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David Seamon

Kansas State University, Architecture, Faculty Member

Design multi-disciplinary practice +4496

David Seamon (PhD, 1977, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts USA) is a Professor of Environment-Behavior and Place Studies in the Department of Architecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, USA. Trained in behavioral geography and environment-behavior research, he is interested in a phenomenological approach to place, architecture, environmental experience, and environmental design as place making.His books include: DWELLING, PLACE AND ENVIRONMENT: TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERSON AND WORLD (1985); DWELLING, SEEING, AND DESIGNING: TOWARD A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ECOLOGY (1993); GOETHE'S WAY OF SCIENCE: A PHENOMENOLOGY OF NATURE; and A GEOGRAPHY OF THE LIFEWORLD: MOVEMENT, REST AND ENCOUNTER (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979/Routledge Revival series, 2015). His most recent book is LIFE TAKES PLACE: PHENOMENOLOGY, LIFEWORLDS AND PLACE MAKING (Routledge, 2018).
Address: Architecture Dept
211 Seaton Hall
Kansas State Univ
Manhattan, KS 66506-2901 USA

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Papers

Phenomenological Perspectives on Place, Lifeworlds, and Lived Emplacement: Selected Writings of David Seamon (London: Routledge, 2023)

PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PLACE, LIFEWORLDS, AND LIVED EMPLACEMENT, 2023

This volume is a compilation of 17 previously published entries that focus on the significance of... more This volume is a compilation of 17 previously published entries that focus on the significance of places and place experiences in human life. Chapters are broken into three parts. Part I includes four chapters that consider what phenomenology offers studies of place and place making. These chapters illustrate the theoretical and practical value of phenomenological concepts like lifeworld, homeworld, natural attitude, and bodily actions in place. Part II incorporates five chapters that aim to understand place and lived emplacement phenomenologically. These chapters consider consider Merleau-Ponty's thinking on place-assituatedness, the value of phenomenology for a pedagogy of place making, how architecture might be understood phenomenologically, and the significance of place serendipity in human life. Part III presents phenomenological explications of real-world places and place experience, drawing on photography (André Kertész's Meudon), television (Alan Ball's Six Feet Under), film (John Sayles's Limbo and Sunshine State), and imaginative literature (Doris Lessing's Four-Gated City, Penelope Lively's Spiderweb, and Louis Bromfield's The World We Live in).

Preface: Setting Forth Humanistic Geography (2023)

Chinese translation of HUMANISTIC GEOGRAPHY: PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS (originally 1978), 2023

First draft of a new preface for the Chinese translation of Humanistic Geography: Prospects and P... more First draft of a new preface for the Chinese translation of Humanistic Geography: Prospects and Problems, co-edited by geographers David Ley and Marwyn Samuels and first published by Maaurofa Press in Chicago, 1978; the Chinese translator is geographer Liu Su, and the Chinese publisher is Beijing Normal University Press.

Prominent in the 1970s and 1980s, humanistic geography referred to a wide-ranging body of research emphasizing the central role of human experience and meaning in understanding peoples' relationship with geographical environments. Realizing that human engagement with the geographical world is complex and multivalent, humanistic geographers drew on qualitative approaches like phenomenology and hermeneutics to describe and interpret human actions and understandings as they both sustain and are sustained by geographical aspects of human life such as space, place, region, landscape, and natural environments.

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, (winter/spring 2023) [special memorial issue for Yi-Fu Tuan]

by David Seamon and Stephen Wood

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY , 2023

Entries in this EAP issue are as follows: As you may know, humanistic geographer Yi-Fu Tuan died ... more Entries in this EAP issue are as follows:
As you may know, humanistic geographer Yi-Fu Tuan died in August 2022, and this EAP is a special “in memoriam” issue in his honor. The issue includes tributes by philosopher Ingrid Leman Stefanovic and geographers Edward Relph, Stanley Brunn, and Xu Huang. We include excerpts from five of Tuan’s many articles, chapters, and books.
This winter/spring issue also includes one book review and three essays:
 Cognitive scientist Andrea Hiott reviews psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist’s 2009 The Master and His Emisary.
 Zoologist Stephen Wood considers the phenomenon of noticing the natural world and the question of how this directed awareness unfolds.
 Anthropologist Jenny Quillien provides a first-person ethnography of her recent residence in Alaska.
 Religious-studies scholar Harry Oldmeadow discusses the sacredness of deserts, a theme that complements his earlier EAP essay on the holiness of mountains.
A complete digital EAP archive (1990-2022) is available at: http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/1522.

David Seamon
Editor, Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY (summer/fall 2022) [special memorial issue for Christopher Alexander & Robert Mugerauer]

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2022

Architect Christopher Alexander died in March, and philosopher Robert Mugerauer died in May. This... more Architect Christopher Alexander died in March, and philosopher Robert Mugerauer died in May. This issue of EAP is entirely a memorial to these two significant thinkers whose works were a major contribution to environmental and architectural phenomenology. The issue includes contributions from philosopher Ingrid Leman Stefanovic, anthropologist Jenny Quillien, and computer-program researcher and poet Richard Gabriel. We republish several passages and entries from Alexander and Mugerauer’s writings.

A complete digital EAP archive (1990-2022) is available at: http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/1522.

Moments of Realization: Extending Homeworld in British-African Novelist Doris Lessing's Four-Gated City (2022)

CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY REVIEW, 2022

For Husserl, the homeworld is the tacit, taken-for-granted sphere of experiences, understanding, ... more For Husserl, the homeworld is the tacit, taken-for-granted sphere of experiences, understanding, and situations marking out a world that is comfortable, usual, and "the way things are and should be." Always, according to Husserl, the homeworld is in some mode of lived mutuality with an alienworld-a world as seen as a realm of difference, atypicality, and otherness. In this article, I draw on British-African novelist Doris Lessing's 1969 novel, The Four-Gated City, to consider the shifting homeworld of protagonist Martha Quest, a young white African woman emigrating to battle-scarred London immediately after World War II. Throughout the novel, Quest finds herself in unfamiliar or challenging situations where the world she takes for granted is called into question. Lessing draws on these life-testing experiences to portray Quest's shifting understandings of other individuals' homeworlds that at first she sees as atypical, abnormal, or unreal.

Finding the Center [architect Christopher Alexander's concept of "center"] (2022)

THE SIDE VIEW, 2022

This article is now online at the website of the journal THE SIDE VIEW: https://thesideview.co... more This article is now online at the website of the journal THE SIDE VIEW:

https://thesideview.co/journal/finding-the-center/

In this article, I highlight American architect Christopher Alexander’s concept of “center,” which offers one way to identify the crux of his work, whether thinking or designing. Most broadly, a center is any spatial concentration or organized focus of more intense pattern or activity—for example, an intricate carpet pattern, an elegant entryway, a handsome arcade, a gracious building, or an animated plaza full of users finding pleasure in the place. Whatever its specific nature and scale, a center is a region of concentrated physical and experiential order that provides for an intense spatial and lived relatedness among things, people, situations, and events. A center is “an organized zone of space … which, because of its internal coherence, and because of its relation to context … forms a local zone of relative centeredness with respect to the other parts of space." A pivotal question for Alexander is how an understanding of centers might help architects to conceive of and actualize vigorous places and environments that sustain thriving human life.

Sense of Place (encyclopedia entry, 2022)

International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology, Douglas Richardson, Editor-in-Chief. NY: Wiley, 2021

Sense of place is closely related to genius loci (spirit of place) and can be defined as the spec... more Sense of place is closely related to genius loci (spirit of place) and can be defined as the specific character, atmosphere, and expressive energy of a particular environment or locale. Though allied to sensory, perceptual, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of human experience, sense of place cannot be fully described or understood by these experiential dimensions alone. Sense of place is greater than its environmental and spatial parts and can evoke both positive and negative qualities. Most broadly, sense of place relates to the customary ways in which a place makes itself felt-its specific manner of being as perceived, encountered, known, and remembered by the human beings engaging with that place. As a phenomenon in human life, sense of place has a millennia-old history, beginning with archaic peoples who experienced specific places as receptacles of expressive energy envisioned as gods, spirits, or other ineffable presences. In the English-speaking world, sense of place and genius loci first became significant in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as industrialization and urbanization supplanted agriculture and rural ways of life. Most recently, sense of place and genius loci have been interpreted via the concept of atmosphere, which provides one helpful means for identifying and articulating the less visible features that makes an environment unique and confers on that environment a specific sense of place and genius loci. In the early 2020s, research on sense of place incorporates three contrasting conceptual traditions: first, phenomenological research, which examines experiential aspects of sense of place; second, empiricist-analytic research, which considers sense of place via measurable criteria and correlates respondents' degree of place involvement with independent variables like social status, home ownership, and community ties; and, third, social-constructionist research, which examines how human attributions of sense of place are a social and cultural construction of reality.

Serendipitous Events in Place: The Weave of Bodies and Context via Environmental Unexpectedness and Chance (2021)

INTERTWINING: WEAVING BODY CONTEXT, 2021

In this article, I focus on place release, which relates to an environmental serendipity of happe... more In this article, I focus on place release, which relates to an environmental serendipity of happenstance events and experiences (Seamon 2018). Through unexpected actions, encounters, and situations in place, people are "released" more deeply into themselves. Partly because of surprises happening in place, "life is good" as when one meets an old friend on the sidewalk or notices by chance a street poster advertising a neighborhood coffeehouse reading by a local poet one admires. Importantly, release can also unsettle place when serendipitous events happen that are inappropriate, distressing, threatening, or deadly-for example, an old man is mugged in his own neighborhood or a woman from the United States is run down and killed on a London street because she looked the "wrong" way. Here, I probe place release by considering journalistic and cinematic descriptions of two contrasting modes of place serendipity, one felicitous, the other ill-starred: on one hand, meeting one's life partner because of happenstance encounter in place; on the other hand, losing one's life because of happenstance encounter in place. My aim is to better understand what place release entails and how both human and environmental aspects contribute to its role in the life of places.

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY (winter/spring 2022)

by David Seamon and Harry Oldmeadow

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2022

The 2022 winter/spring issue of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology Includes the fol... more The 2022 winter/spring issue of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology
Includes the following entries:
Five “book notes”:
 Philosopher Quill R. Kukla’s City Living (Oxford Univ. Press, 2021);
 Phenomenologists Michael and Max van Manen’s Classical Writings for a Phenomenology of Practice (Routledge, 2021);
 Philosopher Sebastian Luft’s Subjectivity and Lifeworld in Transcendental Phenomenology (Northwestern Univ. Press, 2021, softcover);
 Philosopher Jeff Malpas’ Rethinking Dwelling (Bloomsbury, 2021);
 Architects Akkelies van Nes and Claudia Yamu’s Introduction to Space Syntax in Urban Studies (Springer, 2021, open-access).

The issue also includes two essays: zoologist Stephen Wood’s consideration of becoming familiar with a natural place; and religious-studies scholar Harry Oldmeadow’s portrait of the holiness of mountains.

A complete digital EAP archive (1990-2021) is available at: http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/1522

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY (summer/fall 2021)

by David Seamon, Jeff Malpas, and John Russon

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2021

This EAP issue includes the following:  An “in memoriam" for environmental psychologist Robert S... more This EAP issue includes the following:
 An “in memoriam" for environmental psychologist Robert Sommer, who died in February, 2021;
 A “book note” on architect Giulia Foscari’s Elements of Venice (2014).
 A “book note” on architect and planner Matthew Carmona’s 3rd edition of Public Places, Urban Spaces (2021), an overview of urban-design theories, concepts, and practices.
 Environmental educator Michael Maser’s explication of a place-based education grounded in what he calls “self-in-place.”
 Philosopher John Russon’s discussion of parallels between love of place and love of human beings.
 Philosopher Jeff Malpas’ consideration of the relation between “spirit of time” and “spirit of place.”
 Cartographer Luke Harvey’s efforts to draw on the example of London parks to develop graphic means for presenting aspects of place experience visually.

