Zecheng Li, Norhuzailin Binti Hussain, Mohd Yazid Mohd Yunos
Urbanization has aggravated the mental health problems of youth. Blue spaces have been recognized as potential non-pharmacological intervention resources. However, there is a lack of literature focusing on seasonal water body variations in northern cities and youth populations. Using a collection of 4,502 social media posts and entries on Douyin and Xiaohongshu with a geographical location, this study used three-level NVivo thematic coding and triangulation to systematically analyze how the youth in Beijing perceive the stress-relief function of urban waterfronts. The findings show that waterfront areas are superior in terms of sensory experience compared to non-waterfront areas, with a 3.05-fold difference. The distinct waterfront value of calmness that exists in waterfront areas is completely absent in non-waterfront areas. Winter water bodies in northern cities exhibit “alternative restoration” characteristics, where frozen landscapes and seasonal rituals provide distinct pathways for psychological adjustment. The ice landscape at 5.8% and seasonal rituals at 3.9% reflect the alternative pathways for psychological adjustment. The five types of water bodies constitute a differentiated functional spectrum of “tranquil aesthetics” to “social sharing.” The natural ones are mainly sensory and emotional restoration while the artificial ones are mainly social and accessibility. This study affirms the relevance of Attention Restoration Theory and Stress Recovery Theory in the Chinese urban blue space context. It also enriches the seasonal dimension of the restorative environment theory through the proposed “alternative restoration” hypothesis. Further, this research fills in the gap of youth-centric research. Finally, it provides empirical evidence for refined planning of youth-friendly waterfront spaces.
In the nineteenth century, travel literature played a crucial role in shaping Western perceptions of the "Orient." While claiming to offer objective accounts, European travelers often perpetuated colonial stereotypes, portraying the East as an exotic, inferior, and vanishing “Other.” This article examines Eugène Fromentin’s Une Année dans le Sahel (1859) as a paradigmatic example of French colonial Orientalism, where aesthetic refinement serves to mask the violence of empire. Fromentin’s poetic vision of Algeria naturalizes displacement through what he called l’art pour l’art, a philosophy that transfigures colonial domination into melancholic spectacle. Drawing on postcolonial thinkers such as Assia Djebar, Frantz Fanon, and Malek Alloula, the study shows how Fromentin’s travelogue performs symbolic violence, what Djebar allegorizes as the “mutilated hand of Algeria” by transforming Indigenous loss into aesthetic pleasure. Extending this critique, the article situates Fromentin within contemporary decolonial frameworks, engaging Achille Mbembe’s notion of aestheticized necropolitics and Ann Laura Stoler’s concept of imperial debris to examine how Orientalist vision persists in modern archival and museological practices. It also incorporates Abdelkader Aoudjit’s reading of Algerian literature as a counter-discursive act of witnessing to a différend, a colonial silence that resists translation into imperial epistemology. By tracing Fromentin’s legacy from colonial nostalgia to present-day debates on restitution and memory, the article argues that Une Année dans le Sahel is not merely a historical text but a critical site in the ongoing struggle over how Algeria is remembered, represented, and reclaimed.
