CC BY
5Urbis et Orbis. 2023. 3 (1)
https://doi.org/i0.34680/urbis-2023-3(i)-i34-i48
Visual-semiotic patterns in the study of urban architectural identity: Artistic and aesthetic perception of old building facades in Kaliningrad
Arina Sherstiuk <D
Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia arina.sherstyuk@mail.ru
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
visual semiotics artistic city image wall identity architectural patterns urban anthropology communicative method artistic fieldwork
This scientific paper is dedicated to the issue of studying the urban architectural environment as a comprehensive continuum for socio-cultural communication and artistic expression. The research's relevance lies in the creation of practically oriented conditions for dialogue between the artist and the city, as for artistic reflection on the exact visual-semiotic architectural layer. The research purpose is to scientifically substantiate and present a concept dedicated to the artistic and aesthetic city image, which is formed by the artist during individual decoding the visual semiotics of local architecture patterns. The methodology is based on the perceptive research model, which describes the urban architectural identity through artistic and aesthetic perceptive ways. The scientific paper confirms the important role of urban architectural identity in the construction of the holistic city image and building interpersonal "city - artist" interactions. The research's investigations are proved through an international art project in the format of realized author's urbanistic practice dedicated to the search for the wall's image identity in one of Kaliningrad's districts.
For citation:
Sherstiuk, A. A. (2023). Visual-semiotic patterns in the study of urban architectural identity: Artistic and aesthetic perception of old building facades in Kaliningrad. Urbis et Orbis. Microhistory and Semiotics of the City, 3(1), 134-148. https://doi.org/i0.34680/urbis-2023-3(i)-i34-i48
© Sherstiuk A. A., 2023
Исследование визуально-семиотических паттернов городской архитектурной идентичности: художественно-эстетическое восприятие фасадов старых зданий в Калининграде
А. А. Шерстюк ©
Балтийский федеральный университет имени Иммануила Канта,
Калининград, Россия arina.sherstyuk@mail.ru
КЛЮЧЕВЫЕ СЛОВА
АННОТАЦИЯ
визуальная семиотика художественный образ города
идентичность стены архитектурные паттерны городская антропология коммуникативный метод художественная полевая работа
Статья посвящена проблеме изучения городской архитектурной среды как комплексного континуума для социокультурной коммуникации и художественной интеракции. Актуальность исследования заключается в создании практико-ориентированных условий диалога художника и города, а также художественной рефлексии в отношении определённого визуально-семиотического слоя архитектуры. Цель исследования - научно обосновать и представить концепцию, посвящённую художественно-эстетическому образу города, который формируется у художника в ходе декодирования визуальной семиотики элементов локальной архитектуры. В основе методологии лежит перцептивная исследовательская модель, описывающая городскую архитектурную идентичность через художественно-эстетическое восприятие. Исследование подтверждает значимость роли городской архитектурной идентичности в конструировании целостного образа города и построении межличностных взаимодействий характера «город - художник». Апробация результатов исследования осуществлена в рамках международного художественного проекта в формате локально реализованной авторской урбанистической практики, посвящённой поиску идентичности образа стен одного из районов Калининграда.
Для цитирования:
Шерстюк, А. А. (2023). Исследование визуально-семиотических паттернов городской архитектурной идентичности: художественно-эстетическое восприятие фасадов старых зданий в Калининграде. Urbis et Orbis. Микроистория и семиотика города, 3(1), 134-148. https://d0i.0rg/i0.34680/urbis-2023-3(i)-i34-i48
Since the second half of the XX century, the discourse on urban identity has gained relevance in connection with the processes of urbanization, leading to the reorganization of already established urban formations and the construction of a new architectural city image. At the present stage of urban civilization development, there is a problem of conceptualising the phenomena of identity and urban authenticity (Efimov & Mina, 2021, p. 262). Contemporary socio-cultural context continues to promote transitional urban states, the consequences of which, in turn, have debatable nature: deformation of the "old" urban identity and the emergence of the architectural image of the "new" city. In this case, there is a need to define and preserve the authentic architectural city image, and to accentuate its architectural and urban identity, including its recognizability and attractiveness not only for its citizens, but also for city guests and tourists.
