How Atmospheres Communicate: Aesthetics of Burial Grounds and Car-Showrooms

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How Atmospheres Communicate: Aesthetics of Burial Grounds and Car-Showrooms

Jürgen Hasse

 

Abstract
On the one hand, atmospheres constitute themselves from situations. On the other hand, they are also produced for a specific purpose, in order to communicate feelings and the meanings associated with them. This article elaborates theoretical foundations of a recent philosophy of atmospheres. It turns out that aesthetic form not only follows function but that function also follows form. In the emission of atmospheres, there is a dialectic between surface aesthetics and depth aesthetics. Two examples illustrate the affective power of atmospheres. In the example of cemeteries, plants act in a special way as an immersive media of communication. In the showrooms of car dealers, it is above all technical arrangements that offer far greater flexibility to the design than natural materials can. In each case, there is an interaction between atmosphere (of space) and aura (of things).

Key Words
atmospheres; bodily communication; planted design; sepulchral cultural; gestures of seduction; car dealer showrooms

 

1. Introduction

Atmospheres are not only constituted; they are also produced in a planned manner. Numerous examples can already be found in ancient architecture. The Romans sometimes invested more in the impressiveness of their houses than in their structural engineering. The Vikings equipped their ships with impressive figureheads, ornaments, and ornate lettering to ward off evil forces, blows of fate, and bad weather. However, the production of an atmosphere is not identical with its design. Since the fifteenth century, ‘design’ has been understood to mean a creation made for serial reproduction. In it, art is pushed back in favor of interests of exploitation.[1] So, it is not about auratic uniqueness in the Benjaminian sense, but about patterns for the serial reproduction of sensually affirming productions. This puts the spotlight on cultural systems that profit from the function of atmospheres.

After some preliminary remarks on the understanding of atmosphere, two examples will provide a concretization: the sepulchral cultural world of Christian burial places and the quasi-sacral showrooms of car dealers.

2. From “spatial soul” to atmosphere

Like the ether which in mythology was extended “between the spirit and the body,”[2] the atmosphere also shares a dual character.[3] In its pre-objective volume, it floats, flutters, swims, and breathes in a diffuse “around-reality.”[4] But it cannot be “’accommodated’ in any circumscribed object.”[5] Nevertheless, it is present, similar to the weather that expands in space. They are similar to what Theodor Lipps addressed around 1920 with the term “spatial soul.”[6] Their specific substrates are “light, air and atmosphere.”[7] The resulting “sense of space” owes itself to multifaceted forces weaving through the space.[8] “It is an unspeakable ripple, an indescribable trembling of life in space at all.”[9] In the metaphor of “trembling,” a felt-bodily moment of being touched comes to the fore through an impression: sensual vibration, emotional contact, and bodily resonance. Lipps understood his space-soul as a weaving force. For him, it was “the way in which objects are together in space and, as it were, hold an inner dialogue, in each case in space and through it.”[10]  What mattered to him was not individual effects, but a pneumatic, breath-like interaction that remained diffuse. Hermann Schmitz will later capture this with the concept of “bodily communication.” He speaks of this whenever “someone is so affected and afflicted by something in a way that is perceptible to him in the flesh that he more or less falls under its spell and is at least tempted to act on it involuntarily and to let it give him a sense of his state of mind and behavior in both suffering and reaction.”[11]

The receiving station for atmospheres is therefore not primarily the “thinking head” of the material and organic, but much more the feeling body.[12] Schmitz understands that the human body can feel its surrounding area “without relying on the testimony of its five senses […] or its perceptive bodily schema.”[13] The felt body is the sensitive and tangible side of the material body.[14] What Lipps called space-soul and spatial mood since the middle of the twentieth century has been thematized in the humanities with the concept of atmosphere. In it, what we see, hear, smell, touch, and so on is suddenly present as something whole. In their fleetingness and immersivity, atmospheres are threshold-like “in-between phenomena.”[15] Hermann Schmitz therefore addresses them ontologically as “half-things.” They differ from full things by the fact that their duration is interruptible. “They come and go, without there being any point in asking what they did in the meantime.”[16] Tonino Griffero sees Quasi-things as a ”dangerous reification: pseudo-transcendence similar to that of Platonic ideas, though undergoing the same precise classification process as chemical substances and vegetal species.”[17]

An atmosphere expands spatially beyond its location of emission into the expanse. Related to it is the aura, which like nimbus and charisma has an ephemeral character. Unlike atmosphere, however, aura tends to unfold at the local place of its anchorage, that is, at the work of art and not in the whole art gallery, at the gravestone and not in the whole cemetery, at the noble luxury limousine and not in the whole street. Aura is rather small-scale; atmosphere rather large-scale.

