Landscape Aesthetics

Siani develops a deeply original, pragmatist conception of landscape that emphasizes openness, pluralism, and expression. His philosophical, interdisciplinary approach carves out much-needed space to reconceive and relegitimize aesthetics for landscape studies. This book offers outstanding scope on this significant social and political core of lived experience. -- Emily Brady, Texas A&M University In this engaging book, Alberto Siani cogently argues that understanding landscape as a phenomenon in the world, as a human construct, and as representation requires transdisciplinary work. He fruitfully suggests that aesthetics–that of Dewey in particular–has a key role to play in promoting that necessary transdisciplinarity. By showing that humans are not separable from the rest of the world in which they act and that acts on them, Siani rewards his readers with new grounds for undermining the nature/culture conceptual divide. -- Ivan Gaskell, Bard Graduate Center With a meticulously researched and crafted discussion, Siani challenges long-held scenic exceptionalism and the objectification of landscape as a static external entity. Instead, he gives an impassioned account of landscape as a dynamic and pluralistic sense-making process in which humans are fully present and engaged, forever transforming readers’ experience. -- Yuriko Saito, Rhode Island School of Design Building on a groundbreaking idea of performative landscape as defined by social interactions, Siani focuses on the everyday aesthetic experience of lived spaces. Landscapes and aesthetics, if viewed as integral to each other, trigger a radical paradigm shift in how we address the multiple temporalities and the unstable balance between nature, culture, and societal concerns. -- Salvatore Settis, former director of the Getty Research Institute Landscape Aesthetics offers an incisive shift in thinking when it comes to the intersection of landscapes and aesthetics. Combining theoretical rigor with a conversational style, Alberto Siani’s deeply philosophical text brings this fresh theory to bear on the ways we think about and live in worlds of crises. -- Emma Waterton, Leverhulme International Professor of Heritage Studies and director of the Heritage for Global Challenges Research Centre, University of York, editor in chief of <i>Landscape Research</i>