This article reveals the problem of exploring the identity of the architectural urban environment observed through artistic practices inside the urban space under the participative conditions of a visual and audio-artists group. The author perceives the city architecture as an institutional, social, communicative space, subject to constant evolution and dynamic contextual deformation. Hypothetically, the identity of the architectural urban landscape represents a multilayered temporal-spatial continuum, consisting of the individual's psychological and emotional perceptions of the city, which distinguish this architectural continuum from others.
The article considers artistic practices and the artist's perception itself as tools of identification and decoding of the architectural urban space image. In addition to the theoretical component of the issue, the article has a practice-oriented character and presents the research results regarding an element of architectural urban space - a series of old stock houses walls and facades in the Kaliningrad central district - in the course of a conceptual artistic urbanistic practice developed by the article's author.
The considered problem of artistic and aesthetic perception within the urban architectural environment identity is due to a complex of factors, which are reflected by theoretical sources in the field of history, sociology, cultural studies, design, semiotics and urbanism. The term "identity", connoted in terms of the humanities, is used in relation to the individual as a basis for his or her perception through the personal identification of the urban environment with an element of personal socio-cultural lifestyle: social group, place, neighborhood, culture, activities of the individual.
In cultural studies, "identity" is seen as cultural identification and is understood as a person's need for a dialogue with a certain cultural paradigm or its cultural elements and phenomena. Sociology advances the position that the urban architecture image and perception perceived by the resident is largely determined by the urban environment and its symbolic landscape, including visual cultural elements (Osipova, 2011, p. 5). According to the psychological point of view, the "identity" refers to the conscious or unconscious identification of oneself with large and small groups (Efimov & Mina, 2021, p. 262). The paper gives an overview of the general criteria through which the main self-identification of the resident with urban architecture takes place: territorial, temporal, behavioral, psychosocial, social and ideological.
Consequently, the practice of urbanism that has embraced fragmentation and a culture of difference, leads to many problems such as "imageability" (Lynch, 1960), legibility, way-finding (Bentley et al., 1985, p. 42), aesthetic aspects, "concept of physical distance" (Cupchik, 2002, p. 156) and so on. There is no doubt that urban spatial configuration has an effect on human taste and identity (Hourakhsh & Resmiye, 2016,
p. 196). Therefore, studying the urban environment in the semiotic and socio-psychological aspects, as a comprehensive sign system, it is necessary to mention its constant socio-communicative movement and contextual formation. Given that, urban space is able to encode, synthesize and accumulate socio-cultural and personality-oriented elements of architectural perception, endowing them not only with cultural and semiotic semantics, but also with psycho-emotional attachment (Berestovskaya & Petrenko, 2017, p. 25).
Architectural identity is often conceptualised and portrayed as an immutable or historically continuous entity in certain existing fields of architectural design, heritage conservation, and architectural history. In this article, the phenomenon of urban architectural identity is defined as a socio-cultural construct formed as a result of the actor-artist interaction with a specific territorial context and its characteristic urban community. Conceptually, urban architectural identity is a naturally formed integral recognizable set of material and immaterial features of city environment, oriented to the inner perception and conditioned by the identity with the local factors and ideas about the city (Skalkin, 2018, p. 92).
It is not sufficient that modern representations of architecture, moving away from the traditional direct material image of the architectural ensemble, conceptualize architectural identity as a changeable and evolving semiotic-visual structure. Such notions of urban environment structure allow to consider architectural identity, on the one hand, as a materially fixed in place construction; and on the other hand, as an ideational construction having continuous temporal formation and semiotic narrative describing historical contextual transformation of the constructed form. Thus, analyzing architectural identity in practice, an individual constantly shifts his or her attention from the building, seen as an object in space by means of concentrated thought, to the building as a changing event in time, personally experienced in the course of some action (Arnheim, 1977, p. 96).