ObjectiveAt this stage, Beijing’s urban development has entered an era of stock renewal, and urban landscaping has also shifted from “incremental expansion” to “stock quality improvement”. In this context, the concept of the capital as a “Garden City” has emerged. It is a new idea and strategy for the high-quality development of the capital, pointing out the direction for Beijing to build itself into a “world-class, harmonious and livable capital”. To better achieve the goal of “building the capital into a large garden”, Beijing has, based on its green resource endowments, designated 15 essence areas for Garden City building. The “Xiaoxishan – Three Hills and Five Gardens” area is one of the 15 essence areas designated in Beijing. With the continuous deepening of the “government affairs guarantee function” in recent years, the “Three Hills and Five Gardens” area has entered a new stage of stock optimization. At present, a new round of environmental improvement and upgrading actions is being promoted in this region. How to align with the current requirements for Garden City building and explore pathways for the renewal and quality enhancement of green spaces in the essence areas is of great significance for protecting and inheriting historical and cultural context, optimizing ecosystem service functions, improving the overall environmental quality, and enhancing the attractiveness and vitality of the essence areas.MethodsThis research interprets the content of Garden City building and analyzes the natural and humanistic advantages that make the “Xiaoxishan – Three Hills and Five Gardens” area designated as an essence area. On this basis, this research focuses on three types of green spaces in the essence areas that are closely integrated with recreational functions, namely Yuanwaiyuan, historical gardens, and greenways, and takes them as the research object. Corresponding strategies for renewal and quality improvement are proposed in a problem-oriented manner from three aspects: overall planning of the area, meticulous shaping of nodes, and linear connectivity.ResultsBy implementing the spatial coordination strategies of “overall area planning, meticulous node shaping, and linear connection”, the research aims to enhance the quality and efficiency of regional green spaces in essence areas. The objective of overall area planning is to achieve the integration and optimization of the Yuanwaiyuan area. It primarily adopts the following four strategies. 1) Shape landscape characters in different areas according to their respective landscape characteristics. 2) Dig deep into historical and cultural information in light of the current site conditions by methods of reproducing historical features and marking historical memories to realize the expression and presentation of historical cultural information. 3) Proceeding from ecological service functions and the actual usage needs of visitors, implement the “quantity reduction and quality improvement” strategy within green spaces. 4) Improve the recreational functions to enrich visitors’ experience. Meticulous node shaping, aiming at the green rebirth of historic famous gardens, mainly adopts the following three strategies. 1) Take the surrounding environment of historic gardens as an integral part of the green base of the “Three Hills and Five Gardens”, and ensure that such surrounding environment is consistent with the overall landscape of the “Three Hills and Five Gardens” in terms of spatial pattern and landscape style. 2) Enhance the quality of the historic gardens themselves. 3) Promote the activation and utilization of historic gardens to realize the transformation from a single “garden scene” to multiple “scenes”. The goal of linear connection is to energize greenway networks, and it primarily adopts the following three strategies. 1) Upgrade and enhance existing greenways. 2) Establish a greenway network system. 3) Create distinctive brand travel routes.ConclusionThe development of green space in the “Xiaoxishan – Three Hills and Five Gardens” essence area needs to break the traditional concept of “garden” and regard different types of green spaces as organic components of the green base. By establishing a three-level spatial strategy system of “surface-point-line”, we can promote the transformation of project practice from the mindset of “protection and development of a single garden” to “integration and optimization of regional green spaces”, thus enhancing regional landscape quality and cultural value to foster the synergistic coexistence of historic preservation and contemporary urban development.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Architectural drawing and design
In the mediaeval Church in England, half of the diocesan cathedrals were also monastic communities; this phenomenon was virtually unique in the Church worldwide. Even after the Reformation, the monastic character of cathedrals continued to have a profound influence on the liturgy of the Church of England and on cathedrals as places to maintain the daily worship of God in solemn and musical form; to be homes for libraries and scholarship, and to be places of retreat and contemplative prayer. Norwich Cathedral was the last of these monastic cathedrals to be established (1096) and the first of the monastic cathedrals to be dissolved (1538). Particularly since the mid-nineteenth century, it has self-consciously been recovering a Benedictine character to its mission and ministry, most recently in the reconstruction of three monastic buildings lost since the Reformation: the Library reading room, the Refectory, and the Hostry. These buildings, while modern in design, build upon the remaining monastic fabric and echo the proportions and materials of their monastic predecessors, exemplifying the monastic vows of stability, obedience, and conversion of life. The Cathedral’s Benedictine principles extend to its ethos as an employer and commercial enterprise.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology
This article examines how Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle and Elif Shafak’s The Gaze mobilize grotesque femininity to destabilize the mimetic ideals of beauty, coherence, and narrative unity. Both novels center on protagonists whose excessive bodies and fractured identities render them unreadable within dominant aesthetic frameworks, thereby raising critical questions about who may be represented, desired, or made visible. Drawing on feminist theory—particularly Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection, Luce Irigaray’s critique of phallocentric discourse, and Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the grotesque—the study develops the concept of abject mimesis: a feminist representational strategy in which distortion and excess expose the exclusions that sustain mimetic norms. In Lady Oracle, Joan’s grotesque embodiment and parodic use of popular genres disrupt the logic of coherence and closure. In The Gaze, the unnamed obese narrator and the novel’s structure reveal the violence embedded in visual regimes. Taken together, these texts reconfigure mimesis not as faithful imitation but as rupture, where bodily and narrative excess become sites of feminist resistance. By pairing Atwood’s postmodern irony with Shafak’s mythopoetic layering, the article advances a theory of abject mimesis as a feminist poetics of grotesque excess, contributing to debates in feminist aesthetics, genre studies, and the politics of representation.
