IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v14y2025i2p367-d1587996.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Utopia and Apocalypse: 7 Theses on the Aesthetics of Sustainability

Author

Listed:
  • Jörg H. Gleiter

    (Department of Architectural Theory, Institute for Architecture, TU Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Jörg H. Gleiter, 2025. "Utopia and Apocalypse: 7 Theses on the Aesthetics of Sustainability," Land, MDPI, vol. 14(2), pages 1-7, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:14:y:2025:i:2:p:367-:d:1587996
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/2/367/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/2/367/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:14:y:2025:i:2:p:367-:d:1587996. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.