An environmental aesthetic approach to ruins: the situativity, relationality and emergence of experiences in a derelict sanatorium

Drawing on the aesthetics of engagement proposed by the philosopher Arnold Berleant, this article sets out an environmental aesthetic approach to the human geographic debate about ruins. By adopting a relational understanding of self and world, the focus is on the immersive and multisensory experience of ruins including (im)material, bodily and cognitive accounts. Sensitive recording is introduced as a method to make experiences accessible in their situativity and fragility. Based on an empirical case study in the derelict Beelitz sanatorium in Germany, the article reveals three central qualities of experience that can be encountered in the ruins: emotive, challenging and irritating qualities. Such experiential qualities bring to light the significance of situative tensions at the threshold of absence and presence, past and present, familiar and unfamiliar, or vitality and lifelessness. By describing such tensions, we gain greater insight into the disruption of the familiar. Therefore, we can assess the emergent qualities of experience with the concepts of 'haunting' and 'uncanny'. Furthermore, we discover that encounters with the derelict place reveal qualities of wellbeing and connectedness.