Philosophy Commons^™

The Principles Of Islamic Moral Philosophy And The Possibility Of Re-Conceptualizing Classical Islamic Aesthetics Of Architecture, Muhammad Feteha

Theses and Dissertations

This study is primarily concerned with the intersection of the moral and aesthetic theories of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111). Al-Ghazālī’s theory of aesthetics has been the subject of thorough scholarly investigations and diverse interpretations in the field of Islamic art history since the 1940s. This thesis critiques the premises upon which the use of al-Ghazālī’s writings in studies of Islamic art and architecture were built. It suggests that they lead to what could be described as “the contradiction of unethical beauty.” To overcome this contradiction, it offers a comprehensive interpretation of al-Ghazālī’s aesthetics through analyzing the concept ḥusn in …

Searching For The Hyperobject: Crystals As Transscalar Vehicles, Jay Costello

Masters Theses

When I touch the street outside my house, I'm touching Los Angeles—a contiguous vector of material bisecting a continent. A slab, a stone, dust and oil, a googolplex of tightly packed anisotropic particles... At nightfall, I sneak to the edge of the highway and break off a piece. 'What does it mean for a worm to be aware of the scale of the planet?' Bruno Latour's evocative questioning of scalar jumps prompts an existentialism that places me somewhere between the hyperlocal and the massively distributed. Like a cosmic traveler floating through the universe, I feel adrift. I look around, grasping …

Emotional Factory, Yukun Cui

Masters Theses

该项目设想将上海一个历史悠久的仓库改造成一个创新的、以情感为主题的联合办公空间，超越传统的办公环境。在工作环境质量深刻影响生产力和幸福感的时代，该项目旨在创造一个协调身体、心理和情绪健康的空间。该设计融合了促进健康的元素，例如健身设施、美食和丰富的绿色植物，确保居住者在整个工作日中保持动力和灵感。该项目涉及个人与其环境之间的动态互动。认识到传统的办公室布局往往会限制移动和空间感知，我们的设计引入了一个固有的动态工作空间。灵活的布局，可调节的家具和可移动的隔板使空间能够适应各种活动和需求。互动元素和视觉刺激全天变化，鼓励探索和互动，而不需要持续的身体运动。使用不同的纹理、颜色和照明方案创造了一种多感官体验，使空间充满活力和不断变化的感觉。通过结合这些元素，该项目旨在重新定义现代工作空间，创造一个不仅能提高生产力，而且能丰富人类工作体验的环境。这种创新方法旨在为全球联合办公空间设定新标准，培养社区意识、创造力和幸福感。最终，该项目旨在创造一个开创性的环境，增强人类的工作体验，展示工作空间设计在广泛影响和改善情绪和心理健康方面的潜力。

Landscape De/Re-Construction Through Art, Manuel Gonzalez

Masters Theses

Contemporary landscape architecture practice and education primarily focus on ecological and technical interventions. The climate crisis we find ourselves in demands scientifically informed decisions and well-engineered execution of projects, but, more importantly, creativity and innovation.

The fine arts, which were once integral and foundational to design, are today largely unappreciated and appropriated. The spiritual power of Art, Aesthetics, and Beauty, explored at length through art history and theory, are often viewed as indulgent or secondary to execution. The gap between Art & Design has widened. As a result, designers face challenges in fostering in individuals the kind of care and …

Postindustrial Playbook++, Maxwell Fertik

Masters Theses

There is no such thing as an undisrupted ecosystem. Every inch of the planet is impacted by industrial development and its chemical legacy has mutated the soil and water. As a response, this thesis is designed to promote abundant over extractive resources and visualize a post-industrial reality. It consists of a series of objects, writing and design research on the relationship of industry and ecosystem.

In many ways it is a playbook++, laying out possible strategies or “plays’’ for making do with what exists around us amid collapse.

Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica)(ي'ڑ*), a plant that grows in the most degraded …

Out In Thin Air, Daiqing Zhang

Masters Theses

My work often takes form in experience-charged installations underscored by phenomenology. The whys and hows behind the work mostly remain unspoken, since I would rather my work speak for itself. This writing project offered me the opportunity to comb through and tell the stories and thoughts that informed the work.