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY (winter/spring 2021)

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2021

This 2021 winter/spring issue of Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology includes five essays... more This 2021 winter/spring issue of Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology includes five essays: (1) Stephen Wood’s commentary relating to the phenomenology of animal welfare; (2) Claudia Mausner's discussion of liminality, place, home, and multiple “homes”; (3) Tim White’s firsthand examination of the human-sustaining walkability of Florence, Italy; (4) Edward Relph’s penetrating overview of the future of places and place experiences in the 21st century; and (5) Levent Şentürk’s creative effort to summarize graphically the work of urban designer Kevin Lynch’s seminal The Image of the City (1961).

Please note: If you are using a Mac machine, the full PDF will not appear properly unless you download the PDF. For some reason, academia.edu does not fully accommodate Apple products. As a result, a good number of the graphics of the issue don't appear.

Reflections on the Early SPHS (2023)

SHUTZIAN RESEARCH, 2023

first draft of a reflective essay on the early history of the Society for Phenomenology and the H... more

Place Attachment and Phenomenology: The Dynamic Complexity of Place (2021)

2nd edition of L. C Manzo and P. Devine-Wright, eds., Place attachment: Advances in theory, methods and research. New York: Routledge, pp. 29-44, 2021

In this chapter, I consider place, place experience, and place attachment as they might be unders... more In this chapter, I consider place, place experience, and place attachment as they might be understood phenomenologically from three perspectives: first, holistically; second, dialectically; and, third, generatively. I argue that each of these three perspectives points to a spectrum of complementary experiences, situations, actions, and meanings that remain faithful to the lived comprehensiveness of place and place experience. I suggest that each of these three perspectives offers a range of useful ways for thinking about and understanding place attachment.

Merleau-Ponty, Environmental Embodiment, and Place: Implications for Architecture and Placemaking (2022)

Embodied Awareness and Space: Body, Agency and Current Practice, edited by Christos Kakalis. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming, 2022

In this chapter, I draw on French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy to explore e... more In this chapter, I draw on French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy to explore environmental embodiment-the various lived ways, sensorily and motility-wise, that the body in its prereflective perceptual presence engages and synchronizes with the world at hand, especially its architectural and environmental aspects. First, I consider Merleau-Ponty's interpretation of perception, which he understands as the immediate givenness of the world founded in bodily sensibility. Second, I consider the architectural and environmental significance of what Merleau-Ponty calls body-subject-pre-reflective corporeal awareness expressed through action and typically in sync with and enmeshed in the physical world in which the action unfolds. I focus on the taken-for-granted sensibility of body-subject to manifest in extended ways over time and space. I ask how routine actions and behaviors of individuals coming together regularly can transform an environment into a place with a unique dynamic and character-a lived situation I term place ballet. For both perception and body-subject, I examine how qualities of the physical and designable worldfor example, materiality, form, and spatiality-contribute to the lived body's engagement with and actions in the world. I end by arguing that Merleau-Ponty offers an essential perspective for understanding the importance of place and lived emplacement in human life, but this perspective must be extended by considering how places change over time via generative processes that enliven or undermine places and lived emplacement.

Phenomenological Research Methods and Urban Design (2023)

The Routledge Handbook of Urban Design Research Methods, edited by Hesam Kamalipour, Patricia Aelbrecht, and Nastaran Peimani, forthcoming, 2023

Most broadly, phenomenology is the study of human experience, particularly its everyday, unnotice... more Most broadly, phenomenology is the study of human experience, particularly its everyday, unnoticed aspects. This chapter considers phenomenological research methods relating to urban places and city placemaking. The chapter begins by reviewing phenomenology and then discusses four phenomenological methods useful for urban-design research: (1) first-person studies of urban places; (2) third-person studies of urban places; (3) careful observation of urban places; and (4) hermeneutic studies of urban places. The chapter concludes by arguing that phenomenology offers an important contribution to urban studies and provides a valuable perspective and set of directives for urban design.

Architecture and Phenomenology (forthcoming, 2022)

for The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Architectural History, edited by Duanfang Lu and to be published by Routledge, London, 2022

In this chapter, I encapsulate the complex, shifting relationship between phenomenology and archi... more In this chapter, I encapsulate the complex, shifting relationship between phenomenology and architecture by speaking of an architectural phenomenology, which I tentatively define as the descriptive and interpretive explication of architectural experiences, situations, and meanings as constituted by qualities and features of both the built environment and human life (Otero-Pailos 2012; Seamon 2017). In demonstrating that architectural phenomenology has significant research and design value today, I first describe the phenomenological approach more fully, highlighting two key phenomenological concepts relevant for architectural understanding—lifeworld and natural attitude. Second, I overview the complicated thread of events whereby architects and architectural theorists became interested in phenomenology. Third, I discuss two phenomenological topics that have come to have value for architecture and briefly discuss their significance for architectural thinking: (1) environmental embodiment; and (2) architectural atmospheres. Last, I identify some key criticisms of architectural phenomenology and suggest what value it might have for the future of architecture, particularly in regard to the imminent arrival of virtual reality, virtual places, and virtual buildings.

A Phenomenological Reading of Jane Jacobs's Death and Life of Great American Cities (2019)

MEDIAPOLIS (an on-line journal of cities & culture), Oct 4, 2019

Though published almost sixty years ago, urbanist Jane Jacobs’s 1961 Death and Life of Great Amer... more Though published almost sixty years ago, urbanist Jane Jacobs’s 1961 Death and Life of Great American Cities continues to grow in conceptual and pragmatic significance. One can safely say that this book—a remarkably perceptive picture of how cities work—is one of the great twentieth-century explications of urban life, continuing to have profound theoretical and practical significance for urban policy, planning, design, and thinking. Though she has never been associated with phenomenology, I argue in this commentary that, in terms of focus, method, and discoveries, Jacobs (1916–2006) can fairly be described as a phenomenologist of urban place. Conceptually, her work points toward a phenomenology of the city and urban lifeworld. Methodologically, she illustrates a manner of study whereby citiness reveals itself in the course of everyday, taken-for-granted life. Jacobs used firsthand urban observation as a starting point for identifying more general principles and structures that make cities what they essentially are—animated, flourishing places marked by exuberant street and sidewalk life.

The published version of this article is available at: https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/2019/10/phenomenological-reading-of-jane-jacobs/

A Portuguese translation of an earlier version of this article is available at:

https://www.academia.edu/42036900/Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities_-_Tradu%C3%A7%C3%A3o_Portugu%C3%AAs_do_Artigo_de_David_Seamon_2011_

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY (summer/fall 2020)

by David Seamon, John Russon, and Stephen Wood

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2020

The 2020 summer/fall issue includes the following entries: • An “in memoriam” for architect and s... more The 2020 summer/fall issue includes the following entries:
• An “in memoriam” for architect and sacred geometer Keith Critchlow, who died in London in April;
• A “book note” on philosopher Dermot Moran’s study, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (2010);
• A “book note” on philosopher Ingrid Leman Stefanovic’s The Wonder of Water (2020), an edited collection examining how human experience relates to decisions about water;
• Torontonian Robert Fabian’s update on downtown neighborhood planning in his city;
• Philosopher John Russon’s exploration of the lived ambiguity of travelling to a foreign place;
• Independent researcher Stephen Wood’s discussion of two contrasting modes of science teaching—what he calls “knowledge-based learning” vs. “understanding-based learning”;
• Philosopher of science Henri Bortoft’s explication of Goethe’s proto-phenomenology of nature as one example of a science of wholeness (originally published as four separate essays in the last four EAP issues and now integrated into one).

Merleau-Ponty, Lived Body, and Place: Toward a Phenomenology of Human Situatedness (2018)

SITUATEDNESS AND PLACE, T. Hünefeldt and A. Schlitte (eds.), Springer, 2018

REFERENCE:: David Seamon, Merleau-Ponty, Lived Body and Place: Toward a Phenomenology of Human Si... more REFERENCE:: David Seamon, Merleau-Ponty, Lived Body and Place: Toward a Phenomenology of Human Situatedness, a chapter in T. Hünefeldt and A. Schlitte (eds.), Situatedness and Place (pp. 41-66). Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018.

ABSTRACT: In this chapter, I draw on French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty's understanding of perception and corporeal sensibility to consider the significance of human situatedness as expressed via place and place experience. To illustrate how Merleau-Ponty's conceptual understanding might be applied to real-world place experiences, I draw on two sources of experiential evidence, the first of which is a passage from Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez's magical-realist novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967/1970). The second source is a set of first-person observations describing events and situations that I happened to take note of during weekday walks between my home and university office over the course of several months. My aim is to use these two narrative accounts as a means to illustrate, via vignettes of everyday human experience, Merleau-Ponty's central concepts of perception, body-subject, and lived embodiment. I contend that these accounts substantiate Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological claims and point to additional significant elements of human situatedness and place experience.

A Portuguese translation of this chapter by Andre Pinto is available here at academia.edu at:

https://www.academia.edu/42134992/Merleau-Ponty_Lived_Body_and_Place_Toward_a_Phenomenology_of_Human_Situatedness_-_Tradu%C3%A7%C3%A3o_em_Portugu%C3%AAs_do_Artigo_de_David_Seamon_2018_

Place (encyclopedia entry, 2020)

INTERNATIONAL LEXICON OF AESTHETICS [sponsored by MIMESIS journals, Milan, Italy], 2020

This 1500-word entry reviews the phenomenological notion of place, which can be defined as any en... more This 1500-word entry reviews the phenomenological notion of place, which can be defined as any environmental locus in and through which individual or group actions, experiences, intentions, and meanings are drawn together spatially and temporally (Casey 2009; Malpas 2018). Place is relevant to research in aesthetics because an integral feature of specific places is their environmental atmosphere and "sense of place" marked by what the ancient Romans spoke of as genius loci--the specific character, ambience, and spirit of a place contributing to its effable and ineffable environmental uniqueness (Relph 1976).

Phenomenological Perspectives on Place, Lifeworlds, and Lived Emplacement: Selected Writings of David Seamon (London: Routledge, 2023)

PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PLACE, LIFEWORLDS, AND LIVED EMPLACEMENT, 2023

This volume is a compilation of 17 previously published entries that focus on the significance of... more This volume is a compilation of 17 previously published entries that focus on the significance of places and place experiences in human life. Chapters are broken into three parts. Part I includes four chapters that consider what phenomenology offers studies of place and place making. These chapters illustrate the theoretical and practical value of phenomenological concepts like lifeworld, homeworld, natural attitude, and bodily actions in place. Part II incorporates five chapters that aim to understand place and lived emplacement phenomenologically. These chapters consider consider Merleau-Ponty's thinking on place-assituatedness, the value of phenomenology for a pedagogy of place making, how architecture might be understood phenomenologically, and the significance of place serendipity in human life. Part III presents phenomenological explications of real-world places and place experience, drawing on photography (André Kertész's Meudon), television (Alan Ball's Six Feet Under), film (John Sayles's Limbo and Sunshine State), and imaginative literature (Doris Lessing's Four-Gated City, Penelope Lively's Spiderweb, and Louis Bromfield's The World We Live in).

Preface: Setting Forth Humanistic Geography (2023)

Chinese translation of HUMANISTIC GEOGRAPHY: PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS (originally 1978), 2023

First draft of a new preface for the Chinese translation of Humanistic Geography: Prospects and P... more First draft of a new preface for the Chinese translation of Humanistic Geography: Prospects and Problems, co-edited by geographers David Ley and Marwyn Samuels and first published by Maaurofa Press in Chicago, 1978; the Chinese translator is geographer Liu Su, and the Chinese publisher is Beijing Normal University Press.

Prominent in the 1970s and 1980s, humanistic geography referred to a wide-ranging body of research emphasizing the central role of human experience and meaning in understanding peoples' relationship with geographical environments. Realizing that human engagement with the geographical world is complex and multivalent, humanistic geographers drew on qualitative approaches like phenomenology and hermeneutics to describe and interpret human actions and understandings as they both sustain and are sustained by geographical aspects of human life such as space, place, region, landscape, and natural environments.