3. The subject and function of aesthetic design

When the atmospheric design of a park, for example, or a showroom fulfills its purpose, it works thanks to a successful synthesis of form and function. However, by saying that form follows function,[18] Louis Henry Sullivan founded a mantra that was blind to the dialectic of form and function. Glamorous skyscrapers, ecstatic bridges, and baroque gardens make it all too easy to see that there is no “pure” function. Thanks to its atmospheric form, the French garden functions as an aesthetic space that is affect-logically produced.

In the Middle Ages, the dialectic of form and function was also because of the behavior-regulating power of the boundary stone. On the one hand, as a visible physical object, it marked and symbolized a boundary in geographical space. But in order to influence the movement of the people, it had to make the authority of its power felt atmospherically. That was its function. Therefore, the stone had to be charged with repelling feelings first. In other words, it had to be turned into a medium that communicated frightening narratives. The stone, which “spoke” in its specific appearance, above all had to unmistakably announce the punishments threatened in the case of border violations. Essentially, the stone had an atmospheric function. An eternal stone could suggest this more effectively than a perishable wooden stick. Two aesthetic layers thus attach themselves to the material object: a visible surface aesthetic, and a depth aesthetic resulting from its atmospheric charge.[19]

The following two examples will show how atmospheric design works in lived space. Above all, it should become clear that aesthetics expresses a program, that is, the intention according to which something should be. In appearing, a meaning linked to feelings presents itself. Created atmospheres generate syntheses between the expression of a spatial and material arrangement and its affective experience. The first example (section 4) illustrates practices of producing atmospheres in unique sepulchral cultural worlds. The second shorter example (section 5) deals with the technical production of atmospheres of car dealer showrooms. These are spaces that unfold their effect within the context of a culture-industrial fetishization of the automobile within the framework of an “aesthetic economy.”[20]

4. Planted design

The most prominent example of the horticultural design of atmospheres is the garden, especially the French baroque garden and the English landscape garden. The Christian burial places are also (special) gardens. Their aesthetics follow a sepulchral cultural program. In the sacred space, they are under a religious mystique. The following section focuses on those cemeteries that are atmospherically close to the landscape garden that since the nineteenth century has been inspired by the garden theory of Christian Cajus Lorenz Hirschfeld (1742–1792). Between 1779 and 1785, he published the famous five-volume work, Theorie der Gartenkunst. It demonstrates a high sensitivity for atmospheres. Thus, for gardens in general, he notes that the dense and very dark vegetation conveys seriousness and solemn dignity in its character, suggesting “a kind of reverence,”[21] and that the darkness “that rests on ponds and other still waters spreads melancholy and sadness.”[22]

4.1 The atmospheric aestheticization of burial places

Every city needs special places for infection-preventing dead body disposal. However, a cemetery is more than just a special hygiene-policy zone. For mythical reasons, it is also a particularly unique emotional space’ The etymology already points to its spatial separation. The meaning of the German name “Friedhof’ (for burial ground) is not primarily rooted in peace, but in enclosure, boundary, and separation. The cemetery will be enclosed so that peace and tranquility may reign within it. In addition, the English word ‘cemetery’ draws attention to another meaning: “Cemetery hath its name from cimen which is sweet, and sterion, which is a station – for there the bones of the departed rest sweetly, and expect be therein cimices, that is reptiles of intolerable odor.”[23] This was noted by the Bishop of Mende William Durandus (1230–1296). According to this definition, the cemetery as a “sweet place” is close to paradise. Its horticultural staging should create a physically accessible emotional space.

At all times, the aesthetic design of the cemeteries reflected the socio-cultural conditions in the society’s demographic composition. Even in the Roman necropolis, the dead were not considered equal among equals. According to the ancient idea, the survival of the buried was “most probably to be expected through the memory of the dead after their death.” [24] That is why the upper class aestheticized above all tombs and mausoleums. They furnished the gravesites with impressive atmospheres that were to be remembered by the living. For ordinary people, the serial row grave to this day must suffice to escape the intolerability of death.