I have built a collection of documentation about the experience of having a sensitivity to moments of wonder in everyday life. These archives recorded sensuous imprints in life composed of mundane phenomena. In the collection there are images/footage of a glimpse of light leaking through cloud crevices; a brush of …

Salty: A Diffractive Inquiry Of Visceral Knowing And Embodied Aesthetics, Mei Ling Chua

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes a diffractive, onto-epistemological approach to everyday practices with salt in order to articulate an expanded understanding of meaning making and knowledge production. This research reckons with and challenges dominant modes of knowing that engage a Cartesian perspective to situate knowing as the exclusive domain of the mind in both form and topic of inquiry. This research acts simultaneously as both a direct practice of and metacognition about knowledge production by examining 1. the embodied (including sensory and emotional aspects) and 2. the relational (including interpersonal and socio-cultural) dimensions of experience as visceral knowing. This articulation of …

From Building To Dwelling: Unfolding Infinity Through Bioregional Fulfillment, Sanjana Bhatnagar

Pitzer Senior Theses

The causes of anthropogenic climate change touch every feature of our modern-day existences. Approaches to sustainability tend to focus on material actions, but unsustainable practices are guided by an ontological orientation of individuality and human exceptionalism. This thesis provides an alternate account of being that decenters individuality through weaving the metaphysics of Fazang of the Huayan School of Mahayana Buddhism with the metaphysics of Martin Heidegger. To encompass the whole of the relational network that constitutes and conditionally defines our existence, I expand Heidegger’s account of locales as relational sites which are put forth solely by humans to an account …

Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores cities as urban ecologies of communication in which crises emerge and are given significance within the dialogic relations cultivated among public actors attempting to make a living, together, within the shared historical-cultural contexts of everyday life. To describe cities as urban ecologies of communication is to describe them in terms of urban communication and its interdisciplinary foundations in the study of rhetoric, philosophy, planning, policy, architecture, sociology, geography, and media. The first chapter introduces the challenges of urban risk and crisis management within the complex ecologies of communication constituted by cities and reviews how ‘risk’ and ‘crisis’ …

In-Between Spaces: Atmospheres, Movement And New Narratives For The City, Paul Alexander Stoicheff

Masters Theses

We often think of architecture as distinct buildings, yet as we move through the city we continuously pass through a built environment that is a collage of buildings. These spaces between buildings are underestimated as influences on our experience of everyday life in the city. Considering architecture as linked existential experiences through spaces rather than confined to individual buildings is more in line with our experience of the city as a series of interconnected spaces and places. Rather than describing a single, static architecture through words, how can we express this linked experience of spaces dynamically through narratives? Can writing …

Regenerating Agroecosystems By Overcoming Human Exceptionalism In Designing For Increased Equity Of Benefits From Ecoservices, Ali Loker, Charles A. Francis

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Our commentary explores three critical issues related to ecosystem services. First is how ecoservices are currently designed and implemented primarily for human benefit without concern for how these impact other species. We conclude that awareness of this imbalance is the first step toward meaningful change. Second we observe that human exceptionalism guides most decisions, and ask whether we can overcome this mind-set to embrace ecoregeneration and design of resilient and mutually beneficial agroecosystems. Our attitude toward the challenge and moving toward greater humility about human roles that guide management decisions in the ecosystem is a requisite for change. Third we …

The Role Of Aesthetics In Classroom Design: Implications For Engagement And Equity, Giuliana Barraza

Master's Theses

The desire for achieving greater equity in education has been a prevalent topic of research, with many studies indicating that the current education system in this country is designed in a way that exacerbates initial inequities and has a negative impact on student motivation and engagement (EOCD, 2012). While existing scholarship mostly discusses equity and engagement through the lens of curriculum and instruction, the power of physical classroom environments and aesthetic elements present in those environments is less explored. With student populations becoming more diverse, there is a greater need for new tools for teachers to utilize in pursuit of …

Architectural + Language: Breaking Barriers And Creating Cultural Dialogue, Maria De Los Angeles Delgado Bailon

