ALLAMA IQBAL OPEN UNIVERSITY

Master of Science (MSC)

Department of Sustainable Environmental Design Programme

“Spring 2019 Semester”

Assignment No.2

Subject Name: Environmental Aesthetics

Subject Code No: (3674)

Student Name: Mukhtiar Ali

S/O: Muhammad Saleh

Semester 1st

Roll No: BX509217

ID: 191100257

Region: Karachi.
Q.1 a) Who are the three scholars that have put forward the new Aesthetic
Models that stress the interrelationship between nature and
humanity-nature and culture, nature and design?
b) What are their distinct views for sustainable design ecologies?
c) Interpret their views in the local context preferably related to your
Experience.

Answer: These are the three scholars who have put forward the new Aesthetic
Models that stress the interrelationship between nature and
humanity-nature and culture, nature and design.

1. Richard Weller:

2. Frederick Steiner:

3. Billy Fleming:

By “design with nature” McHarg meant that the way we occupy and modify the
earth is best when it is planned and designed with careful regard to both the
ecology and the character of the landscape. In this way, he argued that our cities,
industries and farms could avoid major natural hazards and become truly
regenerative. More deeply, McHarg believed that by living with rather than against
the more powerful forces and flows of the landscape, communities would gain a
stronger sense of place and identity.
McHarg did more than write and talk about these ideas. He developed practical
planning and design techniques to make them real, and then he put his theory into
action around the world.

McHarg was prescient and his philosophy and idealism underpin The Center’s
mission to this day. But, in a world as complex and fluctuating as todays, we must
continually ask: what do we mean by design, and what we mean by nature?

We consider nature to be an all-inclusive, evolving system of which humans have

substantial yet incomplete scientific and cultural knowledge. We believe terrestrial
nature, i.e. ‘the landscape’ is best understood as simultaneously an ecosystem and
cultural system recognition that urban agglomeration economies and rural
processes of extraction and transport now form a planetary network.

Carefully reading the landscape in this way is the prerequisite for consciously
designing our future; using artistic creativity and scientific intelligence to shape the
landscape in the best long-term interest of all living things.

After centuries of mistakenly believing we could exploit the landscape without

consequence (design without nature) we have now entered an age of extreme
climate change marked by rising seas, resource depletion, desertification,
ecosystem migration, and unprecedented rates of species extinction. Set against the
global phenomena of accelerating consumption, ubiquitous urbanization and rising
inequity, these environmental changes are impacting everyone, everywhere.
Adapting our cities and their infrastructure to these conditions of rapid
environmental change is the central design and planning challenge of the 21st
century.
The McHarg Center’s purpose is to meet this challenge by providing a platform for
environmental and social scientists, planners, designers, policy makers, developers
and communities to unite and to research and design new ways of improving the
ecological performance and quality of life in cities and towns worldwide.

As we begin to understand the true complexity and holistic nature of the earth
system, and begin to appreciate humanity’s impact within it, we can build a new
identity for society as a constructive part of nature. This is ethical. This is
optimistic. This is a necessity.

This is what it means to “design with nature”.

Cover (detail), Ian L. McHarg, Design with Nature, The Natural History Press,
1969

Francesca Ammon Assistant Professor of City Planning and Historic

Preservation Penn Design University of Pennsylvania:
Today, designing with nature should also mean designing with history. In the
context of climate change and the many recent hurricanes, earthquakes, and
wildfires, designers must be cognizant of the lessons of the past. We have seen
disasters before, sometimes in these very same places. Designers cannot simply
resist these human- and nature-induced forces, but instead need to intervene in
ways that account for and respond to them. This could mean choosing not to build
somewhere, choosing to build differently somewhere, or just taking the long view
over short-term fixes. Taking a historical perspective reminds us of that longer
temporal frame. Perhaps the signs have long been there to design in this way; but
turning to history should empower designers to heed their call. To design with
nature today means to survey the history of a site and of places like it. This
requires excavating the history of its land, buildings, people, and politics. Now
more than ever, to design with nature, we must listen and respond to the
experiences of the past.

