• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.78-89
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• 2012

This study aimed to interpret aesthetic properties of post-industrial parks with a perspective of the sublime. It examined the roles of the sublime related to landscape architectural history and traced aesthetic characteristics of post-industrial parks based on aesthetic issues of the sublime. In the history of landscape architecture, the sublime had expanded the scope of aesthetic enjoyment. It had operated as an alternative aesthetic category against conventional landscape design. At the same time, it had been associated with the original role of landscape architecture, which created artworks by taming wild and terrible qualities of wilderness or brown field. This study discovered sublime characteristics of post-industrial parks, inquiring into the relationship between the aged industrial infrastructures and wild plants. First, the sense of industrial structure and the sense of plants have conflict dialectically, constructing an aesthetic field of unique sensory experiences. Second, the dialectical relationship produced an uncertainty in time so that people can experience the complexity of time. Third, post-industrial parks proposed an alternative view of nature. Post-industrial parks presented healing power to restore contaminated land through ecological design strategy so that people can find the quality of wilderness in the brown field of urban landscape. As a result, an aesthetic experience of post-industrial parks produced a sublime impression.