Especially in the large cities, the cemeteries expressed themselves in their horticulturally staged atmospheres in a variety of aesthetics—from the planting of “sad” trees to the creation of sentimentalizing dells and the construction of impressive funerary architecture. Until the present day, the aesthetics of the Christian burial place must achieve one thing above all: the atmospheric sublimation of death.[25] Death, according to Vladimir Jankélévitch, is “the extraordinary order par excellence.”[26] It is and remains the radically incomprehensible. The place of the grave gives a sense of the existential borderline situation (Jaspers) par excellence in the inner space of the cemetery. To this day, the task of cemetery atmospheric design is to sedate the piercing unbearability of death’s presence.

For this reason alone, the actual and aesthetic separation of burial places from the profane space of the city is required for mystical reasons. In the medium of atmospheres, they must show the people living metaphorically, symbolically, and in their felt bodies that the dead have found their place in an in-between world—in an “under-world” of graves, in which they rest, until they are awakened to new life again by God on the “last day.” Hirschfeld thus praises the aesthetically arranged burial ground: “The oldest beautification of segregated burial grounds is the planting of trees.”[27]  He does not want the sites of the dead to look serial. Rather, they are supposed to be given a special character.[28]

4.2 Calming the gruesome

At the entrance portal to the burial ground, an atmospheric world of religious myths opens up. Because the buried are then in a post-vital state of latency, the inner space must be experienced differently from the profane space of city streets, urban squares, and private gardens.[29] In its religious frame, a burial ground is not in harmony with the beliefs and rules that prevail in the scientifically enlightened world of the “outside.” In this sense, the atmospheric design of the cemeteries is a cultic action. It serves as an affective overarching of a sacred space situated between heaven and earth. In it, the corpse is not considered dead in a final sense; rather, it is “waiting” at the place of its grave for a post-mortem, “second” life.

According to Hirschfeld, therefore the planting of a burial ground also should not arouse feelings of “fearful confinement”[30]: “The trees must announce the sadness of the scenes by brown and dark foliage; conifers especially belong in this planting because of their stiffness and seriousness.”[31] He never saw vegetation in isolation, but rather as an expression of an atmospheric framing. In this context, sepulchral buildings such as mausoleums and mourning buildings of all kinds played an important role. “But no monument must stand bare and free in its full light; it must seek half to hide behind the veil of a tree, or, shaded by some shrub, seem to slumber in a dark twilight.”[32] Hirschfeld was concerned with an atmospheric, pictorial experience of space: “The whole must represent a great, serious, somber and solemn painting, which has nothing gruesome, nothing terrible, but yet staggers the imagination, and at the same time sets the heart in a movement of compassionate, tender and gently melancholy feelings.”[33] The garden artist Ludwig Skell (1842–1905) also wanted to use horticultural techniques to mute the “gruesome character” of the cemeteries.[34]

In Hirschfeld’s remarks on aestheticization planting, it sometimes seems as if nature in a sense speaks to humans by itself: “Nature, by the way, makes use of woods as an important means” to form “quiet, lonely, desolate, melancholic, gloomy, cheerful, lovely, bright” scenes.”[35] Apparently, nature becomes an aesthetically acting quasi-subject. Ultimately, however, they are metaphors that take up culturally and historically influenced emotional expectations. In this way, subjective moods can be relived in corresponding spatial impressions. Synaesthetic transfers, which connect a sensory impression with a meaning, also serve this function. Thus, the physiognomic impression emanating from drooping branches (of a weeping willow and weeping beech) merges into the depressed feeling of being affected by death and mourning. Even if the branches of such mourning trees only follow their specific growth gene, the drooping habitus nevertheless communicates the feeling of depressing heaviness. Hirschfeld’s knowledge of the species of vegetation was an extremely important mental resource for his horticultural atmospheric designs. To this day, certain plants offer themselves as media for the initiation of feelings. Hirschfeld was also aware of the distressing situation of people in whose lives death and grief have suddenly become a reality. Therefore, he “placed” people’s moods in the “habitual” presence of tree and bush, in a way, in growth images.