Alan Berger Leventhal Professor of Advanced Urbanism Co-Director, Leventhal

Center for Advanced Urbanism Director, P-REX Lab Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Department of Urban Studies and Planning:

Designing with nature now means the same thing Ian had in mind when he spoke
of putting “together again the entire system.” We must deploy design intelligence
with powerful new analytical tools to creatively recover pieces of regional
landscape systems left in the wake of short term economic schema, political
indecision, ad hoc development, a negligent public, and flawed environmental
policy. It will not be possible to work with a meaningful and enduring concept of
nature at the place-making scale without first redesigning the larger systems.
Q2. How Environmental Aesthetics links up with everyday life? Share some
examples from your experience:

Answer: Environmental aesthetics is a relatively new sub-field of philosophical

aesthetics. Also reinforced various long-standing connections between the aesthetic
the aesthetics of everyday life tends to focus on the aesthetics of Aesthetics is the
study of beauty. Beauty is important in life because it is representative of our
values. Values are beautiful because they define our actions through life. With
ethics we are able to define the nature of our values and allow them to shape us
into the essential goodness that we have within ourselves.

Aesthetics: is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and appreciation
of art, beauty and good taste. It has also been defined as critical reflection on art,
culture and nature.

There is a whole branch of philosophy exploring aesthetics. Let’s scratch the

surface of the Aesthetics field and learn how it relates to our design work.

There is a phenomenon that social psychologists call “the halo effect”. It means
humans tend to assume that good looking people have other positive qualities aside
from their looks.

The same is valid for product design. Good looking products and user interface are
perceived as more valuable and having more qualities.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. Aesthetics are in all our senses, not just the
sight. Aesthetic design is a 4D experience. Product designers, who are doing actual
physical products, are aware of that.

With the emergence of VR and AR technologies it becomes more important for

digital designers to consider the 4D experience too.

There are 4 important categories, which can make or break the aesthetics of our
designs.

Vision:

The most dominant sense in majority of people is our sight. We can’t stop ourselves
to look at what we find beautiful. It is as if the light that reflects from the beautiful
design acts as a magnet for our eyes.

Visual aesthetics have these key elements: Color, Shape, Pattern, Line, Texture,
and Visual weight, Balance, Scale, Proximity and Movement. Using this element
well will help us achieve good visual aesthetics.

Hearing:

Our ears are capable of perceiving a whole another level of aesthetic design. The
ability to hear how your car engine works, how the digital product notifies you of
new messages and etc. This is the power of sound aesthetics.
Sound aesthetics have these key elements: Loudness, Pitch, Beat, Repetition,
Melody, Pattern and Noise. Using them well will create enjoyable “music” for our
users.

Touch:

Skin is the largest organ in human body. It also helps us experience the
aesthetics. Material aesthetics are especially important for physical products.

Just remember, the last time you were buying cloths and feeling their texture or
when you were checking out the latest mobile phone and feeling the frame material.
Sometimes people make their buying decisions only based on the material
aesthetics. Powerful stuff is these material aesthetics.

Material aesthetics key elements are: Texture, Shape, Weight, Comfort,

Temperature, Vibration and Sharpness. By mastering them we can make our
customers adore our products.

Taste and Smell:

Taste and Smell are sense that helps us experience aesthetics even more deeply.
Especially in food industry and different environment designs, these senses play an
important role in experiencing aesthetics.

Key elements are: Strength, Sweetness, Sourness and Texture (for taste). Use these
elements when possible to enhance the full picture, so our users can feel the
aesthetics even deeper. Now that we know a bit more about aesthetic design, let’s
look at why it matters.
Why aesthetic design matters?

Not long ago user was expecting only functional and usable products when they
were buying. Today, users’ expectations have evolved together with the design
field.

People expect usability by default and are seeking products that are more than
functional and usable. We want to experience pleasure, to stimulate our senses. We
want the products we use to evoke positive emotion in us. Aesthetic design is
crucial to satisfy these needs.