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, (winter/spring 2023) [special memorial issue for Yi-Fu Tuan]

by David Seamon and Stephen Wood

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY , 2023

Entries in this EAP issue are as follows: As you may know, humanistic geographer Yi-Fu Tuan died ... more Entries in this EAP issue are as follows:
As you may know, humanistic geographer Yi-Fu Tuan died in August 2022, and this EAP is a special “in memoriam” issue in his honor. The issue includes tributes by philosopher Ingrid Leman Stefanovic and geographers Edward Relph, Stanley Brunn, and Xu Huang. We include excerpts from five of Tuan’s many articles, chapters, and books.
This winter/spring issue also includes one book review and three essays:
 Cognitive scientist Andrea Hiott reviews psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist’s 2009 The Master and His Emisary.
 Zoologist Stephen Wood considers the phenomenon of noticing the natural world and the question of how this directed awareness unfolds.
 Anthropologist Jenny Quillien provides a first-person ethnography of her recent residence in Alaska.
 Religious-studies scholar Harry Oldmeadow discusses the sacredness of deserts, a theme that complements his earlier EAP essay on the holiness of mountains.
A complete digital EAP archive (1990-2022) is available at: http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/1522.

David Seamon
Editor, Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY (summer/fall 2022) [special memorial issue for Christopher Alexander & Robert Mugerauer]

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2022

Architect Christopher Alexander died in March, and philosopher Robert Mugerauer died in May. This... more Architect Christopher Alexander died in March, and philosopher Robert Mugerauer died in May. This issue of EAP is entirely a memorial to these two significant thinkers whose works were a major contribution to environmental and architectural phenomenology. The issue includes contributions from philosopher Ingrid Leman Stefanovic, anthropologist Jenny Quillien, and computer-program researcher and poet Richard Gabriel. We republish several passages and entries from Alexander and Mugerauer’s writings.

A complete digital EAP archive (1990-2022) is available at: http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/1522.

Moments of Realization: Extending Homeworld in British-African Novelist Doris Lessing's Four-Gated City (2022)

CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY REVIEW, 2022

For Husserl, the homeworld is the tacit, taken-for-granted sphere of experiences, understanding, ... more For Husserl, the homeworld is the tacit, taken-for-granted sphere of experiences, understanding, and situations marking out a world that is comfortable, usual, and "the way things are and should be." Always, according to Husserl, the homeworld is in some mode of lived mutuality with an alienworld-a world as seen as a realm of difference, atypicality, and otherness. In this article, I draw on British-African novelist Doris Lessing's 1969 novel, The Four-Gated City, to consider the shifting homeworld of protagonist Martha Quest, a young white African woman emigrating to battle-scarred London immediately after World War II. Throughout the novel, Quest finds herself in unfamiliar or challenging situations where the world she takes for granted is called into question. Lessing draws on these life-testing experiences to portray Quest's shifting understandings of other individuals' homeworlds that at first she sees as atypical, abnormal, or unreal.

Finding the Center [architect Christopher Alexander's concept of "center"] (2022)

THE SIDE VIEW, 2022

This article is now online at the website of the journal THE SIDE VIEW: https://thesideview.co... more This article is now online at the website of the journal THE SIDE VIEW:

https://thesideview.co/journal/finding-the-center/

In this article, I highlight American architect Christopher Alexander’s concept of “center,” which offers one way to identify the crux of his work, whether thinking or designing. Most broadly, a center is any spatial concentration or organized focus of more intense pattern or activity—for example, an intricate carpet pattern, an elegant entryway, a handsome arcade, a gracious building, or an animated plaza full of users finding pleasure in the place. Whatever its specific nature and scale, a center is a region of concentrated physical and experiential order that provides for an intense spatial and lived relatedness among things, people, situations, and events. A center is “an organized zone of space … which, because of its internal coherence, and because of its relation to context … forms a local zone of relative centeredness with respect to the other parts of space." A pivotal question for Alexander is how an understanding of centers might help architects to conceive of and actualize vigorous places and environments that sustain thriving human life.

Sense of Place (encyclopedia entry, 2022)

International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology, Douglas Richardson, Editor-in-Chief. NY: Wiley, 2021

Sense of place is closely related to genius loci (spirit of place) and can be defined as the spec... more Sense of place is closely related to genius loci (spirit of place) and can be defined as the specific character, atmosphere, and expressive energy of a particular environment or locale. Though allied to sensory, perceptual, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of human experience, sense of place cannot be fully described or understood by these experiential dimensions alone. Sense of place is greater than its environmental and spatial parts and can evoke both positive and negative qualities. Most broadly, sense of place relates to the customary ways in which a place makes itself felt-its specific manner of being as perceived, encountered, known, and remembered by the human beings engaging with that place. As a phenomenon in human life, sense of place has a millennia-old history, beginning with archaic peoples who experienced specific places as receptacles of expressive energy envisioned as gods, spirits, or other ineffable presences. In the English-speaking world, sense of place and genius loci first became significant in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as industrialization and urbanization supplanted agriculture and rural ways of life. Most recently, sense of place and genius loci have been interpreted via the concept of atmosphere, which provides one helpful means for identifying and articulating the less visible features that makes an environment unique and confers on that environment a specific sense of place and genius loci. In the early 2020s, research on sense of place incorporates three contrasting conceptual traditions: first, phenomenological research, which examines experiential aspects of sense of place; second, empiricist-analytic research, which considers sense of place via measurable criteria and correlates respondents' degree of place involvement with independent variables like social status, home ownership, and community ties; and, third, social-constructionist research, which examines how human attributions of sense of place are a social and cultural construction of reality.

Serendipitous Events in Place: The Weave of Bodies and Context via Environmental Unexpectedness and Chance (2021)

INTERTWINING: WEAVING BODY CONTEXT, 2021

In this article, I focus on place release, which relates to an environmental serendipity of happe... more In this article, I focus on place release, which relates to an environmental serendipity of happenstance events and experiences (Seamon 2018). Through unexpected actions, encounters, and situations in place, people are "released" more deeply into themselves. Partly because of surprises happening in place, "life is good" as when one meets an old friend on the sidewalk or notices by chance a street poster advertising a neighborhood coffeehouse reading by a local poet one admires. Importantly, release can also unsettle place when serendipitous events happen that are inappropriate, distressing, threatening, or deadly-for example, an old man is mugged in his own neighborhood or a woman from the United States is run down and killed on a London street because she looked the "wrong" way. Here, I probe place release by considering journalistic and cinematic descriptions of two contrasting modes of place serendipity, one felicitous, the other ill-starred: on one hand, meeting one's life partner because of happenstance encounter in place; on the other hand, losing one's life because of happenstance encounter in place. My aim is to better understand what place release entails and how both human and environmental aspects contribute to its role in the life of places.

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY (winter/spring 2022)

by David Seamon and Harry Oldmeadow

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2022

The 2022 winter/spring issue of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology Includes the fol... more The 2022 winter/spring issue of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology
Includes the following entries:
Five “book notes”:
 Philosopher Quill R. Kukla’s City Living (Oxford Univ. Press, 2021);
 Phenomenologists Michael and Max van Manen’s Classical Writings for a Phenomenology of Practice (Routledge, 2021);
 Philosopher Sebastian Luft’s Subjectivity and Lifeworld in Transcendental Phenomenology (Northwestern Univ. Press, 2021, softcover);
 Philosopher Jeff Malpas’ Rethinking Dwelling (Bloomsbury, 2021);
 Architects Akkelies van Nes and Claudia Yamu’s Introduction to Space Syntax in Urban Studies (Springer, 2021, open-access).

The issue also includes two essays: zoologist Stephen Wood’s consideration of becoming familiar with a natural place; and religious-studies scholar Harry Oldmeadow’s portrait of the holiness of mountains.

A complete digital EAP archive (1990-2021) is available at: http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/1522

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY (summer/fall 2021)

by David Seamon, Jeff Malpas, and John Russon

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2021

This EAP issue includes the following:  An “in memoriam" for environmental psychologist Robert S... more This EAP issue includes the following:
 An “in memoriam" for environmental psychologist Robert Sommer, who died in February, 2021;
 A “book note” on architect Giulia Foscari’s Elements of Venice (2014).
 A “book note” on architect and planner Matthew Carmona’s 3rd edition of Public Places, Urban Spaces (2021), an overview of urban-design theories, concepts, and practices.
 Environmental educator Michael Maser’s explication of a place-based education grounded in what he calls “self-in-place.”
 Philosopher John Russon’s discussion of parallels between love of place and love of human beings.
 Philosopher Jeff Malpas’ consideration of the relation between “spirit of time” and “spirit of place.”
 Cartographer Luke Harvey’s efforts to draw on the example of London parks to develop graphic means for presenting aspects of place experience visually.

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY (winter/spring 2021)

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2021

This 2021 winter/spring issue of Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology includes five essays... more This 2021 winter/spring issue of Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology includes five essays: (1) Stephen Wood’s commentary relating to the phenomenology of animal welfare; (2) Claudia Mausner's discussion of liminality, place, home, and multiple “homes”; (3) Tim White’s firsthand examination of the human-sustaining walkability of Florence, Italy; (4) Edward Relph’s penetrating overview of the future of places and place experiences in the 21st century; and (5) Levent Şentürk’s creative effort to summarize graphically the work of urban designer Kevin Lynch’s seminal The Image of the City (1961).

Please note: If you are using a Mac machine, the full PDF will not appear properly unless you download the PDF. For some reason, academia.edu does not fully accommodate Apple products. As a result, a good number of the graphics of the issue don't appear.

Reflections on the Early SPHS (2023)

SHUTZIAN RESEARCH, 2023

first draft of a reflective essay on the early history of the Society for Phenomenology and the H... more

Place Attachment and Phenomenology: The Dynamic Complexity of Place (2021)

2nd edition of L. C Manzo and P. Devine-Wright, eds., Place attachment: Advances in theory, methods and research. New York: Routledge, pp. 29-44, 2021

In this chapter, I consider place, place experience, and place attachment as they might be unders... more In this chapter, I consider place, place experience, and place attachment as they might be understood phenomenologically from three perspectives: first, holistically; second, dialectically; and, third, generatively. I argue that each of these three perspectives points to a spectrum of complementary experiences, situations, actions, and meanings that remain faithful to the lived comprehensiveness of place and place experience. I suggest that each of these three perspectives offers a range of useful ways for thinking about and understanding place attachment.

Merleau-Ponty, Environmental Embodiment, and Place: Implications for Architecture and Placemaking (2022)

Embodied Awareness and Space: Body, Agency and Current Practice, edited by Christos Kakalis. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming, 2022

In this chapter, I draw on French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy to explore e... more In this chapter, I draw on French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy to explore environmental embodiment-the various lived ways, sensorily and motility-wise, that the body in its prereflective perceptual presence engages and synchronizes with the world at hand, especially its architectural and environmental aspects. First, I consider Merleau-Ponty's interpretation of perception, which he understands as the immediate givenness of the world founded in bodily sensibility. Second, I consider the architectural and environmental significance of what Merleau-Ponty calls body-subject-pre-reflective corporeal awareness expressed through action and typically in sync with and enmeshed in the physical world in which the action unfolds. I focus on the taken-for-granted sensibility of body-subject to manifest in extended ways over time and space. I ask how routine actions and behaviors of individuals coming together regularly can transform an environment into a place with a unique dynamic and character-a lived situation I term place ballet. For both perception and body-subject, I examine how qualities of the physical and designable worldfor example, materiality, form, and spatiality-contribute to the lived body's engagement with and actions in the world. I end by arguing that Merleau-Ponty offers an essential perspective for understanding the importance of place and lived emplacement in human life, but this perspective must be extended by considering how places change over time via generative processes that enliven or undermine places and lived emplacement.

Phenomenological Research Methods and Urban Design (2023)

The Routledge Handbook of Urban Design Research Methods, edited by Hesam Kamalipour, Patricia Aelbrecht, and Nastaran Peimani, forthcoming, 2023

Most broadly, phenomenology is the study of human experience, particularly its everyday, unnotice... more Most broadly, phenomenology is the study of human experience, particularly its everyday, unnoticed aspects. This chapter considers phenomenological research methods relating to urban places and city placemaking. The chapter begins by reviewing phenomenology and then discusses four phenomenological methods useful for urban-design research: (1) first-person studies of urban places; (2) third-person studies of urban places; (3) careful observation of urban places; and (4) hermeneutic studies of urban places. The chapter concludes by arguing that phenomenology offers an important contribution to urban studies and provides a valuable perspective and set of directives for urban design.