The idea of architectural identity as a semiotically progressive and signified form is expressed by poststructuralist theorists, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes, who offer an alternative way of understanding the contextuality of constructed form, its architectural meaning and value. According to the ideas of poststructuralism, the contextuality of architectural identity emphasizes the cultural, historically changing aspects of architectural meaning and reveals a dynamic notion of architectural identity. Moreover, developing this concept, in relation to the transformative nature of meaning and value of built patterns, architectural identity is revealed as an intangible and unstable entity rather than as an aesthetically prescribed, transhistorical construction (Ellard, 2020, p. 22).
In this respect, P. Bourdieu's sociological concepts and the concept of "habitus" illustrate the ways in which an individual perceives, interprets and responds to the urban environment, given personal sociocultural experience (Bourdieu, 2001, pp. 43-44). These experiences are shaped in the context of the urban environment: past encounters, daily routes, local architectural elements of the area in which the individual lives or is located. Bourdieu argues that it is the internalization and personalization of existing contextual norms, ideas, and practices, intertwined with personal sociocultural sense and experience, that influence the meaning with which an individual embodies the urban environment, how it is signified and identified.
Similar ideas about the discontinuity and fluidity of meaning are also expressed by R. Barthes in his essay "The Death of the Author" (1977). In this essay Barthes criticizes
the assumption that the author has authority or ownership of the meaning of his textual work. Barthes argues against endowing a text with a fixed "ultimate" meaning that is constantly dependent on the author's intentions and personality, arguing that the meaning of a text is not solely determined by the creator of that text (Barthes, 1977, p. 147). Barthes explains that the text does not prescribe, maintain, or demonstrate meaning, rather it is the reader (the recipient) who endows it with ideas and concepts through his or her own personal interpretation. Thus, any text is "actualized" with meaning when interpreted by the reader-consumer, regardless of the author's personal intentions and position in creating it. Barthes reinforces this idea by stating that textual meaning is not final and cannot be fixed by the author, as words can have different connotations depending on the context of norms, socio-cultural ideas and the conditions in which the reader who perceives the text interprets them.
In the context of urbanism, in particular architectural science, the definition and classification of identity as a scientific phenomenon and the subject of research is only beginning to be conceptualized within the architectural phenomenology framework. With the emergence of architectural discourse, the concept of identity is already transformed as a property not of the subject (an individual), but of the object (urban environment) with similar qualities of recognition and identity. Also, the modern system of urban knowledge investigates the influence of the architectural urban environment and its symbolic-significant features on the specificity of subject-object relations "city - individual" formation and the perception of the individual's city image (Skalkin, 2018, p. 90).
The theoretical basis of this study is based on the concept of urban architecture identity as a synthesis-product of collective and individual experience. In its semantic content, the perception of architectural identity is connected with the emotional attitude to the definition of a multicomponent urban mentality. The concept of "mentality of place" in terms of cultural psychology and social urbanism outlined by a specialist in urban planning, Kevin Lynch in his book "The Image of the City" (1960). Ideological construction of the city image is presented as a psycho-symbolic factor in the formation of urban architectural identity. The city image establishes spatial representations of the urban architectural continuum as a system of interrelated and interacting semantic signs, symbols, archetypes, cultural paradigms and coded information units, emotionally and mentally fixed in the subconscious of the citizen.
Expressing the idea of a "mental image" regarding architectural urban space, Lynch argues that its "readability" depends on the "imaginability" of elementary objects, which may or may not become part of the city image identity (Lynch, 1960). Lynch introduces the concept of "imaginability", connoted as a commonality of experienced emotions, when perceiving the object-spatial architectural environment of "own" urban area, the city as a whole, the specifics of communication, interpersonal relations, organization of the emotional sphere within interacting groups of people and their perception of the environment. Thus, the "imaginability" of each architectural structure in the city (whether it is a business center, a multi-storey building, a monument of cultural significance or a decorative architectural element) acts as one of the key operants, allowing to identify the "own" architectural city image on a practical level.
