Environmental Aesthetics

Definition

Environmental aesthetics names the branch of aesthetics that takes the environment — not the discrete art object — as its field: the aesthetic as the quality of the surroundings in which practices occur, rather than of a contemplative object before a spectator. In this wiki the concept enters through Kevin Melchionne's essay, which defines the domestic version of the field and names its lineage: F.E. Sparshott's "now classic article on environmental aesthetics," "Figuring the Ground: Notes on Some Theoretical Problems of the Aesthetic Environment" (The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 6.1, 1972) (note 3, p. 233). Melchionne's operative definition is interior design's own "basic precept": "the role of interior design is to provide artistically satisfying and practically effective solutions to the organization of the environments in which we must do particular things, like cooking, entertaining, sleeping, bathing, and lounging. The art of domestic interior design would be to create an environment that facilitates domestic practice while at the same time making the environment worthy of aesthetic attention and admiration" (p. 229). The test of environmental art is thus double — facilitation and worthiness — and its failure mode is the object that will not disappear: the Glass House "fails as full-fledged interior design (that is, as environmental art) because it never recedes into the background, never becomes an environment for the practices of everyday life" (p. 229). Environmental art, on this account, is defined by the capacity to recede into the background of use — and its paradox is that the receding environment is also where "the ordinary process of inhabiting our homes is an artistic practice" (p. 229).

Key Thinkers

• Kevin Melchionne — the concept's domestic theorist (1998/2006): the interior-design definition of environmental art (facilitation + admirability); the background thesis; the inhabitation thesis ("inhabiting our homes is an artistic practice, a kind of environmental art").
• F.E. Sparshott — the concept's founding theorist (not yet paged — see log): "Figuring the Ground: Notes on Some Theoretical Problems of the Aesthetic Environment" (1972) — the ground/figure problem that relocates the aesthetic from the object to its surrounding field; Melchionne's stated theoretical reliance.
• Stanley Abercrombie — the boundary-keeper (not yet paged — see log): A Philosophy of Interior Design (1990) and the dictum "we cannot live in art or even in a 'white cube'" — the position against which the environmental-aesthetic claim ("we must also live in art") is argued (p. 228).
• Philip Johnson — the concept's negative exhibit (not yet paged — see log): the work of environmental art that "fails as full-fledged interior design" because it will not recede (pp. 228–229).
• Arto Haapala — the concept's neighbouring philosopher in the wiki: the everyday, building and architecture as the aesthetic's ordinary ground — the same reorientation of aesthetics toward the ordinary built environment.

Related Concepts

• aesthetic-experience — the concept's experiential core: Melchionne's contribution is the embodied register — "Pleasure resides in the implication of the body in an aesthetically pleasing scheme, not just experience of space as an aesthetically pleasing visual field" (p. 231).
• interior-design — the concept's disciplinary stake: the definition makes interior design the environmental art of the domestic — "artistically satisfying and practically effective solutions" (p. 229) — a definition of the discipline by its double product.
• dwelling — the concept's enacted field: dwelling as the practice the environment must facilitate (cooking, entertaining, sleeping, bathing, lounging) (p. 229).
• art-of-domesticity — the concept's consequence: if inhabiting is environmental art, domesticity is an art of living — the two theses are one argument.
• glass-house — the concept's negative test: the environment that never becomes a background.
• hyperorganized-environment — the concept's paradoxical instance: the environment so perfectly composed that it cannot recede — "The spaces demand too much" (p. 231).
• atmosphere — the concept's felt medium: the Glass House occupant "immersed in, though not physically subject to, the shifting atmospheric conditions of the outdoors" (p. 229) — atmosphere as what an environmental aesthetic engages.
• everyday-life — the concept's material: art's environmental function is to "refine and intensify experiences already available to us in everyday life" (p. 230).
• function-of-inhabiting — the concept's practical pole: the "practically effective solutions to the organization of the environments in which we must do particular things."
• background-expectations — the concept's structural condition: the environment's success is invisibility — the background it recedes into.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Living in Glass Houses (Melchionne 1998/2006) — the concept's founding source: the interior-design precept as definition (p. 229); the Sparshott citation (note 3, p. 233); the background/failure thesis (p. 229); the revealing-failure inversion (ordinary inhabitation as environmental art, p. 229); the extreme/ordinary continuity ("an extremely refined version of what any sensitive homemaker creates," p. 230).
• The Everyday, Building, and Architecture (Haapala 2017) — the neighbouring statement of the field: the everyday built environment as the aesthetic's proper ordinary ground.
• Sensorial interior landscapes (Garófalo-Khan 2018) — the concept's grotto register: the interior as environmental immersion ("the combination of flowing water, earth as a thermal sink, and deep shadows") — environmental aesthetics at the interior's sensorial base. See sensorial-interior-landscape, ambient-conditioning.

Open Questions

• What does "recedes into the background" require? The thesis makes invisibility the criterion of environmental-artistic success — yet the Glass House's "revealing failure" is the essay's engine. Does environmental art therefore succeed only by not being noticed as art (cf. Spuybroek's "It lies in the nature of architecture to disappear during the act of appropriation"), and is the aesthetic attention the definition also demands ("worthy of aesthetic attention and admiration") self-defeating?
• Sparshott's ground/figure problem: Melchionne relies on Sparshott's "Figuring the Ground" (1972) without excerpting it: what does the founding statement of environmental aesthetics add to the domestic definition — and does the wiki need the full article (currently logged PAGE NEEDED) to separate the two?
• Is environmental aesthetics the interior-design discipline's missing theory? The wiki's interior-design page documents the discipline's demand for "a philosophical base of knowledge" (Hollis). Melchionne's definition — facilitation plus admirability, tested by receding into the practices of everyday life — is a candidate: is it a theory of interior design, or a theory of art that happens to cover interiors? See interior-design, interior-design-vs-architecture.
• The livability criterion's place: "the attractiveness of an interior depends not just on visual spectacle but also perceived livability" (p. 229). Is livability an environmental-aesthetic category (the field's distinctive contribution over object-aesthetics) — the aesthetic value that only environments, unlike objects, can have?