Architecture and Phenomenology (forthcoming, 2022)

for The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Architectural History, edited by Duanfang Lu and to be published by Routledge, London, 2022

In this chapter, I encapsulate the complex, shifting relationship between phenomenology and archi... more In this chapter, I encapsulate the complex, shifting relationship between phenomenology and architecture by speaking of an architectural phenomenology, which I tentatively define as the descriptive and interpretive explication of architectural experiences, situations, and meanings as constituted by qualities and features of both the built environment and human life (Otero-Pailos 2012; Seamon 2017). In demonstrating that architectural phenomenology has significant research and design value today, I first describe the phenomenological approach more fully, highlighting two key phenomenological concepts relevant for architectural understanding—lifeworld and natural attitude. Second, I overview the complicated thread of events whereby architects and architectural theorists became interested in phenomenology. Third, I discuss two phenomenological topics that have come to have value for architecture and briefly discuss their significance for architectural thinking: (1) environmental embodiment; and (2) architectural atmospheres. Last, I identify some key criticisms of architectural phenomenology and suggest what value it might have for the future of architecture, particularly in regard to the imminent arrival of virtual reality, virtual places, and virtual buildings.

A Phenomenological Reading of Jane Jacobs's Death and Life of Great American Cities (2019)

MEDIAPOLIS (an on-line journal of cities & culture), Oct 4, 2019

Though published almost sixty years ago, urbanist Jane Jacobs’s 1961 Death and Life of Great Amer... more Though published almost sixty years ago, urbanist Jane Jacobs’s 1961 Death and Life of Great American Cities continues to grow in conceptual and pragmatic significance. One can safely say that this book—a remarkably perceptive picture of how cities work—is one of the great twentieth-century explications of urban life, continuing to have profound theoretical and practical significance for urban policy, planning, design, and thinking. Though she has never been associated with phenomenology, I argue in this commentary that, in terms of focus, method, and discoveries, Jacobs (1916–2006) can fairly be described as a phenomenologist of urban place. Conceptually, her work points toward a phenomenology of the city and urban lifeworld. Methodologically, she illustrates a manner of study whereby citiness reveals itself in the course of everyday, taken-for-granted life. Jacobs used firsthand urban observation as a starting point for identifying more general principles and structures that make cities what they essentially are—animated, flourishing places marked by exuberant street and sidewalk life.

The published version of this article is available at: https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/2019/10/phenomenological-reading-of-jane-jacobs/

A Portuguese translation of an earlier version of this article is available at:

https://www.academia.edu/42036900/Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities_-_Tradu%C3%A7%C3%A3o_Portugu%C3%AAs_do_Artigo_de_David_Seamon_2011_

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY (summer/fall 2020)

by David Seamon, John Russon, and Stephen Wood

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2020

The 2020 summer/fall issue includes the following entries: • An “in memoriam” for architect and s... more The 2020 summer/fall issue includes the following entries:
• An “in memoriam” for architect and sacred geometer Keith Critchlow, who died in London in April;
• A “book note” on philosopher Dermot Moran’s study, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (2010);
• A “book note” on philosopher Ingrid Leman Stefanovic’s The Wonder of Water (2020), an edited collection examining how human experience relates to decisions about water;
• Torontonian Robert Fabian’s update on downtown neighborhood planning in his city;
• Philosopher John Russon’s exploration of the lived ambiguity of travelling to a foreign place;
• Independent researcher Stephen Wood’s discussion of two contrasting modes of science teaching—what he calls “knowledge-based learning” vs. “understanding-based learning”;
• Philosopher of science Henri Bortoft’s explication of Goethe’s proto-phenomenology of nature as one example of a science of wholeness (originally published as four separate essays in the last four EAP issues and now integrated into one).

Merleau-Ponty, Lived Body, and Place: Toward a Phenomenology of Human Situatedness (2018)

SITUATEDNESS AND PLACE, T. Hünefeldt and A. Schlitte (eds.), Springer, 2018

REFERENCE:: David Seamon, Merleau-Ponty, Lived Body and Place: Toward a Phenomenology of Human Si... more REFERENCE:: David Seamon, Merleau-Ponty, Lived Body and Place: Toward a Phenomenology of Human Situatedness, a chapter in T. Hünefeldt and A. Schlitte (eds.), Situatedness and Place (pp. 41-66). Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018.

ABSTRACT: In this chapter, I draw on French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty's understanding of perception and corporeal sensibility to consider the significance of human situatedness as expressed via place and place experience. To illustrate how Merleau-Ponty's conceptual understanding might be applied to real-world place experiences, I draw on two sources of experiential evidence, the first of which is a passage from Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez's magical-realist novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967/1970). The second source is a set of first-person observations describing events and situations that I happened to take note of during weekday walks between my home and university office over the course of several months. My aim is to use these two narrative accounts as a means to illustrate, via vignettes of everyday human experience, Merleau-Ponty's central concepts of perception, body-subject, and lived embodiment. I contend that these accounts substantiate Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological claims and point to additional significant elements of human situatedness and place experience.

A Portuguese translation of this chapter by Andre Pinto is available here at academia.edu at:

https://www.academia.edu/42134992/Merleau-Ponty_Lived_Body_and_Place_Toward_a_Phenomenology_of_Human_Situatedness_-_Tradu%C3%A7%C3%A3o_em_Portugu%C3%AAs_do_Artigo_de_David_Seamon_2018_

Place (encyclopedia entry, 2020)

INTERNATIONAL LEXICON OF AESTHETICS [sponsored by MIMESIS journals, Milan, Italy], 2020

This 1500-word entry reviews the phenomenological notion of place, which can be defined as any en... more This 1500-word entry reviews the phenomenological notion of place, which can be defined as any environmental locus in and through which individual or group actions, experiences, intentions, and meanings are drawn together spatially and temporally (Casey 2009; Malpas 2018). Place is relevant to research in aesthetics because an integral feature of specific places is their environmental atmosphere and "sense of place" marked by what the ancient Romans spoke of as genius loci--the specific character, ambience, and spirit of a place contributing to its effable and ineffable environmental uniqueness (Relph 1976).

PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PLACE, LIFEWORLDS, AND LIVED EMPLACEMENT: SELECTED WRITINGS OF DAVID SEAMON (Routledge, 2023)

PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PLACE, LIFEWORLDS, AND LIVED EMPLACEMENT (Routledge), 2023

Seventeen previously published chapters and articles dealing with the importance of place and pla... more

A GEOGRAPHY OF THE LIFEWORLD (1979) Chinese translation (2022)

A GEOGRAPHY OF THE LIFEWORLD, 1979

A GEOGRAPHY OF THE LIFEWORLD (1979, reprinted 2015) has been published in Chinese translation. Th... more A GEOGRAPHY OF THE LIFEWORLD (1979, reprinted 2015) has been published in Chinese translation. The author wishes to thank geographers Dr. Shangyi Zhou, who initiated this project; and doctoral student Huihui Gao, who contributed to the translation. The book is published by Beijing Normal University Press. The ISBN is 978-7-303-27114-6.

LIFE TAKES PLACE (2018) Persian translation (2021)

رویداد زندگی نیازمند مکان است: نگاهی پدیدارشناسانه به زندگی و مکان, 2021

David Seamon's LIFE TAKES PLACE: PHENOMENOLOGY, LIFEWORLDS, AND PLACE MAKING (Routledge, 2018) ha... more David Seamon's LIFE TAKES PLACE: PHENOMENOLOGY, LIFEWORLDS, AND PLACE MAKING (Routledge, 2018) has been translated and published in Farsi. The Farsi title is:

رویداد زندگی نیازمند مکان است: نگاهی پدیدارشناسانه به زندگی و مکان

The publisher's website is:

https://www.digikala.com/product/dkp-4808744
‫خمینی‬ ‫امام‬ ‫المللی‬ ‫بین‬ ‫دانشگاه‬ ‫انتشارات‬ ‫سیمون‬ ‫دیوید‬ ‫اثر‬ ‫است‬ ‫مکان‬ ‫نیازمند‬ ‫زندگی‬ ‫رویداد‬ ‫کتاب
‬

LIFE TAKES PLACE: Preface to the Korean edition (forthcoming, 2020)

Korean translation of LIFE TAKES PLACE, 2020

I am honored to write a preface for this Korean edition of Life Takes Place, sponsored by the Aca... more I am honored to write a preface for this Korean edition of Life Takes Place, sponsored by the Academy of Mobility Humanities at Seoul's Konkuk University. I wish to express my thanks to Professor Shangyi Zhou for recognizing the potential conceptual and practical value of my book. I thank philosopher Il-Man Choi for a skillful translation. I argue in Life Takes Place that, even in our current time of geographical mobility, digital technologies, and global interconnectedness, real-world places and place experiences remain integral to human life and human well-being. Drawing on recent phenomenologies of place written by environmental thinkers Edward Casey, Jeff Malpas, and Edward Relph, I consider how places and lived emplacement are an essential part of human experience, and how human being is always already human-being-in-place. As Casey declares, "To be is to be in place." In this sense, human life is impossible without place, even in our mobile, hypermodern world. In Life Takes Place, I draw on examples of specific places and place experiences to understand place more broadly. Advocating for a holistic way of understanding that I call synergistic relationality, I consider place, place experience, and lived emplacement from three complementary perspectives: first, holistically; second, dialectically; and, third, generatively. I argue that each of these three perspectives points to a spectrum of complementary experiences, situations, actions, and meanings that remain faithful to the range of place types and place experiences. I suggest that each of these three perspectives offers a contrasting but complementary way for understanding places conceptually and for making places practically. I contend that the quality of human life is inescapably related to robust places and creative, actualized place making.

LIFE TAKES PLACE--20% off flyer

Why does life take place? This question grounds the phenomenology of place presented in this book... more Why does life take place? This question grounds the phenomenology of place presented in this book. Drawing on the phenomenological claim that human being is always human being in place, David Seamon argues that, even in our mobile, hypermodern world, human life is impossible without place. He draws on examples of specific places and place experiences to understand place more broadly. Advocating for a holistic way of understanding that he calls “synergistic relationality,” he defines places as spatial fields that gather, activate, sustain, identify, and interconnect things, human beings, experiences, meanings, and events.
Recognizing that places always change over time, Seamon examines their processual dimension by identifying six generative processes that he labels interaction, identity, release, realization, intensification, and creation. Drawing on practical examples from architecture, planning, and urban design, he argues that an understanding of these six place processes might contribute to a more rigorous place making that produces robust places and propels vibrant environmental experiences.
Written in an accessible style that will appeal to academics, practitioners, and the lay public, this book is a significant contribution to the growing research literature in “place and place-making studies.”

The Obsolescence of Physical Places? A GEOGRAPHY OF THE LIFEWORLD in Retrospect (2015, new introduction for Routledge "Revivals" reprint)

In this new introduction to the Routledge "Revivals" reprint of A GEOGRAPHY THE LIFEWORLD (1979; ... more In this new introduction to the Routledge "Revivals" reprint of A GEOGRAPHY THE LIFEWORLD (1979; see complete PDF version in "books" entry below), I discuss the book's background and ask if its emphasis on physical place making remains relevant in the hypermodern world of digital technologies that often bypass material space and place. In addition, I respond to the poststructural criticism that the book emphasized essential, universal qualities of human life and ignored lived differences generated by social, economic, political, and cultural structures.

GOETHE'S WAY OF SCIENCE--A PHENOMENOLOGY OF NATURE (1998)

by David Seamon and Mark Riegner

DWELLING, SEEING, AND DESIGNING: TOWARD A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ECOLOGY (1993)

by David Seamon, robert mugerauer, and Gary Coates

DWELLING, PLACE AND ENVIRONMENT: TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERSON AND WORLD (1985, 1989, 2000): Editors' 2000 & 1985 Introductions

by David Seamon, robert mugerauer, and Michael Zimmerman

ENVIRONMENTAL PERCEPTION AND BEHAVIOR: AN INVENTORY AND PROSPECT (1984, intro & ch 11)

HUMAN EXPERIENCE OF SPACE AND PLACE, edited with Anne Buttimer (1980)

This extract includes the following entries: 1. Cover and contents 2.Foreword by Torsten Hagers... more

A GEOGRAPHY OF THE LIFEWORLD: MOVEMENT, REST AND ENCOUNTER (full text) (1979)

This book presents a phenomenology of EVERYDAY ENVIRONMENTAL EXPERIENCE--The sum total of peoples... more This book presents a phenomenology of EVERYDAY ENVIRONMENTAL EXPERIENCE--The sum total of peoples’ firsthand involvements with their everyday places, spaces, and environments. Through a phenomenological explication of some 1,500 personal observations provided by “environmental experience groups,” the author identifies three overarching themes—movement, rest, and encounter—that appear to mark the essential lived core of everyday environmental experience.