The study of the artistic and aesthetic perception regarding the identity of urban architectural space is theoretical, integrative with the practical application of the results. The research includes the main general scientific methods: analytical, which revealed specificity and historical line of "city - individual" interaction of artistic and
psychological nature in the urban architectural space; structural and functional, which allowed to consider the urban architectural space as a multi-layered continuum of connotations and a special integrative cultural code.
The processing of theoretical material was carried out using culturological methods of scientific research. In particular, the genetic approach was applied, with the help of which a comparative-historical review and analysis of artistic practices in urban architectural identity research were carried out. Also, the study is dominated by the method of axiological analysis, within which the urban architecture is considered as a meaning-forming socio-cultural form, semiotic code, value orientation of the individual. In order to realize the research aim, the author modeled and analyzed the practical conditions of creative research urban practice - an international audiovisual project with multidisci-plinary artists - to investigate the identity of old-style houses' walls and facades in the city of Kaliningrad.
Analyzing the mechanisms of semantic urban architectural environment influence on the individual-actor activity and its system of internal values, the author classifies influential architectural elements, especially highlighting "old" city districts. Due to their historical aura and produced quotations in the form of landmarks and monuments, such areas actualize mnemonic connections in the individual (Benjamin, 2012). Thus, the author emphasizes the relevance of urban architectural image perception study. First, through the artistic perception of the "old" architecture and the inclusion of "new" small design forms in it; second, through translating an urban polysemantic cultural code, which together, is a significant step in determining the urban architectural identity.
The main scientific approaches of the article are social, artistic and cultural. With the help of these approaches the author considers practices and mechanisms of urban architectural identity research, in particular the ongoing interaction between the city and the individual, as acts of a kind of art-semiotic and aesthetic communication, highlighting the image of the wall as an indicator and translator of architectural identity. Separate messages of such communicative contact acquire their semantic meaning in accordance with the decoding of a certain information element - the architectural code of an old-foundation house's wall in Kaliningrad.
In the course of the author's creative and research urbanistic practice there is a modeling of spatial and temporal perceptions and emotional and creative reflections of the individual on the architectural environment surrounding him/her. Therefore, the practice of "city - individual" communication, selection of cultural elements of the committed communications and their further substantial processing, synthesis and integration of the results gained in artistically and aesthetically evaluative perception of a certain architectural landscape within the sign systems are all denoted by the process of identification and decoding of information inherent in the urban architecture space.
The practical part of the research is an artistic projection of the collected theoretical information on the artistic, aesthetic and psychological mechanisms of determining the urban architectural identity, implemented in the author's audiovisual project. Ideologically, the project represents the identity construction of the old-style houses' walls and facades, located in the central district of Kaliningrad, with the help of auditory (field audio recordings) and visual (photography) tools produced by a group of multidiscipli-nary artists. In addition to following the concept of auditory and semiotically visual analysis of the investigated objects during urbanistic practice, the methodology of the practical part is also characterized by the inclusion of axiological observation (evaluation of the
dichotomy of the "an old original layer" and the "a new acquired layer"), a detailed description and analysis of which is given in the results section.
The search for the modern urban identity is a complex task, because, on the one hand, urban space needs to make a connection with the authentic code of the city and its history, and on the other hand, changes in the modern city image must comply with the dynamics of new concepts and general global architectural transformations. The identity of urban architecture is embedded in a comprehensive structure consisting of different temporal layers of the evolving communication line "city - individual". The definition of urban architectural identity involves the study of the features included socio-cultural perception of the city by the individual; his psycho-emotional, sensual experience of communication with the urban environment; values derived from various symbolic and mental-associative sources within the city (for example, the form of architectural development or zoned architecture); cultural and historical understanding of the processes placed there.
The nature of the produced interactive communication is mutual: urban space is a producer and translator of an encoded sociocultural coordinates system, while the individual appears as an agent-consumer of the sociocultural code belonging to a specific urban architectural context (Ellard, 2020). Producing and actualizing mechanisms of interactive dialogue, the city and urban architecture become an integrative continuum of existing socio-psychological, cultural and philosophical components of society's and, in particular, individual's existences (for example, daily rituals, set of psycho-emotional states, moral notions, ethical norms, customs and traditions).
