The Human Habitat: Aesthetic and Axiological Perspectives by Pauline von Bonsdorff is a doctoral thesis about the qualities of the environment from the philosophical and aesthetic standpoint. The main theoretical framework is phenomenology discussed from the viewpoint of the environmental experience. Pauline von Bonsdorff defended her thesis at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki in 1998.
The book argues that when life takes place and makes places, unplanned influences are as important as conscious efforts, and that in environmental aesthetics the everyday should be treated with respect. Since, at its best, architecture supports, gives room for and enhances life, the book ends with some utopian suggestions for building and management.
To belong to the human habitat an area must be appropriated or felt as belonging to a human world. Human habitats are areas which individuals visit, pass through, spend parts of their life in and recognize as human. This involves adaptation and often, but not necessarily, cultivation and building. Even if the outward shape of an environment is unchanged by humans it may be recognized as a human habitat, as are the skerries where fishermen land when they go fishing in the autumn, or a far-away hunting area(…)
There is today an evident need for the reappropriation of public space of living bodies. In our situation, the refusal to accept the megalomania of technological progress and utopia is radical. To be conservative is, then, not to look back so much as to look around, to pause and reflect. The emphasis on space and lingering in this work is best understood in that context, against the violence of contemporary land use strategies towards natural and human communities and the insensitive and shortsighted emphasis on efficiency or productivity in dominant discourses.
— Pauline von Bonsdorff, The Human Habitat, p. 15, 337.
The copy in stock is in good condition. There are only some minor signs of shelf wear on the covers.