Our Everyday Aesthetic Evaluations of Architecture

Abstract

Abstract I argue that our everyday evaluations of architecture are primarily evaluations of spaces and, in particular, of their inhabitability— that is, whether they serve or can serve to the realization of our individual ideal of life. Inhabitability is not only a functional criterion but an aesthetic one as well. It is aesthetic insofar as the evaluations about inhabitability include evaluations about the quality of the experience of actually doing something in —or simply occupying—a particular space. This aesthetic aspect of our everyday evaluations explains, on one hand, the distinctive features of our everyday preferences for some architectonic spaces over others—namely, (a) their very personal nature; (b) their noticeable value in our daily lives; (c) their inseparability from the activities we plan to realize in those spaces; and (d) the importance of the spaces which are contiguous to the one we are evaluating. And on the other, it both reveals architecture’s significance for the quality of our daily life and serves as a guide for us to choose spaces that improve that quality.