The section on MOVEMENT examines the habitual nature of everyday environmental behaviors and argues, after French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962), that the lived foundation of these behaviors is the body as preconscious but intelligent subject (“body-subject”). The section on REST explores people’s attachment to place and gives particular attention to at-homeness and positive affective relationships with places and environments.

The book’s third section on ENCOUNTER considers the multifaceted ways in which people make or do not make attentive contact with their surroundings and explores such modes of awareness as obliviousness, noticing, watching, and more intense encounters.

In the book’s concluding section, the author examines the lived relationships and interconnections among movement, rest, and encounter and argues that their threefold structure offers one simple but integrated way to envision human environmental experience conceptually and to think about design and policy implications practically.

Yi-Fu Tuan, Humanistic Geography, and Phenomenology (2022)

This slide presentation was contributed to a memorial event for geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, who died i... more This slide presentation was contributed to a memorial event for geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, who died in August. Prof. Shangyi Zhou, a geographer at Beijing Normal University, organized a special symposium in Tuan's honor--"The Contribution of Humanistic Geography to Contemporary Geographical Research." The symposium was held September 10, 2022. Presentations were limited to 10 minutes each.

Ways of understanding wholeness: Place, Christopher Alexander, & synergistic relationality (October 2018)

In this conference presentation, I discuss Christopher Alexander’s work in relation to a more com... more In this conference presentation, I discuss Christopher Alexander’s work in relation to a more comprehensive body of research and design that broadly might be called a “phenomenology of place and place making.” I begin by describing two contrasting ways of understanding wholeness—what I call “analytic relationality” and “synergistic relationality.” In analytic relationality, wholes are pictured as sets of parts external to each other and among which are located linkages involving stronger and weaker connections and interrelationships. In contrast, synergistic relationality understands wholes as dynamic, generative fields that sustain and are sustained by intensive parts that integrally belong to and support the whole. I suggest that, in terms of synergistic relationality, places can be envisioned as interconnected fields of intertwined relationships gathering and gathered by a lived intimacy between people and world. I illustrate how Alexander’s approach to place making assumes a synergistic understanding of place and contributes to understanding and making places that are whole, robust, and life-enhancing.

Portraying Experience Visually & Aesthetically: André Kertész as a Photographer of the Lifeworld (March, 2017)

A public lecture at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University, March 16, 2017, sponsored by Duquesne's Cen... more

Understanding urban place holistically Analytic vs. synergistic relationality (March, 2017)

A seminar presentation at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University, March 17, 2017, and sponsored by Duqu... more

Finding Merleau-Ponty in Architecture and in Place (2016)

The actual lecture is available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/results?q=David+Seamon&sp... more The actual lecture is available on YouTube at:

https://www.youtube.com/results?q=David+Seamon&sp=QgIIAQ%253D%253D

This presentation considers how the phenomenological work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) contributes to an understanding of architecture and place experience via his emphasis on the lived body. The focus is on architect Thomas Thiis-Evensen’s “architectural archetypes” and architectural theorist Bill Hillier’s “space syntax.” The presentation highlights three claims: First, that Thiis-Evensen provides a language for locating unself-conscious, visceral aspects of buildings & architectural meaning (Merleau-Ponty’s perception and phenomenal field); second, that Hilllier illustrates how the spatiality of place—i.e., pathway configuration—supports or inhibits particular actions & routines of lived bodies as they come together or remain apart spatially (Merleau-Ponty’s body-subject and intercorporeality); and, third, that both Thiis-Evensen & Hillier illustrate ways via architecture and place whereby pre-reflective bodily awareness and actions play an important role in the lifeworld (Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the lived body as intentional but pre-reflective agent).

Understanding wholes holistically: Synergistic relationality & place (2016)

This presentation has two aims: First, To present wholeness as synergistic relationality; and, s... more

Twenty-Five Years of ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY (2015)

Presentation prepared for a special conference session, “25 Years of Environmental and Architectu... more

Situated Cognition and the Phenomenology of Place: Lifeworld, Environmental Embodiment, and Immersion-in-World (2015)

This presentation makes use of a passage from novelist Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years... more This presentation makes use of a passage from novelist Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to illustrate Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the lived body and to consider what the related phenomenological concepts of place, environmental embodiment, and immersion-in-world might offer research in situated cognition.

Key words: body-subject, lifeworld, lived body, Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology, place, situated cognition

Situated Cognition and the Phenomenology of Place: Lifeworld, Environmental Embodiment, and Immersion-in-World (2015)

paper version to accompany above powerpoint presentation with same title invited talk prepared for a special session, “Space and Situated Cognition,” held at the 6th International Conference on Spatial Cognition, September 7-11, 2015, Rome, Italy; © David Seamon 2015

This paper makes use of a passage from novelist Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Sol... more This paper makes use of a passage from novelist Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to illustrate Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the lived body and to consider what the related phenomenological concepts of place, environmental embodiment, and immersion-in-world might offer research in situated cognition.

Key words: body-subject, lifeworld, lived body, Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology, place, situated cognition

Looking at a Photograph—André Kertész’s 1928 MEUDON: How Phenomenologically to Interpret Aesthetic Experience? (2013)

The published version of this presentation (in ACADEMIC QUARTER) is available in "papers" above.

Focusing on André Kertész’s 1928 photograph of the Paris suburb, Meudon, I consider a phenomenolo... more Focusing on André Kertész’s 1928 photograph of the Paris suburb, Meudon, I consider a phenomenological means for exploring aesthetic encounter with a photograph. Drawing on my own interpretive work with this image as well as student responses, I delineate a continuum of lived encounter that ranges from partial seeing to deeper aesthetic insight. Making use of the progressively-intensive designations of philosopher Henri Bortoft (2012), I identify a lived continuum ranging from limited assimilation through a more involved appropriation to an engaged participatory understanding."

Analytic and Synergistic Understandings of Place: Keeping the Whole, Whole through Phenomenology, David Bohm's "World Tube," and Relational Ontologies (2013)

Finding One’s Place: Environmental and Human Risk in American Filmmaker John Sayles’s LIMBO (2012)

A major theme in American independent filmmaker John Sayles’ films is exploring relationships bet... more A major theme in American independent filmmaker John Sayles’ films is exploring relationships between people and places, particularly as those places incorporate economic and existential limitations or possibilities. In Sayles’ 1999 Limbo, the place is current-day Alaska, which is both the setting and antagonist for the three main characters who face personal and interpersonal risk as that risk is impelled by place in both its human and natural forms—in other words, the hazard of civilization, on one hand; the hazard of pure nature and wilderness, on the other hand. A central conclusion that Sayles points to in Limbo is that looking for one’s place may ultimately be more significant than the actual finding itself. Here, I examine this phenomenon of “trying to find one’s place” as portrayed in the experiences, situations, and events encountered by Limbo’s major and minor characters. I also consider how Sayles presents the place of the natural world in this effort to find one’s place.

“Seeing” Merleau-Ponty in the Photographs of André Kertész (2012)

This presentation draws on Hungarian-American photographer André Kertész’s photographs as they mi... more This presentation draws on Hungarian-American photographer André Kertész’s photographs as they might provide insight into Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological understanding of perception, which he depicts as the immediate givenness of the world founded in corporeal sensibility. I argue that Kertész’s photographs can be used to illustrate three dimensions of Merleau-Ponty’s perception (Cerbone 2008): First, perceiving the world; second, being embodied in the world; and, third, coming to grips with the world. Examples from Kertész’s oeuvre are provided for each.

“Crosshatching” as a Qualitative Method for Facilitating Interpretive Trustworthiness: Clarifying Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenological Understanding of Perception through Photographer Saul Leiter’s New York City Photographs (2012)

“Lifeworld” as a Word to Describe People-Environment Intertwinement (2012)

One ontological and epistemological dilemma faced by phenomenological researchers is how to descr... more One ontological and epistemological dilemma faced by phenomenological researchers is how to describe in academic language the always-already givenness of the world at hand. From a phenomenological perspective, there is no dualistic person/world or people/environment relationship. Instead, there is only a people-world immersion, entwinement, and commingling whereby what is conventionally understood as two conceptually—person/world, subject/object—is realized as one existentially—person-intertwined-with-world. How accurately to identity and depict this lived wholeness of people-world is a challenging phenomenological problem.

For this symposium on "words in environment-behavior research," I choose the word “lifeworld” to discuss because it is one phenomenological concept that sustains the lived wholeness of people-world and insulates one from falling back into the dualistic phrasing of people apart from world or person apart from environment.

A Goethean Phenomenology of Water: The Work of Naturalist Paul Krafel, Hydrologist Theodor Schwenk, & Sculptor John Wilkes (2011)

Homeworld, Alienworld, and Becoming-at-Home in Alan Ball's HBO Television Series, SIX FEET UNDER (2011)

‘Seeing’ Merleau-Ponty’s Perception: Possibilities in the New York City Photographs of Saul Leiter (2011)

In this presentation, I draw on images from New York City photographer Saul Leiter (1923—) to cla... more In this presentation, I draw on images from New York City photographer Saul Leiter (1923—) to clarify Merleau-Ponty’s notion of perception—the always already immediate givenness of the world founded in corporeal sensibility. Perception is difficult to understand intellectually because its presence typically lies beneath conscious cerebral awareness.

I explore how many of Leiter’s photographs facilitate a rupture in what is seen so that the tacitness of perception is given attention. Because of some visual shift in the world’s usualness, viewers bring direct awareness to the “unusualness” of the situation seen; as a result, the perceptual stratum moves to the foreground because we are not exactly sure what we see.

I identify several ways in which Leiter’s photographs call into question our looking: Unraveling the ‘unknown’ through finding the recognizable; picturing parts of things; presenting mirror and window reflections that at first glance don’t make sense; portraying ordinary things oddly framed; and depicting unusual images of people-in-place.

Jane Jacobs's DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES as a Phenomenology of Urban Place (2011)

The published version of this presentation (in JOURNAL OF SPACE SYNTAX) is available in "papers" above.

"This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Jane Jacobs’s seminal 1961 Death and Life of Great A... more "This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Jane Jacobs’s seminal 1961 Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jacobs 1961/1993), a book that helped shift Americans’ understanding and treatment of their cities (Klemek 2011, p. 76). Though her work has never been associated with phenomenology, I argue in this presentation that, in terms of method, focus, and discoveries, Jacobs (1916—2006) can fairly be described as a phenomenologist of urban place.

In claiming Jacobs as a phenomenologist of the city, I examine the following themes:

• Jacobs’s mode of seeing and understanding as phenomenological method;
• Her claim that citiness is a phenomenon in its own right and has the power to draw and hold people to particular urban places;
• Her portrait of urban experience and place as they are founded in environmental embodiment;
• Her pointing toward a constellation of place relationships and processes that potentially strengthen or weaken citiness.

key words: Jane Jacobs, city, urban lifeworld, place, urban place, Jane Jacobs as phenomenologist, urban phenomenology, Death and Life of Great American Cities"

Using Imaginative Literature to Understand Environmental Embodiment: An Example from Gabriel García Márquez’s ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE (2010)

This presentation focuses on classroom use of a passage from Columbian novelist Gabriel García Má... more This presentation focuses on classroom use of a passage from Columbian novelist Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (Márquez 1967/2006) to provide a descriptive context in which upper-level Architecture students in a “theories of place” seminar interpret phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty’s notion of body-subject—the pre-reflective but learned intentionality of the body manifested through action and typically in sync with and enmeshed in the physical world in which the action unfolds (Merleau-Ponty 1962).

After delineating some of the key aspects of body-subject as it has relevance to environmental and architectural concerns, I present the passage from One Hundred Years of Solitude, provide two examples of student interpretation, and conclude with some evaluative comments on the students’ interpretations.