We all judge the book by its cover. The better the book cover the more we believe
the content is better. This is phenomenon called “Aesthetic-usability”. Beautiful
products/objects are perceived as easier to use and more valuable than ugly ones.
Even if it is not true.

This phenomenon is especially valid when the products compared are equal in
functionality and ease of use. The better looking product will win over the users
swiftly.

Aesthetically pleasing designs are bringing up positive attitude in the users. It

makes them care more about the product. Aesthetic design makes people more loyal
of the brand and tolerant toward mistakes or failures. Imagine all the apple fans.

Early impressions of a product design matter! Aesthetic design is influencing how

people think and feel. It influences how much pleasure we feel from the product.
Aesthetic design affects our long-term attitude about products and even people.
Aesthetic design matters not only to make the first impression, but also to keep
strengthening the bond with the user. The design of our products needs to be
aesthetically pleasing consistently across the whole product and user journey.

Design for aesthetic pleasure:

Let’s see how the words above can be useful for us to make better design. We have
to design products that deliver pleasure to the user with aesthetics and usability.

But when aesthetics are in the senses of our users, how do we know what to design?
The answer can be given by the people we’re designing the product/experience for.
We need to understand them before deciding what is aesthetically pleasing.

When we are designing products for really wide audience it is wiser to keep things
simple as much as possible.

There are 4 important pleasure aspects that we need to consider when we want to
make our designs aesthetically pleasing.

Psychical pleasure:

Pleasure derived mostly from touch, smell and taste. Think of designing hand-held
product, computer devices, VR set even a normal pen.

We need to make sure the design is ergonomic; it feels comfortable and doesn’t
overload the user senses. Consider how sensitive your user’s senses are, what the
average norm is. Make sure the smell and taste is either neutral or brings positive
associations.
Social pleasure:

Pleasure derived from interacting with other people or with AI(still not that
common). This context is very broad it can be from home assistant device and VR
experiences to a room/building where social events will be hosted.

We need to make sure the design supports social interaction in the best way
possible. It could be as simple as the sound aesthetics of the coffee machine that
allows employees to communicate, while waiting for the coffee to be ready.

Psychological pleasure:

Pleasure derived from completing a task or feeling in control and safe. This context
is very tightly related to the usability of the product. But it can be also related to
how the product design looks.

For example, a solid and stable looking car gives more psychological comfort than
one that seems it might break if you open the door. Same is valid for digital
products where the user feels in control and knows the task can be completed for
sure.

Making things look and feel simple and stable. Guiding the user with great
composition and motion. Using aesthetics plays a big role in making the users feel
safe and in control.
Ideological pleasure:

This context is mostly about abstract pleasure. I like to think of it as the glue that
binds the other pleasure types. It is the meaning of the words in the books not the
colors, font sizes and page layouts.

For example, in product design taking the sustainability angle can trigger pleasure
in the user, making her feel well because she is responsible for the environment?
Here are a five startups that are using that context.

We need to make sure that our designs communicate ideas and deeper meaning. This
can frequently result in very deep aesthetically pleasure once the user realizes it.

Balancing aesthetics and usability:

There are cases where we need to sacrifice aesthetics, due to different limitations
depending on the context. Other times aesthetics could dominate the usability
aspect.

Aesthetics and usability in balance:

This is what most of the cases as Designers we should strive to achieve in our
designs. There are many good examples from smart phones and apps to computer
chair that look and feel good, but also have the desired usability.

Aesthetics over usability:

Sometimes products have dominating aesthetics that are not supported by good
usability and ergonomics. This is mostly visible in the fashion industry. Shoes made
to look nice and attractive, while at the same time destroying the feet of the user.
This demonstrates clearly how humans can be seduced by aesthetic design and even
at the price of their health.

Usability over aesthetics:

Other times usability must be on focus no matter what. Equipment designed for
emergency situations, where people cognition is compromised. In these cases
aesthetics are with low priority. When designing for such cases there are a lot of
constraints from different authorities and requirements. Using Hick’s law for quick
decision making can help you make the better design decisions.

