Kuban State Technological University, 2, Moscovskaya str., Krasnodar, 350072, Russian Federation.

Abstract

The article investigates the main characteristics of the concept “space of culture” as one of the fundamental ontological characteristics of the “second nature” of human. It is proved that such space has a substantive integrity in the geo­graphical, speculative and metaphysical plans, that it carries coiled meanings and opportunities, which are realized in the construction of a system of relations be­tween objects of the urban environment. The city is a cultural landscape, formed by the superimposition of the sphere of meanings on a geographical place. In this context, the city itself and the objects filling it are considered in the opposition “artifact – counterfactual”, which is connected with the value and semantic con­tent of artificial objects. Through artifacts a metaphysical vertical of culture is built, in which the recognition of ideas and their material embodiment take place. Such an embodiment has an immanent expressiveness, which determines the visual side of the city’s cultural space. Here a special place is occupied by monuments, which, on the one hand, organize the space, acting as its aesthetic and semantic dominant, and, on the other hand, carry the pathos of the highest meaning of human existence. The semantic side of the space of urban culture
determines its semiotic landscape, which is filled with narratives that form the city’s landmarks. These, in turn, are fleshed out with art objects that are part of the physical flesh of urban space. The semantic component implies the subjec­tive dimension of cultural space. It represents the mental constructs structuring the citizen’s life experience, in the space of which he/she experiences their pres­ence in the city. The authors show that such constructs are not hermetic subjec­tive formation. They are formed in the context of interpretation of the meanings of urban artifacts in the horizon of spiritual values of culture.