ABSTRACT

In an increasingly globalizing world, the aesthetics of Dubai have become potentially available even for impoverished, peripheral cities such as Belgrade. With the explicit rhetoric of finally achieving a “global profile” for the city, the Serbian government has hired an Emirati company to build a “world city” in a centrally located district of Belgrade. The rationale for the development is explicitly aesthetic, and the high-rises planned articulate the globally recognizable aesthetic vocabulary of superlatives and (generic) modernity. The tall buildings suggest economic growth while forming a façade against which Belgraders play the role of extras. This paper builds on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the body schema as well as James J. Gibson’s notion of affordances and recent contributions to architectural aesthetics that grew from it, to outline an alternative, embodied ideal of urban aesthetics. The paper presupposes that the common world is to be understood as a task to be achieved. The city, understood in its material form, as urbs, as well as in terms of social relations, as civitas, is the place where the common world can potentially be tangibly experienced. Its architecture narrates, but also affords and prohibits social change, and reversely social and political relations influence the making of the material city. The paper argues that a city’s place in the world is not a matter of gaining access to a supposedly pre-existing reality by displaying the right look, but of engaging actively in the making of the common world.

摘要

在一个日益全球化的世界中，即使是贝尔格莱德等贫困的外围城市，迪拜的美学也有可能成为现实。塞尔维亚政府明确表示要最终实现这座城市的“全球形象”，并聘请了一家阿联酋公司在贝尔格莱德的中心地区建造一座“世界城市”。开发的基本原理是明确的审美，计划中的高层建筑表达了全球公认的最高级和（通用）现代性的审美词汇。高层建筑暗示着经济增长，同时形成了贝尔格莱德人扮演临时角色的立面。本文建立在 Maurice Merleau-Ponty 的身体图式概念以及 James J. Gibson 的可供性概念以及由此产生的对建筑美学的最新贡献的基础上，勾勒出另类、体现城市美学的理想。这篇论文预设了共同世界将被理解为一项需要完成的任务。这座城市，以其物质形式被理解为urbs以及就社会关系而言，如civitas，是可以切实体验共同世界的地方。它的建筑叙述，但也提供和禁止社会变革，相反的社会和政治关系影响物质城市的形成。该论文认为，一个城市在世界上的地位不是通过展示正确的外观来获得一个所谓的预先存在的现实，而是积极参与共同世界的建设。