Introduction: In addition to understanding the basic standards of a smile and patient's opinion, dentists should take into account smile aesthetics, an essential factor for optimal outcomes. This study aimed to evaluate the factors that affect the perception of an aesthetic smile and determine its morphological characteristics and measure the gingival aesthetic parameters. Methods: In all, 200 Vietnamese aged 18-35 years were recruited to have their spontaneous smiles captured. These smile images were assessed by 50 laypersons and 50 dentists using a visual analogue scale measurement. The images were analysed to evaluate perceptions of evaluators, determine smile attractiveness, and measure gingival aesthetics. Results: The difference in the judgements of laypersons and dentists, males and females, and laypersons aged 18-25 and 26-35 years were nonsignificant. High or average anterior smile line, parallel smile arc, upward upper lip curvature, second premolars as the posterior-most teeth displayed, smile index of 5.23-5.63, and dynamic smile symmetry of 1 were scored highly on smile attractiveness. The following maxillary gingival aesthetic parameters were preferred: gingival zenith (GZ) of the canine 0.72-0.75 mm apical to the GZ of the central incisor; GZ of the lateral incisor 0.66 mm coronal to the gingival line; gingival line angle of ∼87°; for the central incisor, lateral incisor, and canines, distance from the GZ to the long axis of 1, 0.4, and 0 mm, respectively; interdental papilla height of 4.25, 3.60, and 3.85 mm, respectively; ratio of the distance from the GZ and the interdental papilla tip to the incisal edge of ∼1.74-1.77 mm. Conclusions: Factors including profession, gender, and age of evaluators had almost no impact on their perception of aesthetics. Smile attractiveness characteristics and gingival aesthetic parameters have clinical applicability for patient care.
Daniel Guião-Fernandes, Kimberlly Avelar, Victoria Melo
et al.
Hyperdontia is a condition when patient presents one or more supernumerary teeth in maxilla or mandible. When the supernumerary tooth is in the midline, above the upper incisors, it is called mesiodens. The aim of this paper is to report a case of a mesiodens extraction by means of a minimally invasive technique using an incision in the labial frenulum, avoiding releasing incisions and using platelet-rich fibrin (PRF) to fill the surgical site. A 13 year-old patient was referred to our clinic to extract a supernumerary tooth located above maxillary central incisor. After anesthesia and removal of the labial frenulum, a mucoperiosteal flap was raised bilaterally via tunneling. A careful osteotomy was performed and the tooth was cautiously removed with an apexo elevator. This technique provides a predictable and conservative approach and reduction in the procedure morbidity, also absence of scar in the anterior maxilla, not impacting aesthetics.
This commentary presents an experimental-composer’s perspective on contemporary music therapy practice. I begin by offering my impressions of the field, gathered through interviews with practising music therapists, and an examination of the relevant literature. Then, the commentary first draws upon G. Douglas Barrett’s radical post-sonic theorisation of music to question the future of existing music in therapy, before instrumentalising avant-garde aesthetics to imagine what music may become in music therapy. This exploration will pay particular attention to the impacts of the dematerialisation of the art object in contemporary art, and the potential benefits a similar decentering of sound in contemporary music practices may provoke—specifically, the creation of theoretical frameworks that further suppress the authority of canonical forms, and increased contributions from previously-marginalised groups. Next, the commentary presents an analysis of two recent musical compositions that determinedly decenter sound, before examining the appropriateness of this aesthetic to therapeutic contexts. Finally, the commentary signposts a number of historical antecedents that illustrate music therapy’s potential for rigorous (and radical) selfexamination, and examines how these efforts may be expanded.