Things have power over atmospheres. But atmospheres also have power over things. On the one hand, things appear auratically on their own. On the other hand, they also appear in the image of atmospherically tuned spaces. Mourning trees communicate heavy feelings of grief in their lively physiognomy. But they can only have this effect in the cemetery and not in the streets in the middle of the noisy city. Hirschfeld pointed out a number of plants, especially trees, that are particularly suited to the situational character of a cemetery: the cypress tree (Cupressaceae) reaching for the sky; the Pacific casuarina tree (Casuarina), whose drooping branches and needles “stand thin and sadly downward;”[36] the taxus tree (Taxus) that appears in death myths and reaches a great age and, with its soft needles, in contrast to the hard visible needles of other conifers, is synesthetically smooth and associated with the feeling of mourning; the common box tree (Buxus sempervirens), which in its evergreen color is a sign of continued life after death; the Ilex tree (Ilex aquifolium), which according to myth protects against evil and is a symbol of life; the common ivy (Hedera helix), which as an evergreen plant signifies eternal life; and last but not least the oak (Quercus) that in history was used as a sacred tree for ritual acts because of its longevity.[37]

5. Technically produced design

In this example, too, it is situation-specific contexts of meaning that connect the programming of spaces, such as the auratic charge of objects placed in them, with systemic reason. The example of car dealer showrooms takes a look at ways of atmospherically dressing salesrooms in the automobile business.[38] The aesthetics of these spaces, however, not only help sales, but at the same time reinforce the fetish character of automobiles in general. The atmospheric design focuses on arranging a salesroom-specific, situational experience that relates to the desire for the automobile, but also enhances it at the same time. In view of characteristic contradictions of capitalist societies, what arouses desire in a “beautiful” surface aesthetic need not ultimately prove to be ethically “good.”[39]

5.1 The showroom as aesthetic stage

Digital trade via the internet (e-commerce) has been changing the entire business world for about fifteen years. The car market is also affected by this. In an expanding virtual market, the question of the future of physical salesrooms arises: “It will be small footprint and high experience, regardless of whether the retailer is online-first with offline additions or offline-first (legacy) plus E-Commerce.“[40] Studies on the changing economics of retailing now show, however, that booming online retailing does not necessarily make so-called offline retailing (goods in presence) superfluous, “yet it is also alive and thriving. The bottom line is that stores are very much alive, but with a subtle yet profound shift in focus—from fulfillment to experience-oriented environments.”[41]

Traditional offline shops, in particular, can benefit from good networking of offline and online presence if they turn into event worlds, that is, atmospherically staged in a way that is not possible in the world of screens.[42] Although the Italian car manufacturer Lancia expects half of all purchases to be made via the internet in the future,[43] the group opened a flagship store in Milan in 2023. Through an “innovative sales approach,” it wants to offer “the customer a tailor-made buying experience.”[44] An elegant dark exterior façade, large windows, fine furnishings, and high-quality materials underline the brand’s premium image.[45] The US car manufacturer Chevrolet is acting in a similar way.[46] In 2021, Chevrolet opened a 120 m2 showroom (that is also mobile) in Zurich to present a new sports car.[47] New and innovatively designed showrooms prefer immersive gestures of seduction.[48] On a surface level, the spaces suggest themselves as places of information; on a deep level, they serve the dissuasive arousal of desire. In this way, everyday objects are exaggerated into objects of desire and mystified as extraordinary cult objects.

If the showrooms of car sellers are in principle also spaces of “radical seduction,”[49] their aesthetics are nevertheless highly different. In its language of form and style, it addresses socioeconomically disparate worlds of consumption and meaning. They only have a quasi-sacred character under the condition of the greatest rarity of the presented good. Thus, mainly the luxury limousines (Rolls Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin) that are out of reach for the average person are presented in quasi-sacred atmospheres. The places of ecstatic exclusivity are in the metropolises and the fashionable places on their outskirts, never in the rural small towns. There, the dealers place their everybody vehicles in simple sales hangars. But even here, the family vehicles suitable for everyday use must not be shown like simple machines. Every automobile requires at least rudimentary atmospheric refinement in its presentation to guarantee cultic values. Even the cheap brand has its place in a mythical world of enchantment. The following three illustrations show characteristic types of atmospheric design of car showrooms.[50]

5.1.1 A provincial showroom outside the big cities

The interior design of the car showroom is similar to a cheap warehouse. The space, tightly packed with vehicles, appears simple, bare, sober, and functional. It is free of décor and ornamentation, sometimes even untidy. Blue iron beams run under the ceiling, with industrial sheets in the same color above them. The floor tiles are mass-produced. There is a sparse strip of carpet between the entrance and the service counter. Behind a few advertising racks is a seating area with three chairs and a square tubular steel table for sales talks. The room lighting is a pale grey tube light. There is nothing more to say about the aesthetics of this room.