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

When I was 11 years old, I moved back to the United States, after having spent my whole childhood in Ecuador, my parents native land. I was moving back to the land of opportunity in the search for the so called ‘American Dream’. It was difficult to leave and move to a new place where we did not know anyone or have anything, but just the idea of a going back to my hometown piqued my curiosity and excitement. I remember very vividly, the day I left Ecuador. I remember telling myself to be happy, because this was a moment …

Some (Im)Material Girls, Living In (Im)Material Worlds, With Seeds, Stars, And Shit, Matthew Weiderspon

Theses and Dissertations

This writing situates material and gestural vocabularies cultivated in my artwork in relation to my lived experience; primarily my rural upbringing in Colorado. Scattered floor dispersals, calling sounds, and bodily movements desire reconsiderations of hope in precarity through a disorientation of place, association, scale, and language.

Manuscript For Aesthetic/Design Guidelines For Campus Master Planning Bethel University, Wayne Roosa, Eugene Johnson

Art and Design Faculty Works

This document is the manuscript version before graphic design and copyediting. Follow this link to see the final version.

The situation that inspired and drove these aesthetic guidelines for campus master planning were unique to the history Bethel University and Seminary. By the early 1960s, Bethel was outgrowing its site on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul. The opportunity to purchase 160 acres in Arden Hills arose and the leap of faith was taken to buy this land and relocate. But it was not that simple. More was involved than mere practical problems of too-little space solved by an abundance …

Aesthetic/Design Guidelines For Campus Master Planning Bethel University, Wayne Roosa, Eugene Johnson

Art and Design Faculty Works

Table of Contents

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

The Need for Aesthetic Guidelines for Campus Master Planning The Purpose and Use of this Document

Aesthetic Guidelines: “Suggestions Concerning the Character of the New Campus,” by Eugene Johnson (1963) (original version without annotations) . . . . . . . 5

Eugene Johnson’s, “Suggestions Concerning the Character of the New Campus” (with annotations, a history of interpretation and use) Annotations …

Aportes De Henry Lefebvre Al Concepto De Espacio Social A Partir De Su Obra La Producción Del Espacio, Tatiana Cabrera Rubio

Filosofía y Letras

La fractura social se objetiva en la fractura urbana, es decir, en el espacio que constituye la ciudad. El análisis del espacio supone el estudio de las relaciones humanas que allí tienen lugar y que se configuran según su disposición. Para este análisis, se define en la obra de Henry Lefebvre tres elementos que constituyen el concepto “espacio social”, a saber, lo percibido, lo imaginado y lo concebido; esta trilogía conceptual permite comprender el espacio social como un organismo dinámico inherente a las relaciones humanas desde el cual se puede agenciar una transformación social debido al poder emancipador de la …

Brutal Encounters: Primitivity, Politics, And The Postmodern Revolution, Archer Thomas

Honors Projects

The switch from late modernism to postmodernism in Western aesthetic theory and criticism took place in the mid-to-late 20th century, radically changing the face of cultural criticism. Much has been written on how postmodernism broke from modernism, but what factors paved its way in the decades following the Second World War? This paper argues that postmodernism represents both a reaction to and a necessary evolution of late modernism, specifically as it manifests in architecture, politics, and the politics of architecture. It focuses on the crisis of confidence among Western left-wing circles following the upheaval of the Second World War and …

The Modes Of Intervention In Alvin Lucier’S I Am Sitting In A Room, Daniel Fox

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room (1969) is an icon of experimental music and sound art. The sizable literature addressing the aesthetic and philosophical implications of this piece rarely discusses the performance practice beyond what is indicated in the score itself. This is problematic for two reasons: 1) The meaning that is derived from the piece often hinges not just on what sounds are obtained, but on how they are obtained. 2) Over the past 50 years, changes in the performance practice have altered what constitutes the work: magnetic tape was used until 2000 when it was replaced …

Concrete Poetry, Sara Ghazi Asadollahi

Graduate School of Art Theses

This text addresses my work as an artist and defines it in the context of the following subjects: The concept of ruins, which highlights the relationship between architecture and landscape; the formal and metaphorical dialectic between absence and presence in abandoned places; and the idea of dystopia, which emerges from that in-between space where the real dissolves into the imaginary. At the same time, my work is inspired by the visual culture of cinema and literature, principally within the science-fiction genre, and draws upon my observation of abandoned buildings in Tehran, my native city. These urban ruins are products of …

