Rappel au désordre: Architectural Aesthetics between the Performative and the Sublime

Abstract

Rappel au désordre: Architectural Aesthetics Between the
Performative and the Sublime.
An increasingly aestheticized society has inevitably changed
architectures role and function. By some enthusiastically embraced
as a longed-for recognition of architectures scenographic, artistic or
entertaining potentials, this change has also given rise to a scepticism
as to the role of slippery aesthetics and a subsequent recall of
a more decent, tectonic form-power. But do architects necessarily
have to be either uncritically engulfed by aesthetics or the obstinate
defenders of a decent, but boring, alternative? A constructive answer
to this question, however, requires a critique of aesthetics as formal
or normative order, in favor of a performative, view of aesthetics as a
means to do justice to a disorderly world.