Utopia and Apocalypse: 7 Theses on the Aesthetics of Sustainability

Jörg H. Gleiter ()
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Jörg H. Gleiter: Department of Architectural Theory, Institute for Architecture, TU Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany

Land, 2025, vol. 14, issue 2, 1-7

Abstract: It is a common misconception that sustainability is a brand-new topic. Since the beginning, since the construction of the first house, sustainability has been a central component of the architectural concept. With industrial production and mass production, however, modernity has excluded the concept of sustainability from the consciousness of architecture. In the context of post-industrial society, the climate, resource, and migration issues, sustainability is now returning at a new conceptual level. In practice, however, materialistic, technical, and instrumental reasons prevail. What is missing, however, is a critical theory of sustainability that conceives of sustainability organically, from within architecture. The essay sketches out the foundations for such a critical theory of architecture, which focuses on the unity of human and non-human authors or, in other words, of humans, materials, and the system of earth.

Keywords: sustainability; aesthetics; utopia; future; apocalypse; katechon; modernity; permanence; temporality; urbanity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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