Cars,Aesthetics and Urban Development

The aim of this presentation is, first, to examine the role of aesthetics in creating the experiential effects of the attractions of Autostadt at Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony in Germany. Secondly, Autostadt will be seen in a perspective of urban and regional development which will include a reference to how Volkswagen AG has contributed to the development of the city of Dresden in Saxony by launching a production of luxury limousines at the centre of the city. In conclusion, the experiential design applied in both cases will be evaluated and put in perspective of urban environmental development.

Urban Space,Representation, and Artifice

This article offers a semiotic approach to modes of representation and organization of urban space. With point of departure in the art historian Donald Preziosi’s account of art history as episteme of modernity, the aim is to characterise codes that regulate the representations of urban space in a development from modernity towards a post- or hypermodern condition. In order to understand especially developments in aesthetic representation, Roman Jakobson’s semiotic mode of “artifice” is reintroduced. It seems that the application of this semiotic mode is highly relevant to the understanding of aesthetic representation in general but also and especially to the understanding of the aesthetics of three-dimensional artefacts. The article concludes with a tentative matrix of urban spatial trends and a perspective to the impact of changes in communications technology on the developments of urban space. Although the article has a theoretical scope, it refers to a number of examples from and observations in the urban environment.