Aesthetic Sustainability: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives

This talk focuses on the concept of “aesthetic sustainability”, tracing its background, history, and contemporary uses. The emphasis of the talk is on the applicability of the concept, although the theoretical underpinnings are explained through a combination of environmental aesthetics, design theory, everyday aesthetics, and intergenerational ethics.

Contemporary human environments comprise both lasting and fairly stable elements as well as those that change continuously: change is an inevitable part of life. Different aspects of city life, for example, evolve with a different tempo: urban nature has its cycles, inhabitants their rhythms, and building materials and styles with different lifespans.

Aesthetic sustainability is an especially important topic, when future imaginaries are projected onto existing environments and when decisions about the details of their future are made. The concept of aesthetic sustainability is thus presented as a tool to understand better how environmental timescales unfold experientially and the aesthetic values of different types of environments develop over time. Aesthetic sustainability is part of the discussion about sustainability transformations based on how it captures the experiential side of the physical and temporal dimensions of different types of human environments.

Sanna Lehtinen works as a Research Fellow in the Transdisciplinary Art Studies unit (TAITE) at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. She is also a Docent in Aesthetics at the University of Helsinki.

Sanna's research focuses on urban environmental aesthetics and the philosophy of the city, and her current research interests include aesthetic sustainability, transgenerational aesthetics, and aesthetics of new urban technologies.

Sanna’s publications include journal articles published in Open Philosophy, Essays in Philosophy, Philosophical Inquiries, Sustainability Science, and Behaviour & Information Technology, invited articles in edited volumes published by Routledge, Bloomsbury, Springer, and Oxford University Press, as well as editing special issues for Environmental Values, Contemporary Aesthetics, ESPES, East Asian Journal of Philosophy, and Open Philosophy.

Sanna was the President of the Finnish Society for Aesthetics and a Delegate in the Executive Committee of the International Association of Aesthetics in 2019–21. She is currently a Codirector in the Board of the international Philosophy of the City Research Group (PotC) and an affiliate member in 4TU. Centre for Ethics and Technology. Sanna is a member of the editorial boards in several international academic journals in addition to being the Assistant Editor of Contemporary Aesthetics. 

https://www.sannalehtinen.com | https://research.aalto.fi/en/persons/sanna-lehtinen