Perceiving the urban architectural environment in the artistic, aesthetic and psychological aspect as a comprehensive sign system, it is necessary to note its constant socio-communicative movement and contextual formation. In view of this, urban space is able to dynamically encode, synthesize and accumulate socio-cultural elements, endowing them not only with cultural and semiotic semantics, but also with psycho-emotional personal-oriented attachment. In this case, the artistic aesthetic perceptual approach (including social interaction), reflects the artist-actor's perception of the city and influences the formation of the city image by individual viewers. In terms of the communicative "city - individual" model, the city architecture image is identified with a historical "portal", a medium of preservation and transmission of statements, (non)visual symbols and signs. At the same time, the dynamic sign-symbolic system, formed by the city, has the function of accumulating mnemonic connections regarding projections of individual interactions with the architectural environment.
The artistic aspect of urban architecture perception, reflection and representation of urban architectural spatio-temporal environment assumes that the representation of architecture is conditioned by the direct-creative involvement of the individual. There also should be an attempt considered to make sense of urbanization in ways that reflect the dynamics of social change. In this case, the methodology explores the relationships between population concentration and trends in social organization, structure and individual behavior (Mikhaylenko, 2010, p. 89).
In the present study, hence, the role of creative-psychological urban practice and its artistic decoding lies in the individual-artist's perceptual rethinking of the identity of the architecture of the building, place, neighborhood, city, as well as the habitual everyday complex of subject-object, role interactions within the urban architectural system.
The presence of role behavior is manifested in the artistic approach of interaction with the urban environment in the urban practice conducted by the research. The study of urban architecture identity is elaborated in the professional environment of multi-disciplinary artists, including street art artists, and urban researchers. The artist-individual acts as an actor with his/her own set of coordinates including perception and channels of communication, interaction with the architectural city space. In the process of "artist - city" communication there is an expression of personal reflections through the artistic perception of urban elements, involving the image of the city's architecture.
The coding of artistic expression in the urban architectural environment produces an artist's psychological sense of socio-cultural difference, the formation of identity within the urban space. The urban architectural environment sends aesthetic messages, semiotic, visual or "polydimensional", and uses the channel, "which conveys a message from a transmitter to a receiver". "That message is a finite, ordered set of perceptive elements formulated from a repertoire and assembled in a structure", the elements of which "are defined by the properties of the receiver" (Cupchik, 2002, p. 174). The information that is transmitted along these channels is conceptualized as a quantity and can thereby be measured and related to human perception and behavior. Setting certain visual and behavioral scenarios of interaction with the urban architectural environment, artistic perception introduces the artist to the origins of the local cultural paradigm, contributing to the expression and significance of his/her own artistic position and the formation of original artistic aesthetic reflection, aimed at establishing the image of the architectural environment identity.
In the basis of urban practice there was the idea of the individual artist's positions transition: from the consumer of urban coordinates (practical everyday use of the city as a tool for personal and social needs) to the individual as an observer-interviewer and actor in the architectural urban space. In order to solve this problem, the author created a conception of the audio-visual project "Patches 33"1 which was a part of the international exchange cultural project "Radio Instantopia" (Kaliningrad - Berlin, 2020-2021).
The provided urbanistic practice had an artistic character of perception and documentation of urban architectural identity elements. The artist-actor's task, in the role of the article's author, was to photographically capture the image of the old stock house wall with a conspicuous indicator - the presence of a "patch" on the wall. The author defines the notion of "patch" in this urbanistic practice as a colored fragment, mostly rectangular in shape (fig. 1). Generally, the patch-pattern, as each pattern, presents an infinite combination of variations modifying the sense of the whole architectural structural piece (Alexander et al., 1980, p. 11). The absolute reason for the appearance of such a patch-fragment has no obvious primary sources. However, their appearance finds an explanation in the hypothesis that a rectangular painted patch is applied to the wall because services workers while decorating or fixing, painted over a graffiti or painted a color sample as a mark for future major restoration of the building facade.