Forest-Walks – An Intangible Heritage In Movement A Walk-And-Talk-Study Of A Social Practice Tradition, Margaretha Häggström

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This article seeks to understand and extend current understandings of intangible heritage and particularly forest-walks as such. The study is related to Swedish conditions and has been conducted in Sweden. The research is grounded in social practice theory – and the perspective of practice architectures in particular – and it draws on the work of Stephen Kemmis. Further, we view practice theory entangled with the phenomenological life-world concepts of intersubjectivity and historicity. The data are based on 12 walk-and-talk interviews conducted in the forest with individuals who willingly walk in the forest on their leisure time. The analysis takes its …

Lab‐Grown Meat And Veganism: A Virtue‐Oriented Perspective, Carlo Alvaro

Publications and Research

The project of growing meat artificially represents for some the next best thing to humanity. If successful, it could be the solution to several problems, such as feed- ing a growing global population while reducing the environmental impact of raising animals for food and, of course, reducing the amount and degree of animal cruelty and suffering that is involved in animal farming. In this paper, I argue that the issue of the morality of such a project has been framed only in terms of the best conse- quences for the environment, animals, and humans, or in terms of deontic princi- …

What’S So Authentic About Restoration?, Remei Capdevila-Werning, Sue Spaid

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

When shown two identical works of art, and told that one is the original and the other an artist-sanctioned copy, most viewers claim that they prefer the ‘original’, precisely because they imagine that something of the artist’s hand remains. Knowing full well that most everything that is old, yet still exists, has undergone some form of restoration, we are surprised that some philosophers still share viewers’ preference for some original over its sanctioned copy, as if they too believe that something of the artist’s hand remains, even if paint molecules have chipped off or surfaces have been (unbeknownst to them) …

A Hundred Houses: Pauline Leader And The Spatial Poetics Of Disability, Carl Robert Nelson

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Multidisciplinary Studies of Bard College.

The Aesthetics Of Frank Lloyd Wright’S Organic Architecture: Hegel, Japanese Art, And Modernism, Kenneth Charles Dahlin

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

THE AESTHETICS OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S ORGANIC ARCHITECTURE: HEGEL, JAPANESE ART, AND MODERNISM

by

Kenneth C Dahlin

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2018

Under the Supervision of Professor Robert Greenstreet, PhD

The goal of this dissertation is to write the theory of organic architecture which Wright himself did not write. This is done through a comparison with GWF Hegel’s philosophy of art to help position Wright’s theory of organic architecture and clarify his architectural aesthetic. Contemporary theories of organicism do not address the aesthetic basis of organic architecture as theorized and practiced by Wright, and the focus of this dissertation …

Transit, Christopher Janke

Masters Theses

This written thesis, transit, accompanies an exhibition by the same name and serves to contextualize the exhibit. The written portion begins with an inquiry into the nature of the contextualization itself, questioning the nature of the relationship between the written thesis, the exhibit, and the University which explicitly requires and connects the two, especially the ways that the written word as granted authority through an institution of higher education might undermine the exhibit’s intent to provoke thought into other forms of knowledge and other avenues of legitimacy than those presented by this institution.

The thesis discusses the philosophic question sometimes …

“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales

Theses and Dissertations

After-Ozymandias examines the visual rhetoric of American patriotism through its many symbols, including flags and monuments. My thesis project consists of photographs of empty plinths, objects, products and archival materials. Countless relics remain today memorializing leaders and empires that inevitably declined, from antiquity to modern times. Looking back at distant history feels like a luxury, though: the question for our time in America is whether we have the strength of mind as a society to scrutinize our history, warts and all.

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Profanation, Tsahi Zac H. Hacmon

Theses and Dissertations

This paper attempts to provoke an Israeli American dialogue that comes through profanity of conventional architecture. I am creating this dialogue by displaying two main subjects in proximity to each other: border architecture from Israel and institutional architecture or non-places in New York.

Introduction To The Ethics Of Physical Embodiment, Linda M. Johnston

Siegel Institute Ethics Research Scholars

Introduction to the Ethics of Physical Embodiment