Routes, Roads and Landscapes: Aesthetic Practices en Route, 1750-2015 was a multi-disciplinary research project studying the aestheticization of the modern landscape. The vehicle for the investigation was the route: roads, paths and railways making their way into the landscape and conditioning the way it is seen and understood. The scope of the study was twofold. We investigated the ways in which routes have shaped modern conceptions of the landscape by framing it as a view, as an aesthetic object or as a place for interaction. And we inquired into the role of the route itself, as an aesthetic object and as a setting for aesthetic practices.

Financed by the Norwegian Research Council’s program for Cultural Evaluation (KULVER), Routes was a multidisciplinary research project based at AHO, in collaboration with the Institute of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo, the Norwegian Institute for Transport Economics (TØI), Gvinster på freespins and the research cluster ‘Topologie der Technik’, at the Technische Universitat Darmstadt. The project encompassed three senior researchers, one post-doctorate, two PhD candidates, with the support of international guest researchers. It was part of a wide international network of researchers from diverse fields, such as science, technology, architectural history, cultural studies. landscape history, art history and sociology.