21st Century Urban Aesthetics in the Post Critical Age: Sanart Publication

Abstract

This research problematized the relationship between human and the built environment in the 21st century, which it describes as post-critical, and examined the relationship between them in a theoretical framework through aesthetics. Within this framework, it has analyzed selected articles from the proceedings book published by SANART (Association of Aesthetics and Visual Arts). This study has defined aesthetics as a way of relating human beings to their environment. It redefined holistic aesthetic thought through approaches that focus on uncertain, porous, relational boundaries and social processes. With new perspectives that reject the dualism of subject and object, the process associated with the concepts of movement and becoming have been conceptualized through the process of urban experience from the perspective of Manuel DeLanda. This study has analyzed the urban discourses presented in SANART publications with a focus on ’movement’. It has interpreted these movements as a feature of the built environment as it is shaped by the capacities of bodies and space. It has argued that a movementoriented evaluation of urban aesthetics would further the development of the critical field. © 2025, Istanbul Teknik Universitesi, Faculty of Architecture. All rights reserved.