1 https://karengin.com/instantopia/patches/ Arina Sherstiuk Visual-semiotic patterns
Fig. 1. An example of patch № 1. The source: author's photo.
Fig. 2. An example of patch № 2. The source: author's photo.
Fig. 4. An example of patch № 4. The source: author's photo. Visual-semiotic patterns
The territorial choice of the study area is justified by an architectural landscape attractiveness and axiological content. Thus, the visual component of the project: photographic (analog photography) documentation of the walls was organized in the central district of Kaliningrad (formerly Amalienau and Hufen (fig. 5, fig.6)), because this area is filled with heterogeneity in the visual, color, semiotic solution of the old stock houses' facades. The actor could move along his own mentally cartographic route of the area, flitting, intuitively choosing patches for fixation - his main tasks were to reinterpret the original architectural area image, to decode and denote the multi-layered visual wall patterns.
проспект Мирз
проспект Победы
Fig. 5. The German map of Amalienau and Hufen districts in Königsberg. Source: http: //www.etomesto.ru/map-kaliningrad
Fig. 6. The modern map of Amalienau and Hufen districts in Kaliningrad (historical centre). Source: https://yandex.ru/maps/geo/istoricheskiy_rayon_ama-liyenau/i508543062/?ll=20.466439%2C54.7229i6&z=i4.87
The next step, after creating a series of photographs, was the direct involvement of sound artists from Berlin - Carina Khorkhordina and Moritz Krumm. The artists needed to sound the walls, to give the patches voice and noise. By making field recordings in Berlin, the sound artists expressed their personal perception of the wall patch identity through an auditory medium. Moving to a new level of communication "artist - artist" and "artist - city" was the main task of the author's project "Patches 33" and "Radio Instantopia" in general. Locally, the author outlines the patch project's:
I collect various things. One of my passions is patches and rags of walls.
I am sympathetic to this inherent fragmentation and lumpiness of the building facades. Events that took place in these areas are covered with secret layers of paint or even scraped together with part of the facade. The multi-layered texture tells an extremely long story. The choice of color and its combination sometimes turns me crazy.
Why every time does a new color episode appear?
The wall is patched up roughly and quickly. Repainted countless times it has become an urban descendant of ready-made.
In these spontaneous strokes, one by one, I find the personal expression of an unknown author. Footprints, alternative mosaic, urban patterns.
33. We repeat one pattern after another. Mimic. We become a mirror image of each other. Patches from Kaliningrad walls sound contextually berlinium from Berlin.
The project's result was to combine audio and visual parts in common online space. A projection of the wall, consisting of 33 patch elements series and audio accompaniment (field audio recordings) to some of them, was modeled on the project's web page. The wall model is considered as an encoded, symbolic image of the urban architectural identity translated through the color-psychological visual semiotic patterns of the old-style houses' facades in the central district of Kaliningrad. In this way, the idea of urban practices became effective in the artistic project of audiovisual research of the Kaliningrad walls' identity. The project "Patches 33" was shown at the public presentation of the international art-educational project "Radio Instantopia" and became a full part of the reporting exhibition in Kaliningrad in August 2021.
Overall, it should be noted that the research discourse of urban architectural identity acts as a cultural code of communicative construction in the complex urban environment structure, due to which it becomes a relevant subject of contemporary scientific urban-istic research. According to research, the city is a multi-layered product of cultural and social activities, while humans play the role of actors in setting cities as the stage to express their artistic aesthetic perception of decoded architectural urban patterns in connection with personal life experience. In this regard, the architectural identity is defined as an intangible dynamic elaborated process and sociocultural indicator which produces new identical patterns and coordinates.
Conceptually, the urban architectural identity is a naturally formed holistic recognizable set of tangible and intangible features of the urban environment, focused on the internal perception, due to the identity with the local factors and perceptions of the city. In this article, the phenomenon of urban architectural identity is defined as a socio-cultural construct, formed as a result of artistic interaction of the actor-artist with a particular territorial context and characteristic urban community.
