From Theoretical to Applied Environmental Aesthetics

Yrjö Sepänmaa discusses the relationship between the theory and practice of environmental aesthetics. He suggests that the future lies in moving outside the academy through a new kind of professional aesthetic activity and through engagement with the public. Environmental aestheticians should combine or complement their role as analysts with the role of guides, acting as experts in beauty in cooperation with researchers from other disciplines, practical workers, policymakers, and the wider public. The need for a close cooperation between various parties as a consequence of the transition from theoretical to applied environmental aesthetics poses intricate problems of communication across boundaries between different and sometimes divergent disciplines and audiences. As an important way to tackle these problems, Sepänmaa points to a series of seven international congresses on environmental aesthetics that took place in Finland from 1994 to 2009. This series has been a major force in the unification of the discipline, in crossing borders between the natural sciences and the humanities, in finding a common language for exchanging information and ideas across boundaries, and in linking activities of players from different fields.