This article examines the evolution and the organization of francophone urban studies. Based on a review of the first twenty one issues of Métropoles, the paper examines the construction and development of this scientific field within the French scientific context and in terms of international scientific trends. Four dimensions are proposed in turn: the disciplinary balances, the objects considered, the areas covered and the methodologies followed. The paper reveals the significant place occupied by public policy analysis, which attracts many authors, notably from geography and urbanism. Since its creation, Métropoles has progressively adopted the debates and concepts that mark the English-speaking community. However, this paper reveals a limited interest for theoretical and political reflection. This paper also offers a number of perspectives which might enrich and renew cumulative research.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology
The epistemological approach of a thinker influences his attitudes to education, and determines teacher activity in the learning process. This article through a qualitative approach and based on a ‘descriptive- inferential’ method, examines the necessity of aesthetic experience in education based on Allama Jafari’s epistemological principles. So we at first, according to his works, consider Allama’s epistemological elements as theoretical principles, then focusing on his cognitive pluralism, explain the necessity of aesthetic experience in education, and analyze the importance of its use in the education system. The results show that regarding epistemic pluralism can get rid us of narrow perspectives in education and can lead us to a special kind of literacy i.e. aesthetical literacy
During a Barolo en primeur tasting session, a seasoned wine taster is assailed by a procedural unease which leads him to question the foundations on which his work rests. Sparked off by his reading of Michel Le Gris’ pamphlet Dionysos crucifié, the taster’s objections and perplexities are directed towards teasing out the rules and coordinates of a tasting aesthetic which has become tamed and domesticated, at the service of a narcissistic “tyranny of instant gratification”. Such an approach translates into wines that are beaten into submission by interventionist winemakers, wines that derive from a tasting model that has been pre-emptively cleansed of tension or dissonance so as to exalt products that are easy, reassuring, docile to marketing logic, and increasingly similar. What sort of doubts, what interpretative friction can hope to reacquaint wine criticism with its true and original aims? What relations between the tongue that tastes and the tongue that speaks can respond to the needs of a new approach to wine appreciation, a ‘tasting different’?
El propósito de esta comunicación es definir, dentro del bestiario borgesiano, los mecanismos de descentramiento y resignificación del minotauro de la mitología griega a través de algunas categorías de Deleuze y Guattari, como también el comentario intertextual, a fin de inquirir si el animal borgesiano consiste en un reservorio intensivo de posturas vitales que contribuyen a mejor explicar lo humano.<br>The purpose of this communication is to define the mechanisms of I decentering and resignification of the Minotaur from Greek mythology in the Borgesian bestiary, through some categories of Deleuze and Guattari, as well as some intertextual tools, so as to inquire whether the borgesian animal is a reservoir of intensive vital positions that contribute to a better understanding of what is human.
In TELEVISION STUDIES: A SHORT INTRODUCTION, Jonathan Gray and Amanda D. Lotz argue for ‘television studies as an approach to studying media’ rather than as ‘a field for the study of a singular medium’. The critique of ‘Quality TV’, I argue, furthers the disciplinary lure of medium singularity by recourse to essentialising notions of ‘the people’ and by extension ‘popular culture’. A simplistic equation between aesthetics, audiences, and programs produces an imaginary construction of both television and the people. Interrogating television studies and the policing of the people is crucial for developing a critical and historically-nuanced mode of approaching a shifting cross-medial landscape as well as the politics of culture in general. Given the Leavisite-inspired hostility to ‘mass culture’ and the accompanying discourse of elitism, sexism, and class disapproval, television studies and its recourse to the people was both necessary and critically important. However, the actual construction of the popular in television studies as a concept forecloses on the critical study of television, first of all through the risk of essentialising a static, simplified, and often patronisingly benevolent notion of popular culture; and second, by responding defensively rather than proactively to the historical shifts in programming, genre-hybridisation, and television production.
Hérica Vanessa Colonhese Delalíbera, Mariliani Chicarelli da Silva, Renata Corrêa Pascotto
et al.
