Skip to main content
Passa alla visualizzazione normale.

ELISABETTA DI STEFANO

From Familiar to Uncanny. Aesthetics of Atmospheres in Domestic Spaces

Abstract

The notion of “familiar” has recently become crucial in the debate generated by Everyday Aesthetics. In this essay I will explore this concept following Arto Haapala and Yuriko Saito’s theories, then I will investigate the notion of familiar – and some antonym notions (i.e. strange, uncanny, alien) – while embracing a phenomenological approach. Referring to German phenomenologist Gernot Böhme's theory of atmospheres, my paper shall compare a notion of a glass house, theorized by Modernism, and a notion of a shell house, seen from different perspectives by Walter Benjamin, Gaston Bachelard and Juhani Pallasmaa. I will finally draw attention to the notion of strange as possibly degenerating into the idea of uncanny or alien, for instance when the transparency of glass is used as a tool for control or when it is embodied in the digital screens of hyper-technological homes.