Final thoughts:

First impression matters. When we perceive beauty with more of our senses we feel
deeper pleasure from the design. Aesthetic design gives users pleasure from the
start! It makes them form a bond with the design, bond that goes beyond the initial
interaction. Aesthetic design is perceived as more friendly, usable and valuable.
Q3.How the term “functional fit” integrates ecology and culture into
aesthetics of human environments? Refer to Carlson Approach?

Answer:
Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture
presents fresh and fascinating insights into our interpretation of the environment.
Although traditional aesthetics is often associated with the appreciation of art,
Allen Carlson shows how much of our aesthetic experience does not encompass art
but nature, in our responses to sunsets, mountains, or more mundane surroundings,
such as gardens or the views from our windows. He demonstrates that, unlike
works of art, natural and ordinary human environments are neither self-contained
aesthetic objects nor specifically designed for convenient aesthetic consumption.
On the contrary, our environments are ever present constantly engaging our senses,
and Carlson offers a thought-provoking and lucid investigation of what this means
for our appreciation of the world around us. He argues that knowledge of what it is
we are appreciating is essential to having an appropriate aesthetic experience and
that scientific understanding of nature can enhance our appreciation of it, rather
than denigrate it. Aesthetics and the Environment also shows how ethical and
aesthetic values are closely connected, argues that aesthetic appreciation of natural
and human environments has objective grounding, and explores the important links
between ecology and the aesthetic experience of nature. This book will be essential
reading for those involved in environmental studies and aesthetics and all who are
interested in the controversial relationship between science and nature. Allen
Carlson is an authority in aesthetics and has pioneered the field of environmental
aesthetics. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alberta, Canada.
Integration into landscape has been carried out with ever-increasing prevalence on
the for new interpretations of technological, material and environmental culture
in a balanced In Carlson's opinion the ecological approach to landscape
Such functional fit ensures that landscapes created by human .

To my knowledge, Jusuck Koh was the first to use the terms "ecological
architecture" and "ecological aesthetics" in this sense. See his "Ecological Design:
A Post-Modern Design Paradigm of Holistic Philosophy and Evolutionary Ethic”
Allen Carlson proposes the notion of functional fit to describe the integrated
relation of a building to its physical and cultural environment, in reconsidering the
Aesthetics.

A still different model of architecture is one that elaborates a structure sensitive to

the distinctive physical features of its location, incorporating them into the design
and reaching toward a unity of building and site. Here the building complements
its site, carrying out its suggestions, incorporating its features, assuming a place
through adaptation rather than imposition. This ecological conception integrates
structure and site by blending the building into the physical and qualitative features
of the natural landscape to achieve proportion and harmony From Mediterranean
villages that have accreted to their sites over long centuries, fusing to rocky
mountainsides, embracing protected harbors, or nuzzling among hills, to the New
England farmstead that seems to have grown out of the contours of the land,
vernacular architecture and its derivations typically express this respect for the
landscape, adapting and adjusting over time to the economy of conditions and
need.

Berleant Art and Engagement, familiar and while they may be combined at times,
they exemplify different sensibilities to environment. Yet these types do not just
represent ways of seeing, ways of sensing space and mass and of apprehending the
qualitative characteristics of the building site. They embody more, too, than ways
of building. They provide ways of being, for each of the different architectural
patterns originates in a distinct conception of the human environment. Each
provides an embodiment of that conception and, most important of all, each shapes
and directs the experiential world of its inhabitants. Architectural structures, then,
do not stand alone but must be related to environmental experience. What is such
experience we can look in vain for an explicit definition of environment in the
writings of cultural geographers and cultural ecologists, where we would most
expect to find one. The usual practice is to adapt our common sense understanding
to the purpose, taking environment to mean the physical surroundings.
Philosophers tend to be more explicit, yet those few who face the demands of
definition tend to retain the same division between people and their surroundings.
All such proposals suggest the definition of environment sanctified in the object or
the region surrounding anything." Cartesian dualism remains alive and well.