Este trabalho avaliou os resultados estéticos de pacientes Classe II submetidos à terapia ortodôntica corretiva. Selecionaram-se, aleatoriamente, sete pacientes do gênero feminino, leucodermas, submetidas a tratamento ortodôntico corretivo com extração de pelo menos dois pré-molares e com início do tratamento aos 16 até 26 anos. Cada paciente foi entrevistada e as falas foram gravadas e posteriormente transcritas e analisadas. Modelos de estudo, teleradiografias e fotografias constantes nos prontuários foram consultados para se avaliar cinco parâmetros quantitativos: contorno facial, ângulo nasolabial, proporção áurea inter-incisivos, linha média facial e dentária e silhueta incisal no sorriso. Os resultados obtidos revelaram que o tratamento ortodôntico corretivo melhorou a estética facial, alterando medidas do tecido mole da face, o sorriso e as relações pessoais. Concluiu-se que as pesquisas qualitativas e quantitativas são complementares, pois uma análise de resultados, baseada somente em um parâmetro, pode mascarar o resultado real e revelar aspectos parciais. A análise qualitativa indica que ângulos e proporções faciais diferentes do que é proposto cientificamente como estético não interferem com os resultados do tratamento, contanto que a percepção facial dos sujeitos envolvidos vá ao encontro dos padrões de normalidade aceitos por estes e estabelecidos pela sociedade.<br><br>The aim of this study was to investigate the aesthetic results of orthodontic treatment in Class II individuals. Seven Caucasian females were randomly selected, subjected to corrective orthodontic treatment with extraction of at least two pre-molars and initiation of treatment between 16 and 26 years of age. All patients were interviewed; their speeches were recorded and then transcribed and analyzed. Plaster models, lateral radiographs and photographs contained in records were consulted to assess five quantitative parameters: facial contour, nasolabial angle, incisors golden ratio, facial and dental midline, and smile line to incisal edge. The corrective orthodontic treatment improves facial aesthetics, changing facial soft tissue measures, smile and personal relationships. It was concluded that the qualitative and quantitative research are complementary, because an analysis of results based only on one parameter can mask the actual outcome and reveal aspects partially. The qualitative analysis indicates that different facial angles and proportions of what is proposed as scientifically aesthetic does not interfere with the results of treatment, provided that the facial perception of the subjects involved meet the standards of normality and accepted by them and those set by society.
El siguiente ensayo está dividido en dos partes tituladas "Del lado de acá" y "Del lado de allá". El objetivo central de este texto es analizar el trabajo del cineasta chileno Raúl Ruiz, tanto en Chile antes del golpe de Estado como en Francia después de éste, y ver algunas continuidades y discontinuidades en su trabajo, en el que se unen las nociones de estética, política, exilio y la posición de un sujeto latinoamericano.<br>The following essay is divided into two parts entitled "From This Side" and "From the Other Side". The main objective is to analyze the work of the Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz, both in Chile before the coup, and in France after it, so as to see the continuities and discontinuities in his work, where aesthetics, politics, exile and the position of a Latin American subject coincide.
Così, in pochi secondi si pensava di distruggere un quartiere e toglierselo di dosso come polvere dalla giacca1. “4000 sud” della Courneuve è considerata una delle banlieues francesi più malfamate, una di quelle che, anche se lì non succedeva assolutamente nulla, apparivano nel novembre 2005 nella famosa carta della CNN con i focolai della rivolta delle periferie francesi.
Architecture, Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying
Th e essay debates a link between the hermeneutic discourse of Krleža’s interpretation of visual
arts and the comprehension of postmodernist activist poetics. Interrelation between the above
theoretical models gets analyzed on the example of Krleža’s Foreword to “Podravian Motifs of
Krsto Hegedušić’ (1933) within a context of disintegration of modernist understanding of
aesthetics. Th is instance is then being thematized by directing – from the general hermeneutic
practice of intending the certain cultural-social connotations within painting’s interpretation –
towards the postmodernist art practices affi rming the interrelation between the aesthetic and
ethical (as ideological and political) fi elds of action.
A review of Allen Carlson’s and Sheila Lintott’s (eds) Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, 458 pp. ISBN 9780231138864)
Based on Locke and Rousseau, the aim of the present article is to describe the forms of body understanding in that transitional historical period. Taking into account the unemployment increase in a period of a steady technological development, the human body is seen as occupying a different place from that by which it was characterised in the rising bourgeois society. Both in Locke and Rousseau, body building has an important place in the individual education, since material goods necessary to life produced through physical effort in that time. That is why physical exercise is so important for these authors. Work process transformations, from the beginning of the bourgeois society up to now, show a tendency to replace physical strength by mechanical power and emphasize individual qualities such as body building and aesthetics. This tendency is not limited to the sphere of individual interests, but shows the social demands formed in man’s daily struggles for life. Nowadays, when physical effort becomes more and more unessential and a standardised corporal aesthetics is required by the market it is necessary to rethink the role of education and specially physical education in the individual development and recuperate the historical contents to better understand the forms of struggle for life. Each historical period impresses man’s ideals in his body.