Review of Craig Holdrege's SEEING THE ANIMAL WHOLE AND WHY IT MATTERS (2021)

SOCIETY & ANIMALS, 2021

In the last several decades, there has arisen a growing interest in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ... more In the last several decades, there has arisen a growing interest in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s way of science as it contributes to a phenomenology of the natural world. Though must better known for his works in poetry, drama, and imaginative literature, Goethe (1749-1832) was profoundly interested in studying the natural world (Goethe 1988). His writings on plants, morphology, geology, weather, and color continue to draw supportive attention today, from scientists, artists, and philosophers (Bortoft 2012; Richards 2002; Schad 2019).

One of the most significant aspects of Goethe’s scientific efforts was his developing a method of study whereby the researcher might empathize with the thing studied and see it in a comprehensive, accurate way truthful to what the thing actually is, mostly via a method of engaged, qualitative encounter and description. Since the 1990s, this method of study has been associated broadly with a particular manner of phenomenology—more specifically, with a phenomenology of the natural world (Hennigfeld 2015; Seamon and Zajonc 1998; Simms 2005). A recent effort to draw on Goethe’s way of understanding the natural world is ecologist Craig Holdrege’s Seeing the Animal Whole and Why It Matters. In this book, Holdrege uses a Goethean approach to understand nine animals as they might be described “holistically,” by which the author means showing “how an animal’s many features are interconnected and are a revelation of the animal as a whole” (p. 12). The nine animals that Holdrege studies are the sloth, elephant, mole, bison, zebra, lion, giraffe, tadpole/frog, and dairy cow.

Review of Peter L. Laurence's BECOMING JANE JACOBS (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)

A review of Peter L. Laurence's just-published BECOMING JANE JACOBS (University of Pennsylvania P... more

Review of Yi-Fu Tuan's ROMANTIC GEOGRAPHY (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2013)

ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, vol. 11, issue 2, pp. 369-72, 2014

Yi-Fu Tuan's ROMANTIC GEOGRAPHY: IN SEARCH OF THE SUBLIME LANDSCAPE (Madison, Wisconsin: Universi... more

Review of Christopher Alexander's THE BATTLE FOR THE LIFE AND BEAUTY OF THE EARTH (Oxford Univ Press, 2012)

Review of Nili Portugali’s A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO ARCHITECTURE: THE FELICJA BLUMENTAL MUSIC CENTER AND LIBRARY, TEL AVIV (Tel Aviv, Israel: Am Oved Publishers, 2011).

Review of Jorge Otero-Pailos' ARCHITECTURE'S HISTORICAL TURN: PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE POSTMODERN (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2010)

Review of Christopher Alexander’s THE NATURE OF ORDER, volumes 2-4 (Berkeley: Center for Environmental Structure, 2002-05)

Review of Christopher Alexander's THE PHENOMENON OF LIFE: Vol 1 of THE NATURE OF ORDER (Berkeley: Center for Environmental Structure, 2002)

TRADITIONAL BUILDING, February 2005, pp. 204-05, 2005

Review of Bill Hillier's SPACE IS THE MACHINE (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996)

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol. 14, no. 3 (fall 2003), pp. 6-9, 2003

Review of Henri Bortoft's THE WHOLENESS OF NATURE (Edinburgh: Floris, 1996)

PARABOLA, vol. 22, no. 3 (fall 1997), pp. 90-91, Oct 1997

Review of Meryle Secrest's FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT (NY: Knopf, 1992)

PARABOLA, 1993, vol. 18, no. 2 (summer), pp. 92, 94, 1993

Review of Grant Hildebrand's THE WRIGHT SPACE: PATTERNS & MEANINGS IN FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S HOUSES (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1991)

GREAT PLAINS RESEARCH, vol. 2, no. 1 (Feb. 1992), pp. 131-34, 1992

Review of Neil Evernden's THE NATURAL ALIEN--HUMANKIND AND THE ENVIRONMENT (Toronto Univ of Toronto Press, 1985)

A review of Neil Evernden's THE NATURAL ALIEN--HUMAN KIND AND THE ENVIRONMENT.

Review of Edward Relph's RATIONAL LANDSCAPES AND HUMANISTIC GEOGRAPHY (NY, Barnes & Noble, 1981)

Relph's second book in which he develops the invaluable ethical concept of "environmental humilit... more

review of Christian Norberg-Schulz's GENIUS LOCI--TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF ARCHITECTURE (NY Rizzoli, 1980)

A review of architectural theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz's GENIUS LOCI--TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOG... more

Review of Edward Relph's PLACE AND PLACELESSNESS (London , Pion, 1976)

A review of Relph's seminal PLACE AND PLACELESSNESS, first published in 1977 and reprinted in 200... more

Review of Sir George Trevelyan's THE ACTIVE EYE IN ARCHITECTURE (Ross on Wye, Herefordshire: Wrekin Trust, 1977).

IMPRESSIONS, 1988

Review of Gottfried Richter's ART AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1985 [translated from the German Ideen zur Kunstgeschichte; originally published 1937])

IMPRESSIONS, 1988

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, Vol. 33, 2022 (2 issues)

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2022

2022 winter/spring and summer/fall issues of volume 33 of ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENO... more

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY--Cumulative Index, vols. 1-32 (1990-2021)

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2021

This index includes all EAP entries except reference items listed in “citations received.” Entrie... more This index includes all EAP entries except reference items listed in “citations received.” Entries have been identified in the following order: volume number, issue number, and page(s). Thus 3,2:10, for example, refers to volume 3, issue 2, page 10. Volume numbers by years are as follows: vol. 1—1990; vol. 2—1991; vol. 3—1992; vol. 4—1993; vol. 5—1994; vol. 6—1995; vol. 7—1996; vol. 8—1997; vol. 9—1998; vol. 10—1999; vol. 11—2000; vol. 12—2001; vol. 13—2002; vol. 14—2003; vol. 15—2004; vol. 16—2005; vol. 17—2006; vol. 18—2007; vol. 19—2008; vol. 20—2009; vol. 21—2010; vol. 22—2011; vol. 23—2012; vol. 24—2013; vol. 25—2014; vol. 26—2015; vol. 27—2016; vol. 28—2017; vol. 29—2018; vol. 30—2019; vol. 31--2020; vol. 32--2021 [note EAP became digital copy only in 2016 and shifted from three to two issues per year]

The index categories are: feature essays; thematic issues, book & film reviews; book notes; bibliographies; course outlines; poetry; noteworthy readings; graduate theses; web sites; news from readers; conferences; organizations; refereed journals; book series; other publications; obituaries; topics.

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol. 32, 2021 (2 issues)

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol. 31, 2020 (2 issues)

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2020

The 2020 volume of ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, which includes two issues.

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol. 30, 2019 (2 issues, including 30th-anniversary issue)

by David Seamon, Julia Bennett, Doris Rohr, and david ferlic

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2019

The winter/spring and summer/fall 2019 volume of ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY.

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol. 29, 2018 (2 issues)

Twenty-three definitions of phenomenology (2019)

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 2019

This set of definitions was originally assembled to be included in “Whither Phenomenology? Thirty... more This set of definitions was originally assembled to be included in “Whither Phenomenology? Thirty years of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology.” This article was written to celebrate the thirtieth year of that journal’s publication (ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol. 30, no. 2, summer/fall 2019, pp. 37-48); the definitions were published at the end of this article; the list of questions relating to environmental and architectural concerns and mentioned in the text are available in the issue on p. 36. The complete issue is available at: https://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/39802

Twenty-five Important Works in Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology (2009)

This list was compiled in 2009 by David Seamon for a special 20th-anniversary issue of Environmen... more This list was compiled in 2009 by David Seamon for a special 20th-anniversary issue of Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology (all issues of which are uploaded to this academia.edu website). Several of the entries here are not explicitly phenomenological; they are included because they discuss important lived aspects of peoples’ dealings with environments, places, landscapes, buildings, and the natural world.

Questions relating to environmental and architectural phenomenology from EAP's 25th-anniversary issue.pdf

A list of questions generated for the 25th-anniversary issue of ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHE... more

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol 28, 2017 (2 issues)

by David Seamon, Bob Barzan, and Ulf Cronquist

See individual 2017 issues under "papers" for content descriptions.

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol 27, 2016 (2 issues)

by David Seamon, Tarek Wagih, Stephen Wood, and Victoria King

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY vol 26, 2015 (3 issues)

Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology (winter 2015)

by David Seamon and david ferlic

Besides “items of interest” and “citations received,” this issue includes: • Environmental psycho... more Besides “items of interest” and “citations received,” this issue includes: • Environmental psychologist Claudia Mausner’s review of urban designer Vikas Mehta’s The Street (Routledge, 2013), which incorporates an innovative observational study of sidewalk behaviors in three urban neighborhoods in the Boston metropolitan region. • Phenomenological psychologist Christopher Aanstoos’s “Building Home Together,” a reflection on how a phenomenological perspective can help to envision designing one’s home. “Can we,” writes Aanstoos, “imagine our experience of living in a home well enough to be guided in its design by a phenomenology of that imaginal experience?” • Contemplative craftsman Jeff Ediger’s “If Dwell is a Verb, ‘Chair’ is ‘to Sit’,” an essay in which Ediger presents three “imaginal vignettes” that explore the lived nature of sitting. Having created architecture, Ediger asks, “do we then forget how to dwell? For instance, we sit. We therefore build chairs. Having built the chair,...

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY vol 25, 2014 (3 issues, including special 25th-anniversary issue)

by David Seamon, Bruce Janz, Mark Riegner, Janet Donohoe, Bryan Bannon, Matthew Bower, and Julio Bermudez

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol 24, 2013 (3 issues)

by David Seamon, George Ananchev, Benoit Jacquet, and Ingrid Stefanovic

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol. 23, 2012 (3 issues)

by David Seamon, Andrew Moore, Janet Donohoe, and Benoit Jacquet

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol. 22, 2011 (3 issues)

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol. 21, 2010 (3 issues)

by David Seamon, Eva Simms, Dylan Trigg, and Bruce Janz

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol. 20, 2009 (3 issues, including special 20th-anniversary issue with essays by Karsten Harries, Bernd Jager, Jeff Malpas, and Edward Relph)

by David Seamon and Jeff Malpas

ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, vol. 19, 2008 (3 issues)

by David Seamon, Dylan Trigg, Ron Walkey, and Eva Simms

Humanistic Geography: Key points

Handout accompanying a lecture for a seminar in "Philosophy of Geography," Department of Geograph... more Handout accompanying a lecture for a seminar in "Philosophy of Geography," Department of Geography, University of North Texas, October 6, 2020; seminar taught by Dr. Waquar Ahred.

First formalized by geographer Yi-Fu Tuan in 1976, humanistic geography refers to a wide-ranging body of research emphasizing the importance of human experience and meaning in understanding people's relationship with places and geographical environments. ▪ Key geographic phenomena: space, place, home, mobility, in-placeness, out-of-placeness, landscape, region, nature, and human-made environments. Four key themes 1. Multidimensional understandings. Humanistic geographers emphasized that human life and experience is a dynamic, multivalent structure that incorporates bodily, sensory, emotional, attitudinal, cognitive, and transpersonal dimensions. Humanistic researchers argued that a comprehensive human geography must describe these many dimensions; understand what they contribute to environmental experience, action, and meaning; and seek out integrated frameworks identifying how these many dimensions relate and interact in supportive and undermining ways. 2. Open, empathetic methods. Humanistic geographers emphasized that much of human experience is opaque, ineffable, or beyond taken-for-granted awareness. To identify and describe these less accessible aspects of human life, humanistic geographers largely turned away from conventional scientific methods that required tangible, measurable phenomena explicated and correlated mathematically and statistically. Instead, humanistic geographers turned toward ontological perspectives that accepted a much wider range of experience and presence-e.g., phenomenology and hermeneutics. 3. Firsthand experience. Many humanistic geographers argued that, as much as possible, the evidence, general principles, and understandings of humanistic geography should arise from self-knowledge grounded in researchers' firsthand experiences. Research should work toward a forthright engagement with the experiences of others, whether those "others" are people, places, landscapes, elements of nature, aspects of the human-made environment, or other sentient beings. 4. Explication and interpretation. Broadly, humanistic geographers grounded their work in two complementary research models, the first of which can be identified as explications of experience; and the second, as interpretations of social worlds.