The artistic and aesthetic approach to decoding the urban architectural identity contributes to the individual artist's emotional self-determination and expression of his/her personal artistic experience of interaction with the city, perception of architectural
Urbis et Orbis. 2023. 3 (l)
construction image and behavioral patterns inherent in a given urban architectural continuum. At this rate, the artistic and aesthetic points of architectural identity perception have become the important symbolic-contextual content of the architectural object, in particular its external visual indicators. Hence, the urban architecture identity study elaborates through a set of local social processes and cultural phenomena in relation to the individual, occurring in a direct "artist - city" dialogue.
The study using the artistic and aesthetic approaches shifts the focus of perceptual attention from the functional purpose of urban development, moving to the perception of visual aesthetic identity based on the dominant architectural style, the regular presence of architectural patterns. Following the concept of axiological reversal of the sociocul-tural city architecture position perception, the study not only theorizes and analyzes the artistic aesthetic perceptual approach, but also includes practical approbation of the original hypothesis regarding the urban architecture identity as a complexly composed timespace continuum consisting of unique psychological and emotional individual's perception about the city.
The study confirms the multicomplex, stratified nature of the urban architectural space identity due to the epochally acquired interaction components - the old building facade - and continuously formed and integrated into the existing continuum of new cultural and information realities - a new patch layer. At this level a special communication vector is formed, in which the architectural context plays the role of a conductor between the individual artist and the cultural-semiotic code, the identity carrier of which he/she becomes.
The study reveals that the visual specificity of the architectural urban environment has a mutually provocative effect on the socio-cultural behavioral individual characteristics and the artist-actor's perception of the placement architecture, district, and city identity. In addition, the more involved the actor is in the interaction "artist - city", the more the individual is aware of the identity and specificity of the local architectural context, the more profound is the produced interaction. The criteria for assessing the individual level of artistic architectural urban continuum perception are revealed by referring to the personal artistic and aesthetic experience of the actor involved in the urban practice.
When studying the actor's behavior in relation to the urban architectural context perception, there is a set of things taken into analysis: a sample and evaluation of subjective perceptions regarding aesthetic, symbolic and moral; the level of integration into the urban psychological environment; personal existential experience in a particular architectural area or city district. Despite the possible multilevel oppositions in the perception indicators, it is important to observe the relative interaction of both components. It is the synthesis of the two axiological approaches in a single urban architectural space that forms the identity of urban architecture - a set of different-time visual encoded patterns of socio-cultural and psycho-emotional city climate.
Thus, the study of urban architectural identity through the artistic and aesthetic perception mechanisms is ideologically characterized as a dynamic interactive temporal-spatial process. Identification of urban architectural identity contributes to the awareness of the psycho-emotional belonging of the individual to a certain urban architectural space and its constituent signed components. The article describes the actual factors of formation and ways of urban architectural identity translation in the context of modern urbanistic methodology. The conducted research has a practical relevance in educational and applied specifics.
Materials and theses of the article can be applied in various areas, for example: 1) in the development of targeted cultural tourism programs; 2) for socio-psychological practices and trainings in the urban space; 3) in the organization of the activities within urbanist associations; 4) in the research activities of higher and professional education institutions. In addition, the study conclusions can serve as a basis for further scientific research in the development of urban studies theory and practice in the context of artistic and socio-cultural activities.
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Urbis et Orbis. 2023. 3 (1)
Информация об авторе
Арина Александровна Шерстюк магистрант направления подготовки «Кураторство и продюсирование музейных проектов» Балтийский федеральный университет имени Иммануила Канта Российская Федерация, 236041 Калининград, ул. Александра Невского, 14 ORCID: 0000-0001-7158-4216 e-mail: arina.sherstyuk@mail.ru
Information about the author
Arina A. Sherstiuk Master's student in field of study "Curating and producing museum projects" Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University 14, Alexander Nevsky St., Kaliningrad, 236041, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0001-7158-4216 e-mail: arina.sherstyuk@mail.ru
Материал поступил в редакцию / Received 09.10.2022 Принят к публикации / Accepted 26.12.2022
