Aesthetics of Transport Infrastructure Space as Landscape Between Flows and Cultures of Movement

Abstract

The contemporary city consists of a series of vital systems in which different flows are present – movements, traffic, forms, thoughts, experiences, and others. The traffic systems that occupy a large area of the city and are important for its further development stand out. The focus of the paper is on the landscape of transport space between new modes of transport and different flows in the contemporary city on the one hand and the culture of movement and meaning brought by transport users on the other. Sensitivity as a measure in aesthetic reading helps us to understand infrastructure as an integrated part of the landscape, and not as isolated from it. The subject of the paper is landscapes of experience from two perspectives of observation, i.e., two speeds of movement: vehicles and pedestrians–visual and sound landscape. This paper aims to define the elements of user experience in the space of transport, between aesthetics and humanity. The study area is the space of Highway E75 in the old part of Belgrade, especially loops (punctures) in connection with the rest of the city–parts named Autokomanda and Mostarska petlja. The focus of the paper is the avant-garde observation of infrastructures like Bergson’s metaphysics, which contributes to the metaphysical framework of transport infrastructure and the definition of the relative and the absolute in a flow. Also, there are Bosanquet’s aesthetic approaches that help define a new pattern of experience in the aesthetics of transport. Two films of German Expressionism from the Weimar period, “Metropolis” and “Golem”, help to consider social conditions and factors in the space of transport. There is a question of considering space as landscape and also landscape as a space. When space is landscape, we can consider space in the aesthetics of architecture, sculpture, and urbanism, trying to define space-volume and space-direction. The paper contributes to a new way of perceiving the space of transport outside its economic role in the neoliberal world, where speed and connection in the exchange of goods, services, and people are extremely important, seeking the aesthetics and humanity of such a space.