Rethinking Aesthetics

<p><em>Rethinking Aesthetics </em>is the first book to bring together prominent voices in the fields of architecture philosophy aesthetics and cognitive sciences to radically rethink the relationship between body and design. These essays argue that aesthetic experiences can be nurtured at any moment in everyday life thanks to recent discoveries by researchers in neuroscience phenomenology somatics and analytic philosophy of the mind who have made the correlations between aesthetic cognition the human body and everyday life much clearer. </p><p>The essays by Yuriko Saito Juhani Pallasmaa and Richard Shusterman among others range from an integrated mind-body approach to chair design to Zen Buddhist notions of mindfulness to theoretical accounts of existential relationships with buildings to present a full spectrum of possible inquiries. By placing the body in the center of design Rethinking <em>Aesthetics</em> opens new directions for rethinking the limits of both essentialism and skepticism.</p>