Fantastic architecture revisited: Towards a unified approach to the fantastic in the built environment.
Item
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Title
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Fantastic architecture revisited: Towards a unified approach to the fantastic in the built environment.
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Identifier
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AAI9207106
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identifier
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9207106
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Creator
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Montarzino, Alicia.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Roger Hart
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Date
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1991
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Architecture | Psychology, General
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Abstract
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"Fantastic Architecture" is a label used in architectural literature to qualify a number of spaces (buildings as well as gardens) too strange to be considered as part of mainstream architecture and too intriguing to be ignored. However most approaches in the field have been merely speculative when not purely classificatory, and as a consequence the use of the term "fantastic" has never been properly explained or it has simply been assumed to be a quality of an architectural object independently of both its environment and its perceiver.;The present work is an attempt to re-define the issue following the type of unified approach proposed by the field of environmental psychology in which the theoretical aspects of a problem are confronted with the results of empirical research. In this study the main architectural approaches are discussed and a theoretical frame for the "fantastic" in architecture is established through the study of the "fantastic" in literature and art. On that basis six settings (2 castles, 2 gardens and 2 apartment buildings) all located in Europe and consistently labelled "fantastic" in architectural literature are studied by means of recorded interviews. Twenty people (10 males and 10 females) are interviewed in each site using a standard questionnaire with one or two additional questions for three of the sites.;The analysis of the data is carried out in two steps. In the first step, a general thematic analysis is utilized to provide an overview of the six sites. In the second step each site is analyzed in-depth taking the interviews as whole and then discussed, first in relation to its functional pair and then with the other sites. The results of the analysis are finally confronted to the main issues identified in the theoretical framework.;The results of the study show that a space is not "fantastic" per se but has the potential to be so. Whether that potential is realized or not depends on its environment as well on its perceivers, in particular on the latter's knowledge about the place, on how they came in contact with it and on the type of image that the place evokes in them. Overall the findings show that the perception of "fantastic" places is the result of an active interaction of the perceiver with the place manifested in an affective as well as a reflective response towards the setting in question.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
