Aesthetic Theories and their Paths in Architecture: Milutin Borisavljević and his Scientific Approach to Aesthetics of Architecture

Aesthetics as a philosophical discipline arose during the 18th century, while important aesthetic questions arose in its pre-philosophical period in antiquity. Separating aesthetic thoughts about architecture from the general development of philosophical aesthetics is still an unfinished task that few architects have tackled. One of the pioneers in this regard was Milutin Borisavljević, who in the 1920s received his doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris in the field of aesthetics of architecture. Borisavljević was focused on aesthetic experience of architecture, and he laid the foundation for the study of aesthetics in architecture based on scientific grounds. Aesthetics as a philosophical discipline kept the philosophical apparatus of research, which Borisavljevic in his aesthetic conception opposed the experiment as the most trusted and most objective method of research. In this respect, he created his own aesthetic approach based on the knowledge of experimental psychology, physiology of the senses of vision and neurological physiology. Exploring the aesthetic experience of architecture, Borisavljević dedicates most attention to aesthetic architectural phenomenon of harmony, composition, rhythm, proportion, symmetry and asymmetry. Striving to establish the laws of the sensory experience of architecture, Borisavljević adheres to the tradition of classical French architecture of the École de Beaux Arts and applies these principles aloso in practice on the numerous houses and villas that he built in Belgrade between the two world wars. This paper examines the beginnings of the formation of aesthetic thought from the time of antiquity, following the relationship between architecture and nature, but also architecture and human nature - which Borisavljević's scientific aesthetics of architecture particularly seeks to explore. Questions of determining the criteria and rules by which the beauty of architecture and its sensory impact on people could be explained remain an open and eternally inspiring topic that improves the interaction between engineering and art.