An-Aesthetics and Architecture

Abstract

We consider it important to look at the built environment from the standpoint of critical management studies and ask how buildings contribute to the ideological, political and economic structures of domination. The chapter begins by asking what is meant by ‘aesthetics’. Using the work of Wolfgang Welsch (1997) and acknowledging his dependence on Theodor Adorno (1991/2001) we can see how polysemous the concept is. But hidden away in Welsch are a very few yet suggestive references to ‘anaesthetics’. The chapter, in part, seeks to develop this notion. Using Huxley’s Brave New World we can detect within the Foreword what is tantamount to an ironic manifesto for anaesthetization. We compare aesthetics with anaesthetics in the context of architecture and attempt to show how the ‘dazzle’ (Benjamin, circa 1930s/1999d) of buildings is often accompanied by desensitization of those who live and work within them. This is to say that almost every aesthetic development is matched with an anaesthetizing one.