Yet the actual patterns in which the human world takes shape display forms of
grasping environment that are far more varied than those that conventional usage
has made orthodox. In constructing their habitats, people have created different
kinds of environmental order that reflect the contrast in attitude and experience
between disinterested contemplation and aesthetic Berleant Art and Engagement,
engagement. There is a scope here that resembles the range of relationships of
building to site from isolation and division through degrees to continuity and
integration. At least three patterns of environmental experience can be identified in
discussion and practice: contemplative, active, and participatory. Like the
panoramic landscape described in the preceding chapter, the contemplative
paradigm has become the standard for environmental experience. This attitude
toward art, originating in classical philosophy and assimilated into the structure of
modern aesthetics, lies at the heart of the notion of environment as surroundings,
importing a visual model to explain our apprehension of space. The ideas of the art
object's separation from what surrounds it and the special attitude of disinterested
contemplation that is required for regarding the object's intrinsic qualities have
become silent partners in most discussions of architecture and environmental
design. Adopting a contemplative attitude, environmental experience takes the
form of the gaze of a spectator removed, even distant from the world being
observed. Attention is directed to how objects are placed in spatial emptiness and
especially to how they will be seen in relation to each other. This attitude appears
in the monolithic and cellular conceptions of building, where a structure is isolated
either alone or on its site: a house on its grassy lot with hardly a shrub to soften its
stark geometrical contours, a skyscraper in austere solitude on its plaza.
Contemplation produces a spectator attitude toward architecture, in which the
appearance of a building seen from a distance is the standard, by which it is known
and judged, and it is expressed in Berleant Art and Engagement, boulevards, and
malls are straight lines. We do not see in curves or around corners, hence the
drama of sight requires ruler edge rigidity. The eye becomes the effective organ of
space, as since the seventeenth century it has been the metaphorical organ of
thought. Custom and frequency give great weight to this classical view, even
though it is but one way of experiencing environment and embodies no necessary
or irrevocable truth about the world. Still, the contemplative approach is
established so securely that it has conquered the very concept of environment. The
objectification of environment, however, is the product of an intellectualist
tradition that grasps the world by knowing it and that controls the world by
subduing it to the order of thought. Such a strategy may have secured the assent of
philosophers and scientists but it has not won over the ranks of artists. Wallace
Rationalists wearing square hats think, in square rooms, looking at the floor,
looking at the ceiling. They confine themselves to right angled triangles. If they
tried rhomboids, Cones, waving lines, ellipses as, for example, the ellipse of the
half moon Berleant Art and Engagement, An environmental aesthetic becomes at
the same time, then, a cultural aesthetic, the analogue of the cultural landscape of
which anthropologists and geographers speak. It comprises not only a study of the
perceptual features of the environmental medium that participate reciprocally with
people but includes as well as correlative study of the influences of social
institutions, belief systems, and patterns of association and action that shape the
life of the human social animal and give it meaning and significance. The cultural
aesthetic is the characteristic sensory, conceptual, and ideational matrix that
constitutes the perceptual environment of a culture. This includes the typical
qualities and configurations of color, sound, texture, light, movement, smell, taste,
perceptual pattern, space, temporal sensibility, and size in juxtaposition with the
human body, and the influence of traditional patterns of belief and practice on the
creation and apprehension of these qualities. The human environment is always
historic-cultural, and formulating a cultural aesthetic requires us to identify the
configuration of perceptual features that is characteristic of a particular human
culture at a given time. Certain places exemplify such an aesthetic: In a medieval
Gothic cathedral appreciative perception through distancing does not occur. Here
light filtered through stained glass windows, linear masses and volumes, the
reverberations of chanting voices and organ, the smell of incense, and the taste of
wine and wafer combine to absorb the believer into a multisensory, multimedia
environment. Another example is the Chinese scholar's garden of the eleventh to
nineteenth centuries, which creates a harmony of spirit and place, man and nature.
Studies in cultural aesthetics are an important way in which aesthetics can enter the
social sciences.
Q.4 a) How Berleant’s Approach differs from Carlson’s Approach of
Environmental Aesthetics?
b) Why Berleant stresses on the value of multi-sensory experience?
c) Do you agree that our encounter with environment is sensory and
emotional engagement? Can you explain through personal experience?

