Aesthetic Boredom
Aesthetic Boredom
Definition
Aesthetic boredom is Abel B. Franco's term for the negative emotion — the counterpart of "aesthetic excitement" — that we experience toward an architectonic space when it lacks inhabitability. Inhabitability is the aesthetic quality of a space experienced as (1) creating possibilities significant for us regarding what we can do and how, and (2) enhancing the felt quality of realizing those possibilities. Aesthetic boredom is thus "boredom due primarily to the absence of inhabitability": it is a situative (not existential) boredom, an emotion whose core is a frustrated desire — our constant, ongoing "demand for meaning," the active search for inhabitability in the spaces we occupy. The frustration is not simply failing to find possibilities, but realizing there are none where we expect some; this is why aesthetically boring spaces are experienced as spaces that "deny both significant possibilities and the enhancement of the felt quality of the experience of realizing them."
Key Thinkers
- Abel B. Franco — the originator of the concept; aesthetic boredom as the negative emotion about the absence of inhabitability, read through everyday use of architecture as created space rather than visual object.
- Gernot Böhme — supplies the mechanism (atmospheres, "ecstasies") by which physical qualities fill and qualify space, so that boredom can "emanate from everything" in a space.
- (Related, not yet paged: Lars Svendsen on situative vs. existential boredom; Bertrand Russell on boredom as "thwarted desire"; Martin Heidegger on boredom and the "boring" as that which "holds us in limbo and yet leaves us empty"; Andreas Elpidorou on boredom's self-regulatory function.)
Related Concepts
- Atmosphere — the felt, qualified space through which boredom emanates; Franco distinguishes inhabitability (the aesthetic quality sought) from atmosphere (the mechanism of its felt presence).
- Everyday Architecture — aesthetic boredom is an everyday aesthetic criterion, evaluating the ordinary built environment through use rather than image.
- Dwelling — inhabitability is a user-centred, everyday specification of what it is to dwell well; aesthetic boredom names its failure.
- Aesthetic Experience — aesthetic boredom is defended as a genuine aesthetic emotion, not mere perceptual or object-boredom.
- Aesthetic Judgment — saying a space is "boring" can be an aesthetic judgement, not merely a report of a mood.
Source Support
Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:
Open Questions
- Does "inhabitability" (and its negative, aesthetic boredom) offer a user-centred, everyday aesthetic criterion that can be set against both the iconic image-economy and abstract functionalism — and can it ground an architectural ethics of the everyday?
- Is aesthetic boredom best understood as an emotion (Franco's claim) or as a mood, and does the distinction matter for how architecture is evaluated?