Humanistic geography, phenomenology, & place

A lecture for a seminar in "Philosophy of Geography," Department of Geography, University of Nort... more

Theories of Place Seminar (fall 2018)

Overview This course introduces students to qualitative, descriptive approaches to research in en... more Overview This course introduces students to qualitative, descriptive approaches to research in environmental behavior. The first part of the course explores methods for studying the built environment intuitively, particularly the approach of phenomenology. Next, the course examines such themes as space-as-experienced, sense of place, environmental encounter, built form as experiential symbol, and architecture and landscape architecture as community making. A major focus is architecture and environmental design as place making. Seminar objectives ▪ To consider the experience of place and to recognize its multi-dimensional nature that includes experiential, social, cultural, aesthetic, and political dimensions. ▪ To introduce students to various conceptual approaches to place, including analytic, ethnographic, and phenomenological perspectives. ▪ To review various theoretical and practical approaches to place making, including space syntax, pattern language, responsive environments, and design for social and cultural diversity. ▪ To demonstrate the value of understanding human behavior and experience in relation to environmental and architectural concerns. ▪ To recognize the architect's responsibility to work in the public interest and to improve the quality of life. ▪ To strengthen students' abilities to read, interpret, and write effectively. ▪ To illustrate the value of applied research for architecture and environmental design.

What is Phenomenology? (one-page class handout)

A one-page overview of phenomenology, including descriptions, key words and phrases, research sta... more A one-page overview of phenomenology, including descriptions, key words and phrases, research stages, and methodological venues. Unfortunately, this sheet does not provide authorship for the entries. Most of the authors and full citation are available on the 2-page sheet, "Definitions of Phenomenology," also available here under "teaching documents." If there is a reference here not on that sheet, email me and I will locate it for you.

Definitions of Phenomenology (three-page class handout with references)

Twenty-three descriptions of phenomenology by various phenomenologists (includes references).

Phenomenology and Hermeneutics: Some Thematic and Methodological Commonalities and Differences (one-page handout)

These two tables describe several thematic and methodological commonalities and differences betwe... more These two tables describe several thematic and methodological commonalities and differences between phenomenology and hermeneutics. These two tables were originally published in David Seamon, “A Phenomenological and Hermeneutic Reading of Rem Koolhaas’s Seattle Central Library,” Ruth Conway Dalton and Christopher Hölscher (eds.), Take One Building: Interdisciplinary Research Perspectives on the Seattle Central Library (pp. 67-94; tables appear on 68 and p. 69). London: Routledge, 2017; for references, see original chapter.

Environmental Design and Society (ARCH 325)

Environmental Aesthetics (ARCH 750 & 803)

Course description: Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the beautif... more Course description: Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the beautiful. This course explores the aesthetics of the natural and built environments, including landscapes, places, and buildings. A major emphasis is contrasting philosophical approaches, including semiotic, Marxist-structural, post-structural, feminist, and phenomenological perspectives. The course is conducted as a seminar and includes group discussion on readings. Students read from photocopied articles and chapters available as PDFs at K-State Canvas On-Line. In relation to national architectural accreditation standards, the seminar involves the following objectives and performance criteria.

Theories of Place (ARCH 750 & 850)

Course description: This seminar introduces students to qualitative, descriptive approaches to re... more Course description: This seminar introduces students to qualitative, descriptive approaches to research in environmental behavior. The first part of the course explores methods for studying the built environment intuitively, particularly the approach of phenomenology. Next, the course examines such themes as space as experienced, sense of place, environmental encounter, built form as experiential symbol, and architecture and landscape architecture as community making. A major focus is architecture and environmental design as place making.

Environmental Design & Society (ARCH 325): Course Outline (2020)

Extra Credit: Environmental Design & Society (ARCH 325)

If you would like extra credit in this course, choose one of the five questions below that relate... more If you would like extra credit in this course, choose one of the five questions below that relate to class topics or semester readings. Your response should be 5-7 pages of written text (double-spaced) plus any accompanying drawings (not counted as the 5-7 pages). A grade of "A" will earn the student 20 additional points on the final class score; and a grade of "B," 15 additional points. No points will be given to "C" papers. These points will be added to the student's point total after the grade curve has been determined for the class as a whole; therefore, the grades of students who choose not to do extra credit will not be affected by the scores of those students who do choose to do extra credit. This extra-credit project is due on the last day of examination week, Friday, May 15, by noon. Upload your paper on Canvas as a PDF, making sure you place your name at the top right of the first page. Please title your PDF file as follows: LAST NAME_FIRST NAME_Question#__. These papers are non-returnable; please make an extra copy for your personal files. In submitting your extra credit paper, you agree to the KSU honor code, which holds that all work is the student's own. The following statement should therefore appear at the end of the paper: On my student honor, I have not given or received unauthorized aid in writing this extra-credit paper.

Environmental Design & Society: An Introduction

Introductory lecture for the course, "Environmental Design & Society" (ARCH 325), Department of A... more

The Nature of Environment-Behavior Research

Lecture introducing environment-behavior research.

The Behavioral Approach & Image-Behavior Model

The significance of value systems, world views, and images for understanding environmental and ar... more

PLACE AND PLACELESSNESS by Edward Relph

Lecture for ARCH 325 on geographer Edward Relph's phenomenology of place, including his modes of ... more

William Whyte & Jan Gehl: Making Lively Urban Places

First lecture on the urban research of William Whyte and Jan Gehl.

William Whyte's SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES (1)

Second lecture on the urban research of William Whyte and Jan Gehl.

William Whyte's SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES (2)

Third lecture on the urban research of William Whyte and Jan Gehl.

Christopher Alexander, Wholeness, and Pattern Language--Lecture 1

First of two lectures on the work of architect Christpher Alexander

Christopher Alexander, Wholeness, and Pattern Language--Lecture 2

The second of two lectures on the work of architect Christopher Alexander.

IMAGE OF THE CITY by Kevin Lynch--Lecture 1

The first lecture of three on spatial behavior, cognitive mapping, and Kevin Lynch's IMAGE OF THE... more

IMAGE OF THE CITY by Kevin Lynch--Lecture 2

Second of three lectures on spatial behavior, cognitive mapping, and Kevin Lynch's IMAGE OF THE C... more

IMAGE OF THE CITY by Kevin Lynch--Lecture 3

The last of three lectures on spatial behavior, cognitive mapping, and Kevin Lynch's IMAGE OF THE... more

Egyptian Architect Hassan Fathy's ARCHITECTURE FOR THE POOR (1973)

A lecture for ARCH 325 (Environmental Design & Society) on the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy's ... more A lecture for ARCH 325 (Environmental Design & Society) on the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy's effort to design and build a village for 7,000 displaced Egyptian peasants--the Gourni. Though the village of New Gourna was never completed, Fathy's work is one of the earliest examples of self-help housing and has considerable value for building shelter for the displaced people of the world today.

Territoriality, Personal Space, & Group Territoriality

The first lecture of a series on human territoriality, personal space, defensible space, and comm... more

Territoriality & Architect Oscar Newman's Defensible Space

An introduction to American architect Oscar Newman's defensible space, including his analysis of ... more

Oscar Newman's History of Housing from a Defensible-Space Perspective

Four major house types and how their defensible-space aspects are different: Single-family. Walk-... more

Oscar Newman's Community of Interest (Part 1)

Newman's approach for applying defensible-space principles to neighborhood design

Oscar Newman's Community of Interest (Part 2)

elevator buildings and defensible space; Newman's Newark, NJ, housing proposal, providing dwellin... more

Movement, Rest, and Encounter: A Phenomenology of Everyday Environmental Experience (1977, doctoral dissertation)

Ways of Understanding Wholeness: Place, Christopher Alexander, and Synergistic Relationality (2022)

Course lecture, 2022

In this presentation, I discuss architect Christopher Alexander’s work in relation to a broader b... more In this presentation, I discuss architect Christopher Alexander’s work in relation to a broader body of research and design focusing on a “phenomenology of place and place making.” I begin by describing two contrasting ways of understanding wholeness—what I call analytic relationality and synergistic relationality. In analytic relationality, wholes are pictured as sets of arbitrary parts external to each other and among which are located linkages involving stronger and weaker connections and relationships. In contrast, synergistic relationality interprets wholes as dynamic, generative fields that sustain and are sustained by intensive parts that integrally belong to and support the whole. I suggest that, in terms of synergistic relationality, places can be envisioned as interconnected fields of intertwined relationships gathering and gathered by a lived intimacy between people and world. I illustrate how Alexander’s approach to wholeness assumes a synergistic relationality and contributes to both understanding and making places that are whole, robust, and life-enhancing.

The lecture is the April 15 entry and available at:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-XfZMDYmkMusmXuqmYZ5V6M92gcK_BcD

Note the written version of this presentation is available at:

https://www.academia.edu/38048231/Ways_of_Understanding_Wholeness_Place_Christopher_Alexander_and_Synergistic_Relationality_forthcoming_2019_conference_proceedings_

Key words
Christopher Alexander, pattern language, phenomenology, place, wholeness

Portraying Experience Visually and Aesthetically: André Kertész as a Photographer of the Lifeworld (March 2017)

A public lecture at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University, March 16, 2017, sponsored by Duquesne's Cen... more

Understanding Urban Place Holistically: Analytic vs. Synergistic Relationality (March 2017)

A seminar presentation at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University, March 17, 2017, and sponsored by Duqu... more

Finding Merleau-Ponty in Architecture and in Place (October 2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJfpa9vv9pg This presentation considers how the phenomenological... more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJfpa9vv9pg

This presentation considers how the phenomenological work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) contributes to an understanding of architecture and place experience via his emphasis on the lived body. The focus is on architect Thomas Thiis-Evensen's " architectural archetypes " and architectural theorist Bill Hillier's " space syntax. " The presentation highlights three claims: First, that Thiis-Evensen provides a language for locating unself-conscious, visceral aspects of buildings & architectural meaning (Merleau-Ponty's perception and phenomenal field); second, that Hilllier illustrates how the spatiality of place—i.e., pathway configuration— supports or inhibits particular actions & routines of lived bodies as they come together or remain apart spatially (Merleau-Ponty's body-subject and intercorporeality); and, third, that both Thiis-Evensen & Hillier illustrate ways via architecture and place whereby pre-reflective bodily awareness and actions play an important role in the lifeworld (Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on the lived body as intentional but pre-reflective agent).

GATEWAY BETWEEN RIVER AND MOUNTAINS: HISTORIC CATSKILL POINT (2000)

Text for exhibition boards, Catskill Point visitors' center, Catskill, NY, 2000

The text for a series of exhibit boards on the history of Catskill Point, Catskill, NY, for the C... more

THOMAS COLE AND CEDAR GROVE: Exhibit text for an introductory permanent exhibit (2000)

The text for the first exhibit at Hudson River School landscape painter Thomas Cole's home in Ca... more The text for the first exhibit at Hudson River School landscape painter Thomas Cole's home in Catskill, NY. The exhibit opened in summer 2000 when the site was still known as "Cedar Grove." Today the house is known as the Thomas Cole House National Site and is an affiliate of the National Park Service. This exhibit text overviews Cole's life and work with particular emphasis on his time and work at Cedar Grove.

Place, Placelessness, Insideness, and Outsideness in John Sayles’ Sunshine State

by Chris Lukinbeal and David Seamon

Aether: The Journal of Media Geography, 2008

Atmosphere and Aesthetics: A Plural Perspective. FM e Intro

by Marco Tedeschini, David Seamon, Michael Hauskeller, and Tom Rice

Atmosphere and Aesthetics: A Plural Perspective, 2019

This chapter has two different parts. The editors firstly provide some of the reasons motivating ... more This chapter has two different parts. The editors firstly provide some of the reasons motivating the project of this book, which has been conceived and planned to give an account of the widespread in-terest gained by the ordinary concept of “atmosphere” in the last twenty years. “Atmosphere” has been more and more subsumed by human and social sciences, thereby becoming a technical notion. In this broader context, the editors secondly aim at showing and inquiring the tight relationship between atmosphere and Aesthetics. This discipline is no longer only a theory of art, but has recovered its original vocation: to be a general theory of perception conceived of as an ordinary experience of pre-logical character. In the second part, the editors give a short account of the chapters that compose the book, by which also appears the wide breadth and the scope of applications concerning an atmosphere-based Aesthetics.