Answer: A. On The hand, Several Cognitive approaches emphasie different

kind’s aesthetic (Kemal and Gaskell 1993, Carlson and Berleant 2004)?.

Berleant, A. (1992) The

Aesthetics of
Environment,
Philadelphia, PA: Temple
University Press.
(An elaboration of the
engagement approach
discussed in §5 of this
entry.)
Berleant A. (2002) Environment and the Arts: Perspectives on
Environmental Aesthetics, London: Ashgate Publishers.
(A collection of thirteen articles by some of the main
philosophical contributors to the field.)
Berleant, A. and Carlson, A. (1998) Environmental Aesthetics, special issue
of Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (2).
(Contains ten original articles discussing both natural and
human environments.)
Bourassa S.C. (1991) The (An overview of and contribution to the empirical
Aesthetics of Landscape, research discussed in §3 of this entry, together with a very
London: Belhaven. good general bibliography.)

Carlson, A. (A set of studies in the cognitive approach discussed in §6

(2000) Aesthetics and the of this entry.)
Environment: The
Appreciation of Nature,
Art and Architecture,
London: Routledge.

Carlson, A. (2001) (Presents an overview of the field together with a selected

‘Environmental Aesthetics bibliography.)
in B. Gaut and D. Lopes
(eds), Routledge
Companion to Aesthetics,
London: Routledge, 423–
36.
Kemal, S. and Gaskell, I. (A collection of twelve original articles by individuals
(1993) Landscape, Natural primarily from humanities disciplines.)
Beauty and the Arts,
Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Light, A. and Smith, J.M. (A collection of twelve articles presenting environmental
(2001) The Aesthetics of aesthetics as the aesthetics of everyday life.)
Everyday Life, New York:
Seven Bridges Press.

Nasar, J.L. (A collection of thirty-two articles of differing lengths and

(1988) Environmental technical detail, mainly by individuals involved in the
Aesthetics: Theory, empirical research discussed in §3 of this entry, together
Research, and with an excellent bibliography of empirical work.)
Applications, Cambridge:
Cambridge University
Press.

Sepanmaa, Y. (A collection of twenty-two short pieces presented at the

(1997) Real World Thirteenth International Congress of Aesthetics in 1995 by
Design: The Foundations individuals representing a number of different countries,
and Practice of approaches, and philosophical traditions.)
Environmental Aesthetics,
Helsinki: University of
Helsinki.
B. 1., As Berleant puts the point: ‘In this view, the environment is understood as a
field of forces continuous with the organism, a field in which there is a reciprocal
action of organism on environment on organism, and in which there is no sharp
demarcation between them. Such a pattern may be thought of as a participatory
model of experience.

(Berleant, 2005 Berleant, Arnold. 2005. Aesthetics and Environment: Variations

on a Theme, Aldershot: Ashgate).

2. Thanks to Andrew Light for suggesting a great example of just such a case of
chemically altered engagement with art. Light reports that in the 2001 James
Tobak film Harvard Man, Alan (a young student) is pictured in one scene as
mesmerized by a poster of one of Gauguin's Tahitian paintings after taking LSD.
Slightly later in the scene, one of the Tahitian women actually steps out of the
painting to stroke his hair. Now that's engagement.

3. As Ronald Moore puts it, ‘the inherent limitlessness of the non-conceptual

entails that there can be no bounds on what we make of’ objects of perceptual
experience (Moore, 2004Moore, and Ronald. 2004).
“Appreciating natural beauty as natural” In the Aesthetics of Natural
Environments, Edited by: Allen, Carlson and Arnold, Berleant. Peterborough,
Ontario Canada: Broadview Press.