5.1.2 The metropolitan showrooms of the upper mid-range cars

The showrooms of the (upmarket) mid-range cars have a wide range of aesthetic interior design. The global players of leading car manufacturers erect ecstatic buildings in international metropolises to demonstratively strengthen their brand image. The buildings also programmatically stand out from the aesthetic average in their interior design. The rooms are light, wide, and open between rising columns. As a result of the use of sound-absorbing building materials for floor and wall surfaces, they are free of reverberation. The building materials for floors, ceilings, and walls are also important architectural media of expression. They have an emphatic effect on the atmospheric face of the house as well as the brand. The material is an important aesthetic messenger of bodily communication. It should correspond to the average aesthetic perception of the clientele addressed.

Marked areas for specific models are an expression of a presentation-aesthetic brand policy, for example, spots above the vehicles, light strips in the floor, space-dividing vertical elements. In general, rooms for consultation and sales talks are located in separate bays or glazed niches, clearly set apart from the semi-public areas. Customers often find lounge areas for informal conversations in groups of upholstered seats between the vehicles, complemented by coffee vending machines and beverage service. If there is a reception counter, it is usually located near the entrance to directly address entering customers.

The standard equipment includes glass vitrines for the presentation of so-called brand beyond collections. They vary, along with content, in quality and aesthetic presence with the economic level of the brand. The corporate logo of the manufacturer is sometimes highlighted on a wall that is easy to see and sometimes more in the background. Where the ceilings in the small-town sales halls are made of raw steel beams and industrial sheet metal, the same ceiling structures are now given an atmospheric upgrade with a matte black paint finish and suspended industrial lights. If certain brands or models are associated with a distinct lifestyle type, this is reflected in the aesthetics of the room. Placed oil barrels, car tires stacked on top of each other, and wooden pallets then convey a model-specific atmosphere.

5.1.3 The showrooms of the upper luxury limousines

The aesthetics of those showrooms in which the luxury limousines worth €300,000 and more are displayed differ from this. Such showrooms stand out due to excellent materials and special interior design features—aesthetically above-average ceiling illumination, room dividers in the form of large color displays, separate presentation zones for special models, exclusive rooms for sales consultations, and so on. Tonino Griffero speaks of the “ecstasy of materials“ that seems to find its ideal milieu here.[51] A subtle perfuming that differs from rather rude rubber smells that impose themselves in many show rooms of mass and mainstream vehicles draws attention to the fact that the strategies of seduction extend far beyond the boundaries of the visual world.

In these socioeconomic upperclass worlds, however, the key factor in terms of atmosphere is the personal touch when entering the shop. From habitual presence to the eloquence and commitment of literal speech, the sales staff of high-end houses establish a relationship with the customer that is supposed to correspond to the specificity of the brand. An expression of atmospheric exclusivity is, for example, the presentation of those (few) vehicles that are waiting to be handed over to the customer: they are mystically shrouded, as it were, by a black premium satin cover made for the special vehicle type.

6. Conclusion

The atmospheric design of the showrooms of car salesmen owes itself to a synthesis in which the aesthetically staged image of a brand is affectively transferred to concrete vehicles. The atmosphere of the showrooms and the aura of the presented vehicles interact with each other. This is under the power of the “culture industry.” According to Adorno and Horkheimer, the simple and the high-end design object is based on repetition, the serialization of production but also of reception. The pleasure of watching replaces a pleasure that is out of reach for the masses. In this way, “iconographic” co-consumers as atmospheric free riders become combatants in an economy in which they participate only as “onlookers.” On the whole, the cultural-industrial performance that reproduces itself again and again unfolds a certain “purging of the affects.”[52] The show compensates the spectators, as second-order consumers, for their abdication of purchase—or to use Herbert Marcuse’s phrase about the subtlety of the desublimation of needs: “The Pleasure Principle absorbs the Reality Principle.”[53]

If burial grounds and showrooms of car dealers are also extremely divergent worlds, atmospheres and auras enter into a relationship with each other in both regardless. Which synthesis the ephemeral phenomena ultimately enter into depends on the situation. It is the situation that assembles the meanings into an order and thus also dispositions the logic of effect of an aesthetic arrangement, starting from the objects in the space as well as from the space with its objects.

