elements of the city: the arcades. Uniqueness of Bologna? Heterotopia and spatial and power relations.
Images of the city: Vision, analysis and commentary on Renzo Renzi, Guide for walking in the shade.

8. Aesthetic elements and categories for the city: living after the pandemic, cities and migrants, verticality.
City images: James Ballard's High Rise and Ben Wheatley's High Rise.
Field exercise III.

9. Categories for the aesthetics of the city: degradation and decorum.
Bodies and fences in the urban scene. The "urban landscape" and the "potential city": exercises of estrangement and displacement of the point of view.
City images: degradation and decorum in urban photography.

10. A city for everyone?
Final exercise.

Readings/Bibliography

1. G. Simmel, Le metropoli e la vita dello spirito (1903), Roma, Armando, 1995 and Roma, Firenze, Venezia (1898, 1906,1907), in M. Cacciari, Metropolis. Saggi sulla grande città, Roma, Officina, 1973; W. Benjamin, Parigi, la capitale del XIX secolo (1935), in Id., I «passages» di Parigi, Torino, Einaudi, 2002; G. Perec, Specie di spazi (1974), Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1989. R. Sennett, Costruire e abitare, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2018; G. Agamben, Abitare e costruire in: https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-abitare-e-costruire .

2. M. Aymé, Le passe-muraille (1941) and Maison basse (1935), in Id., Œuvres romanesques, illustrations de Roland Topor, vol. IV e vol. II, Paris, Flammarion, 1977, p. 529-536 e 461-607; Roland Topor, L’inquilino del terzo piano (1964), Milano: Bompiani, 1992; F. Pecoraro, Lo stradone, Milano, Ponte alle Grazie, 2019.

3. W. Benjamin, A. Lacis, Napoli, in W. Benjamin, Immagini di città, Torino, Einaudi, 2007, p. 3-16. M. Mittelmeier, Adorno a Napoli. Un capitolo sconosciuto della filosofia europea, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2019. R. Sennett, La lotta per la città, in «Micromega», 2018, p. 121-134; V. Mattioli, Remoria. La città invertita, Roma, Minimum fax, 2019; M. Canevacci, Paese metropolitano, in A. Criconia, a cura di, Una città per tutti. Diritti, spazi, cittadinanza, Roma, Donzelli, 2019, p. 153-162.

4. G. Simmel, Ponte e porta, in Id., Ponte e porta. Saggi di estetica, Bologna, Archetipo, 2011, p. 1-6; S. Kracauer, Dalla finestra, Addio al Lindenpassage, Il sottopassaggio, in Id., Strade a Berlino e altrove, Bologna, Pendragon, 2004, pp. 55-57, 32-39, 52-54; E. Coccia, Muri, Città, in Id., Il bene nelle cose, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2014, p. 17-39; A. Somaini, Cronogrammi della metropoli. Clair, Ruttmann, Vertov, Ejzenštejn, in M. Vegetti (a cura di), Filosofie della metropoli. Spazio, potere, architettura nel pensiero del Novecento, Roma, Carocci, 2009, p. 153-182.

5. M. Romano, La piazza europea, Padova, Marsilio, 2015; M. Lassault, Hyper-lieux. Les nouvelles géographies politiques de la mondialisation, Paris, Seuil, 2017, p. 41-61.

6. F. Careri, Walkscapes. Camminare come pratica estetica, Torino, Einaudi, 2006; Ch. Bailly, La grammatica generativa delle gambe, in Id., La frase urbana (2013), Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2016, pp. 22-41; Antonio Moresco, passim, cfr. Il mondo come apparizione, in L. Lombard, D. Luglio, a cura di, Uno scrittore visionario. Antonio Moresco, Milano, Effigie, 2019, p. 180-200; Jirō Taniguchi, L’uomo che cammina (1991), Modena, Panini, 1999.

7. M. Foucault, Eterotopie, in Id., Estetica dell’esistenza, etica, politica, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2020, p. 307-316; V. Trione, Effetto città. Arte, cinema, modernità, Milano, Bompiani, 2014; M. Jakob, Il paesaggio, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2009; V. I. Stoichita, L' effetto Sherlock. Storia dello sguardo da Manet a Hitchcock, Milano, Il saggiatore, 2017; R. Pierantoni, Salto di scala, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2012; G. Wajcman, Fênetre. Chroniques du regard et de l’intime, Lagrasse, Verdier, 2004.

8. R. Sennett, How should we live? Density in post-pandemic cities, Domus 1046, 2020 d Cities after coronavirus: how Covid-19 could radically alter urban life, The Guardian, 26 Mar 2020; S. Metha, La vita segreta delle città (2016), Torino, Einaudi, 2016; J. Ballard, Il condominio (1975), Milano, Feltrinelli, 2003; R. Barthes, La tour Eiffel (1964), Milano, Abscondita, 2009.

9. S. Hodkinson, The new urban enclosures, in «City», vol. 16, no. 5, october 2012, pp. 500-517; P. Ascari, Corpi e recinti. Estetica ed economia politica del decoro, Verona, Ombre corte, 2019; M. Berman, Tutto ciò che è solido svanisce nell'aria. L'esperienza della modernità (1982), Bologna, Il Mulino, 2012.

10. A. Criconia, a cura di, Una città per tutti. Diritti, spazi, cittadinanza, Roma, Donzelli, 2019.

Teaching methods

The course aims to provide tools for deepening the discipline. The course will take place through lectures, seminars, exercises, visits.

Assessment methods

To take the exam you must have completed the exercise. The exam is oral. The exam interview will focus on the topics discussed in classroom lessons and on the texts in the program, but it can also take the inspiration from any further study that the student will have presented orally during the lessons or in written form after the end of the course.

In detail:

- the verification of the teaching objective to acquire the main philosophical and social elaborations on the contemporary city and urban images, cultures and forms of life and the contribution the various forms of expression have provided to the experience of the places and to the understanding of urban phenomena will be implemented through presentations of texts or audiovisual materials agreed with the teacher within the course;

- the verification of the teaching objective of acquiring the tools to critically read and analyze the urban landscape and complex sites within it will be carried out through the elaboration of surveys on the ground through texts, films and creative artifacts;

- both verifications will be completed by the individual oral exam at the end of the course, which will include questions about the texts in the bibliography and on the various final works foreseen by the program.

Teaching tools

The bibliographies specific to the different parts of the course will be analyzed and acquired during the various lessons, starting with the tools available in the texts indicated in the program. The teaching material presented during the lessons is made available to the student in paper or electronic format via the internet, also following the access restrictions, according to the modalities that will be indicated at the beginning of the course.

Office hours

See the website of Andrea Borsari