4. That is, Berleant and I appear to disagree about when a person can correctly
be said to be having an aesthetic experience, not about what might count as an
appropriate object of aesthetic experience. So my worry here is not that Berleant
delimits the objects of aesthetic engagement, because I agree with him and others
that anything under suitable perceptual conditions can be an aesthetic object.
5. I have heard Allen Carlson make a similar point about Berleant's view on several
occasions, although he typically couches it in terms of Ronald Hepburn's
distinction between ‘easy beauty’ and ‘difficult beauty’.

6. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant claims that judgments of beauty are the
product of taking a disinterested perspective on the objects of experience, that is,
one in which we are not concerned about their instrumental value or even their
existence. Many philosophers have adopted modified versions of Kant's account of
disinterested appreciation as a necessary condition of aesthetic experience. See, for
example, the work of Jerome Stolnitz. Coplan made this point in a panel discussion
on film given at the 2006 Pacific ASA conference in Pacific Grove, CA.

7. Many thanks to Allen Carlson, Andrew Light and Ronald Moore for the
opportunity to both explore and share my thoughts regarding Berleant's work.
Special thanks to Arnold Berleant for his unqualified generosity at the Eastern
division meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics in 2006 where this paper
was originally presented.
C) Do you agree that our encounter with environment is sensory and emotional
engagement? Can you explain through personal experience?

C, 1. A longer version of these comments is published as a critical notice of

Berleant's Aesthetics and Environment in the British Journal of Aesthetics, 46
(2006), pp. 416–427. The author thanks the BJA for the use of some of this
material.

1. Much of the controversy around Allen Carlson's work is on this issue (see
Carlson, 2000 Carlson, Allen. 2000. Aesthetics and the Environment, London and
New York: Routledge. One thoughtful critic is Emily Brady (see
Brady, 2003Brady, Emily. 2003.

Aesthetics of the Natural Environment, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

2. Hume's characterization of the true judge of art may have more lasting
validity than the best judgments: ‘Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment,
improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice’
(Hume), 1757 Hume, David. 1757. of the Standard of Taste and Other
Essays, 1965 Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.

3. We experience everything through our senses or at least we think it is that give

us real experiences that are personally meaningful and memorable and that
only sensory engagement can engage people emotionally and foster a sense.

We are sight dominated creatures and sight is how most of us get raw information
about the world. Or at least we think it is. In reality our other senses help us build
our picture of the world and how it works. Most importantly, it is often our other
senses especially touch and smell that give us real experiences that are personally
meaningful and memorable and that connect us with the places we are in. Senses
like smell have routes into other parts of our brains and trigger different responses.
Smell is widely recognized to be a memory stimulant: memories can be triggered
by a smell even before our cognitive processes have recognized what that smell is.

Multi-sensory connections:

A multi-sensory learning experience with combinations of visual, auditory and

other sensory functions exploits the natural connectivity of the brain. As each sense
holds a proprietary memory location within the brain, the effective orchestration of
multiple sensory inputs ensures a wider degree of neural stimulation (Wolfe,
2001). This creates stronger memories by virtue of its collaborative effect, thereby
enhancing the learning experience.

This suggests that a multi-sensory approach will succeed not only in transferring
new skills and knowledge, but also in creating and strengthening emotional
connections, which will in turn have a positive effect on motivation and the desire
to maintain these connections. Only sensory engagement can engage people
emotionally and foster a sense of connectedness.

Sensory connections with nature:

Despite the fact that we are born into and remain part of the global ecosystem
throughout our lives, it is a widely held belief that human beings are somehow
apart from the rest of nature. In fact, the single thing that separates us from nature
is our use of language as our primary tool of communication. While we interact
with each other through spoken and written language, the remainder of the
ecosystem “achieves its beauty and perfection through non-language
communication and relationships.” (Michael J Cohen in an interview with F
Richard Schneider PhD)
Cohen goes on to say that to be part of any system, we have to communicate with
it. Because the rest of the ecosystem doesn’t speak our language, we have over 50
natural senses with which to communicate with it. For example, when in a natural
place, our sensations of thirst, motion, trust, belonging, colours, place, taste,
temperature, beauty and community are all natural system connections and non-
language communications that we experience through our senses.