 

Jürgen Hasse
J.Hasse@geo.uni-frankfurt.de

Jürgen Hasse is emeritus professor of human geography at the Goethe-University Frankfurt. His main fields of research are man and space, man-nature relationships, phenomenology of the city. The latest book, Dichte. Zur Mächtigkeit von Atmosphären und Stimmungen (Density. On the power of atmospheres and moods), ed. Karl Alber, has been published in Baden-Baden, September 2024.

Published December 10, 2024.

Cite this article: Jürgen Hasse, “How Atmospheres Communicate: Aesthetics of Burial Grounds and Car-Showrooms,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Special Volume 12 (2024), accessed date.

 

Endnotes

[1] Heinz Hirdina, “Design,“ in Ästhetische Grundbegriffe. Historisches Wörterbuch, ed. Karlheinz Barck et. al. (Stuttgart und Weimar: Metzler, 2000), Vol. 6, 41-62, see 41f.

[2] Marian Kurdzialek, “Äther,“ in Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie (Basel / Stuttgart: Schwabe 1971), Vol. 1, col. 599-601, see 600.

[3] Hermann Schmitz, “Gefühle als Atmosphären und das affektive Betroffensein von ihnen,“ in Zur Philosophie der Gefühle, ed. Hinrich Fink-Eitel / Georg Lohmann. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993), 33-56, see 33.

[4] “Herumwirklichkeit,“ see Karlfried Graf von Dürckheim, Untersuchungen zum gelebten Raum (1932), ed. by Jürgen Hasse (Frankfurt am Main: University Press 2005), 36.

[5] Schmitz, “Gefühle als Atmosphären,“ 33.

[6] “Raumseele,“ see Theodor Lipps, Ästhetik. Psychologie des Schönen und der Kunst. Band 2: Die ästhetische Betrachtung und die bildende Kunst (Leipzig: Leopold Voss, 1920), 189.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 190.

[10] Ibid., own translation.

[11] Own translation, Hermann Schmitz, System der Philosophie, Vol. III/Part 5, 31f and in detail Hermann Schmitz, Der Leib, chapter 4.

[12] Vgl. Hermann Schmitz, Atmosphären (Freiburg und München: Alber, 2014), 11.

[13] Own translation, Hermann Schmitz, Der Leib, der Raum und die Gefühle (Ostfildern: Tertium, 1998), 12.

[14] Helmuth Plessner ascribes the “brokenness of material body and felt body” to an “entanglement of inside and outside”; Helmuth Plessner, Gesammelte Schriften III. Die Einheit der Sinne. Grundlinien einer Ästhesiologie des Geistes (1923). (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), 370.

[15] Gernot Böhme: Aisthetik. Vorlesungen über Ästhetik als allgemeine Wahrnehmungslehre (München: Fink, 2001), 55.

[16] Hermann Schmitz, New Phenomenology. A brief introduction, translated by Rudolf Owen Müllan, Mimesis International, Atmospheric spaces 6, 2019, 99.

[17] Tonino Griffero, Quasi-Things. The Paradigm of Atmospheres, translated by Sarah De Sanctis (New York: State University of New York Press?, 2017), 24.

[18] L. Sullivan, in Lesebuch für Architekten. Texte von der Renaissance bis zur Gegenwart, ed. by Peter Conradi (Stuttgart / Leipzig: Hohenheim, 2001), 101-112, see 110.

[19] Wolfgang Welsch, “Das Ästhetische. Eine Schlüsselkategorie unserer Zeit?“ in Die Aktualität des Ästhetischen, ed. by Wolfgang Welsch (München: Fink, 1993), 13-47.

[20] Gernot Böhme, “Aesthetic Economy,” in International Lexicon of Aesthetics, Autumn 2019 Edition, URL = https://lexicon.mimesisjournals.com/archive/2019/autumn/AestheticEconomy.pdf, DOI: 10.7413/18258630062.

[21] Own translation, Christian Lorenz Hirschfeld, Theorie der Gartenkunst. Erster Band (Leipzig: Weidmanns 1779), 198f.

[22] Own translation, ibid, 200f.

[23] William Durandus, Churches and Church Ornaments (London, 1906), 78.