Therefore, in order to engage people more fully in the natural environment these
sensory, non-language communications should be understood and employed in
meaningful activities in creative and active involvement with the environment. In
order to forge strong emotional ties between participants and the environment,
these activities should understand and employ the rich sources of sensory
stimulation that are abundant in nature. Be prepared to get your hands dirty.

The strength of these “experience memories” also depends in large part on their
associated emotional attachment. Because sensory memories are stored in
fragments across the cerebral cortex (the more senses are engaged, the more
memory fragments), they must be retrieved and reassembled (Kotulak 1997). The
hippocampus is responsible for both storage and retrieval of these loosely linked
memories and is a key component of the limbic system. The limbic system itself
contributes emotional meaning to these fragmented elements. Also controlled by
the limbic system is motivation, and it is conjectured that these two aspects of our
mental processes are closely related (Ortony et al 1994).

Senses and fostering a sense of stewardship:

Responsible stewardship will happen only if people can be re-awakened to a

childlike sense of wonder. Individuals must first develop an awareness and
excitement about the natural environment. This must be followed by an
understanding of the interaction of plants, animals and people in natural and man-
made communities. With understanding comes a concern for the present state of
the environment and an exploration of ways to reverse negative trends. Finally,
activism can initiate positive changes. Unless people’s environmental growth is
properly developed, activism will probably not be sustained over long periods”.
Hlubik, W.T. et al

Many current initiatives to engage more people with the environment through
outdoor leisure activities will not foster a sense of stewardship nor encourage
people to take an active interest in the environment and in issues such as climate
change and resource scarcity. In fact, reducing the natural environment to the
status of a leisure facility on a par with a swimming pool or skate park rather than
understanding it as something that supports us and requires our support in return
may well increase the emotional gulf between western-urban people and the
environment. To promote a sense of responsibility and stewardship, nature
experiences should be more meaningful than mountain biking through a Sitka
spruce plantation.
Q5.Our everyday lives and choices we make have substantial environmental,
social and moral impact on global living. How according to Saito aesthetics
are embedded in our everyday life? Explain with examples?

Answer:

In light of many serious problems that plague today’s world, aesthetic concerns
may appear to be rather inconsequential. In particular, the aesthetics of everyday
life regarding objects of daily use, familiar environments, and regular chores may
seem trivial and insignificant. However, Yuriko Saito argues that our aesthetic
tastes, preferences, and judgments regarding everyday life have a surprisingly,
though often unrecognized, power to affect the quality of life and the state of the
world, both positively and negatively. Saito presents this power of the aesthetic by
exploring everyday aesthetics’ contribution to the promotion of nationalism,
environmental consequences, and the cultivation of moral virtues. Her overall
thesis is that all of us are implicated in the collective and cumulative project of
world-making as citizens, consumers, and community members, although many of
us are not professional world-makers such as architects, designers, manufacturers,
and policy-makers. As such, there is a need to cultivate aesthetic literacy and
vigilance, as well as strategies to harness the power of the aesthetic toward better
world-making.

Professor Yuriko Saito gave this presentation at The IAFOR North American
Conference on Arts & Humanities 2014 in Rhode Island, USA.
Professor Yuriko Saito:

Yuriko Saito, born and raised in Japan, received her BA in philosophy from
International Christian University (Tokyo, Japan) and PhD in philosophy from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been teaching at the Rhode Island
School of Design since 1981, where she received the Frazier Award for Excellence
in Teaching in 1999. Her research area is aesthetics with a focus on everyday
aesthetics, environmental aesthetics, and Japanese aesthetics. She teaches these
subjects regularly, as well as introductory courses in philosophy. Her work and
what she gained from teaching at RISD resulted in Everyday Aesthetics, recently
(2008) published by Oxford University Press.

Everyday aesthetics has the recognized value of enriching one's life Saito draws
out its broader importance for how we make our worlds, environmentally, morally,
as citizens and consumers. Everyday Life and World-Making on the moral, social,
and political dimension of everyday aesthetics; Offers a bridge between.