[24] Own transcription, Reiner Sörries, “Gräberstraßen und Nekropolen nach römischem Vorbild,“ in Raum für Tote. Die Geschichte der Friedhöfe von den Gräberstraßen der Römerzeit bis zur anonymen Bestattung, ed. by Arbeitsgemeinschaft Friedhof und Denkmal (Braunschweig: Thalacker, 2003), 11-26, see 17.

[25] Hirschfeld, however, explained the placement of trees and plants not only with the aim of emotionalizing the atmosphere, but also with the hygienic goal of “reducing the evil vapours, or at least making them less harmful”, Hirschfeld, Theorie der Gartenkunst. Fünfter Band, 118.

Die Begräbnisplätze “müssen eine Lage haben, die reinigenden Winden den Zugang verstattet“; Hirschfeld, Theorie der Gartenkunst. Fünfter Band, 118.

[26] Vladimir Jankélévitch, Der Tod. Translated by. Brigitte Restorff (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 14.

[27] Hirschfeld, Theorie der Gartenkunst. Fünfter Band, 117.

[28] However, the aestheticisation of cemeteries and graves was often a thorn in the side of the Christian churches in the early nineteenth century, because they were attached to the idea that death erases all social distinctions: ”The graves are hidden behind hedges and plantings, the essence of the cemetery is concealed, it has been turned into a park, a sentimental place of recreation for the people.“; in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, (Tübingen:Mohr, 1957-62), Vol. II, Col. 1144.

[29] Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces: “Utopias and Heterotopias” (1966), translated from the French by Jay Miskowiec; https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf.

[30] Own transcription, Hirschfeld, Theorie der Gartenkunst. Fünfter Band, 118.

[31] Own transcription, ibid.

[32] Own transcription, ibid. 119.

[33] Own transcription, ibid.

[34] Own transcription, see Barbara Happe, “Ordnung und Hygiene. Friedhöfe in der Aufklärung und die Kommunalisierung des Friedhofswesens.“ in Raum für Tote. Die Geschichte der Friedhöfe von den Gräberstraßen der Römerzeit bis zur anonymen Bestattung, ed. by Arbeitsgemeinschaft Friedhof und Denkmal (Braunschweig: Thalacker, 2003), 83-110, see 103.

[35] Hirschfeld, Theorie der Gartenkunst. Erster Band, 199.

[36] Own transcription, ibid., Fünfter Band, 118.

[37] The rose (Rosa), which stands for love, joy and youthfulness, rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus) as a plant consecrated to the gods, not least because of its scent, and the lime tree, which was considered a sacred tree by the Germanic and Slavic peoples, also belong in this series.

[38] As car dealers, only those actors who deal in passenger cars and not in commercial vehicles of any type are considered in this chapter.

[39] On the interaction between surface and depth aesthetics, see also Welsch, “Das Ästhetische,” 13-47.

[40] David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino, Antoio Moreno, James Yoder, Daichi Ueda: The Store Is Dead — Long Live the Store. In: MIT Sloan Management Review (04 2018); https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/the-store-is/53863MIT59302/chapter001.html (19.03.2023).

[41] Ibid.

[42] On the significance of aestheticisations in the car trade cf. also Anders Parment, Die Zukunft des Autohandels (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2016), 23.

[43] N.N., “Lancia: Flagshipstore zeigt neue Markenidentität“, https://www.autohaus.de/nachrichten/autohersteller/lancia-flagshipstore-zeigt-neue-markenidentitaet-3322163 (17.03.2023).

[44] Ibid.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Cf. e.g. the new Cadillac showroom of the car dealer Wickenhäuser in Munich, https://www.autohaus.de/nachrichten/autohandel/autohaus-wickenhaeuser-deutschland-premiere-fuer-cadillac-ci-2721857 (18.03.2023).

[47] Chevrolet, “Hallo Zürich,” https://www-chevrolet-ch-nginx-storefront.op22.gm.com/de/mobileshowroom (18.03.2023).

[48] Jean Baudrillard, Laßt euch nicht verführen! (Berlin: Merve, 1983).

[49] Ibid.

[50] The descriptions are based on the exploration of car showrooms of different brands in several cities.

[51] Tonino Griffero, Aesthetics of Emotional Spaces (Farnham / Burlington Ashgate, 2014), 96.

[52] Theodor W. Adorno / Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments (1947), (Stanford: University Press, 2002), 115.

[53] Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society (1964), Reprint (New York: Routledge, 2006), 75.