Merleau-Ponty, Lived Body, and Place: Toward a Phenomenology of Human Situatedness - Tradução (em Português) do Artigo de David Seamon (2018)

by André Pinto and David Seamon

Hyperlink to the original publication by David Seamon: https://www.academia.edu/28776960/Merlea... more

Death and Life of Great American Cities - Tradução (Português) do Artigo de David Seamon (2011)

by André Pinto and David Seamon

Hyperlink to the original publication by David Seamon: https://www.academia.edu/1688125/Jane_Jaco... more Hyperlink to the original publication by David Seamon: https://www.academia.edu/1688125/Jane_Jacobss_DEATH_AND_LIFE_OF_GREAT_AMERICAN_CITIES_as_a_Phenomenology_of_Urban_Place_2011_
Tradução de "Jumping, Joyous Urban Jumble"-Phenomenology of Urban Place de David Seamon (2011) O ano de 2011 marca o 50º aniversário sobre o extraordinário e influencial obra de Jane Jacobs "Death and Life of Great American Cities" (Jacobs 1961/1993), um livro que ajudou na mudança de várias urbanidades, conhecendo e tratando de diversas cidades. Ainda que o seu trabalho nunca tenha sido associado à fenomenologia, pretende-se neste artigo, em termos de método, intenção e descobertas, explicar que Jacobs (1916-2006) pode justamente ser descrita como fenomenologista do espaço urbano. Muitos dos seus argumentos, descobertas de sintaxe espacial, particularmente a sua afirmação de que pequenos blocos de edificado oferecem uma malha permeável, de variadas rotas que contribui para a vitalidade da cidade e da caminhabilidade inerente e para uma robustez do sentido de vizinhança ou vivência em comunidade. Em toda a sua escrita (1961/1993, 1992, 2000) esta diz implicitamente sobre a fenomenologia das cidades, da experiencia urbana, da exuberância da vizinhança, do ambiente como um todo, até mesmo uma fenomenologia da economia que deve ser colocada no seu lugar (Jacobs 1969, 1984). A sua visão de cidade ideal seria "cada vez mais diversa, densa e dinâmica". Sempre viu e explicou que "existiria uma complexidade inexplicável nos mais modestos detalhes", por exemplo o típico passeio ou rua. Em todo o seu trabalho declarou que cidades e a sua vivência nas mesmas, conjugam um integral, inexplicável papel na vida humana e na sua história. Se ignorarmos esta importância fulcral, estaremos a desabilitar a capacidade vivência e a exuberância de todo o mundo. Modo de entender de J. Jacobs como um Método Fenomenológico Como método de estudo, fenomenologia procura ser aberta ao fenómeno em si, para que se possa revelar a ele mesmo e ser o mais compreendido possível. Na sua obra, Jacobs argumenta que o desenho urbano e planeamento de meados do século XX foram influenciadas, nem sempre da melhor forma nas cidades americanas porque os profissionais perceberam o fenómeno de cidade, não por aquilo que era mas pelo que os profissionais de trabalho quisessem que esta o fosse, por exemplo Le Corbusier com o seu trabalho "torres no parque", A rede de novas vilas nas periferias de Louis Mumford, ou o renovar de políticas e construção massiva de autoestradas de Robert Moses. Trabalhadores e investigadores do urbanismo: 18/02/2020

ARCH 750 ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS: Seminar syllabus (Kansas State Univ)

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the beautiful. This course expl... more Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the beautiful. This course explores the aesthetics of the natural and built environments, including landscapes, places, and buildings. A major emphasis is contrasting philosophical approaches, including semiotic, Marxist-structural, post-structural, and phenomenological perspectives. The course is conducted as a seminar and includes group discussion on readings. Students read from photocopied articles and chapters available as PDFs at K-State Canvas On-Line. In relation to national architectural accreditation standards, the seminar involves the following objectives and performance criteria. Course goals & objectives ▪ To introduce students to the study of aesthetics and to consider key questions and problems involved with examining aesthetic dimensions of environments, landscapes, and buildings. ▪ To introduce students to both philosophical and applied studies in aesthetics and environmental aesthetics. ▪ To make students aware of contrasting conceptual approaches to environmental aesthetics, including semiotic, Marxist-structural, post-structural, feminist, hermeneutic, and phenomenological perspectives. ▪ To introduce students to several empirical studies of environmental aesthetics, including analytic and phenomenological work. Student performance criteria relating to architectural accreditation: In relation to national architectural accreditation (NCARB) standards, the seminar involves the following objectives and performance criteria: A.1. Professional communication skills ("Ability to write and speak effectively and use appropriate representational media both with peers and with the general public"). A.2. Design thinking skills ("Ability to raise clear and precise questions, use abstract ideas to interpret information, consider diverse points of view, reach well-reasoned conclusions, and test alternative

Handout--Words & phrases relating to "aesthetic" (generated by students in seminar)

Handout--Aesthetics Word Clusters (generated by students in seminar)

Handout--Descriptions of Aesthetic Encounters

Handout--Definitions of "Aesthetics" (discussion focus)

Handout--The Aesthetic Field (Arnold Berleant, 1970)

Handout--Phenomenology & Hermeneutics: Commonalities & Differences

Handout--Some key phenomenological concepts, including atmosphere

Handout--Prism exercise: Description & questions to keep in mind

Handout--Geographer Edward Relph on authenticity, inauthenticity, and placelessness

Handout--Kim Dovey's Appropriation in Architecture Organizing Life

Handout--Jane Jacobs summary

Her hopeful city vision ▪ "ever more diversity, density and dynamism-in effect, to crowd people a... more Her hopeful city vision ▪ "ever more diversity, density and dynamism-in effect, to crowd people and activities together in a jumping, joyous urban jumble" (Martin 2006). Method of study ▪ identifying and carefully observing successful urban neighborhoods and districts with an animated, diverse street life-particularly her Greenwich Village neighborhood of Hudson Street. She wrote: The way to get at what goes on in the seemingly mysterious and perverse behavior of cities is, I think, to look closely, and with as little previous expectation as is possible, at the most ordinary scenes and events, and attempt to see what they mean and whether any threads of principle emerge among them (Jacobs 1961/1993, p. 19). Major insight ▪ That the essential lived structure of robust urban places is a small-scaled functional and physical diversity that generates and is fed by what she called the street ballet-an exuberance of place and sidewalk life founded on the everyday comings and goings of many people carrying out their own ordinary needs, obligations, and activities. ▪ Out of the many unpredictable individual human parts arises a greater environmental whole that includes a willingness to look out for and assist others: The streets constitute the public sphere where real civic life takes place. Only in the streets, for example, can children learn responsibility in an adult world. Only in the streets do neighbors form these bonds of recognition that make for community. In particular, the streets are necessary for that archetypal urban drama, the encounter between a relatively stable community and the stranger. Where this encounter with otherness is accomplished with safety and civility, there one has true urbanity. Where the stranger is feared and shunned, the city begins to die (Fishman, 1996, p. 5). Design and policy implications ▪ Jacobs concluded that robust urban street ballets are founded on and contribute to four specific physical and spatial groundings: 1. A mixture of primary uses-i.e., anchor functions like residences and workplaces to which people must necessarily go; 2. Short blocks (250-300 ft./ 80-90 m.)-provide for intermingling pedestrian cross-use as well as potential street-front locations for both primary and secondary uses); 3. A range in building types, including a good number of older buildings-"Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings" (p. 245). 4. A high concentration of people-at least 100 dwelling units/acre and as high as 250 du/acre. Jacobs' summary of her argument: In our American cities, we need all kinds of diversity, intricately mingled in mutual support. We need this so city life can work decently and constructively, and so the people of cities can sustain (and further develop) their society and civilization…. [M]ost city diversity is the creation of incredible numbers of different people and different private organizations, with vastly differing ideas and purposes, planning and contriving outside the formal framework of public action. The main responsibility of city planning and design should be to develop-insofar as public policy and action can do so-cities that are congenial places for this great range of unofficial plans, ideas and opportunities to flourish, along with the flourishing of the public enterprises. City districts will be economically and socially congenial places for diversity to generate itself and reach its best potential if the districts possess good mixtures of primary uses, frequent streets, a close-grained mingling of different ages in their buildings, and a high concentration of people (p. 315). The city as a problem in organized complexity-a synergy of intricately intertwined elements, processes, and relationships always in flux, sometimes evolving, sometimes devolving in their degree of connectedness, coherence, resonance, and life (chap. 22).

Handout--Karsten Harries' Natural Symbols

Handout--Thiis-Evensen's Discussion of Stairs

Handout--The Three Arches: A Thiis-Evensen Interpretation

The round arch ▪ The round arch itself o My center is within me. o I am self-contained. o I compl... more The round arch ▪ The round arch itself o My center is within me. o I am self-contained. o I complete myself. o I offer an entry that is as self-contained as I. ▪ The experiencer experiencing the round arch o I enter freely, greeting the self-containment of the arch. o I am self-contained and enter of my own volition. o I move with ease and confidence through. o My conclusion is myself. The pointed arch ▪ The pointed arch itself o My attention is above. o I point upward and away. o I am not concerned with the entrant but something beyond. o My form is the result of something "up there." o I defy the material world to point upward. o I tear apart the wall I support. o I evoke a spiritual space, a heavenly ascension. o My conclusion is beyond myself. ▪ The experiencer experiencing the pointed arch o I am led in by some force above. o I am pulled forward by levity. o I enter by a pull above. o I am pulled out of myself to significance beyond. The flat arch ▪ The flat arch itself o I sink. o I feel pressure from above. o I push down. o I constrict the sense of entry and passage. ▪ The experiencer experiencing the flat arch. o I am repelled by a sense of closing, even falling. o I hesitate to enter. o Weight keeps me out. o I face an inertia for entry.

Handout--Prospect-refuge theory & semiotics

Handout--Modernism: Strengths & Weaknesses

"We have learned to seek concrete expression of the life of our epoch in clear and crisply simpli... more

Handout--Postmodernism & postmodernist architecture

Handout--Rem Koolhaas's Bordeaux House

Handout--Structuralism & Marxism

Setting Forth a Canon of the Gurdjieff Work (2021)

POSTSCRIPTS, 2021

This article considers whether there might be a canon of the Gurdjieff Work and, if so, what that... more This article considers whether there might be a canon of the Gurdjieff Work and, if so, what that canon might include. The author emphasizes that any canonical explication must incorporate two complementary aspects: first, texts that describe the psychological, philosophical, metaphysical, and cosmological structure of Gurdjieff's system of self-transformation; second, an integrated set of guidelines, procedures, and techniques that provide the experiential and spiritual engine for actualizing potential self-transformation. Taking this twofold canonical definition into account, the article defines the Gurdjieff canon as an ensemble of texts, methods, and performative media that when, engaged sincerely and persistently, might facilitate self-transformation psychologically and spiritually. The article focuses on written texts because the starting point of Gurdjieff’s system is intellectual understanding. These written texts are overviewed in terms of seven categories: (1) Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson and Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous; (2) additional texts by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky; (3) commentaries on Beelzebub’s Tales; (4) commentaries on the Gurdjieff Work; (5) biographies of Gurdjieff; (6) memoirs of Gurdjieff; and (7) works that extend Gurdjieffian ideas in innovative directions.

Note: This version is the pre-final copy; errors in this copy have been corrected in the published version, including correcting the reference for Mrs. Staveley's description of Jane Heap.

JG Bennett: An Annotated Bibliography of his Published Works (2022)

This bibliography provides a listing of published works by British philosopher J.G. Bennett (1897... more This bibliography provides a listing of published works by British philosopher J.G. Bennett (1897-1974). They are organized in seven major categories for the most part each arranged chronologically by date of original publication:

1. Books by Bennett (for books and other entries on Subud, see category 6 below);
2. Edited compilations of Bennett’s lectures, writings, and editorial works;
3. Entries by Bennett in the journal Systematics;
4. Entries by Bennett in the in-house “Work” journals Enneagram and Impressions;
5. Other entries by Bennett relating to the Gurdjieff Work;
6. Entries by Bennett relating to Subud;
7. Other entries: Travelogue and scientific and academic articles.

Review: Joseph Azize, GURDJIEFF: MYSTICISM, CONTEMPLATION, AND EXERCISES (NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 2020)

CORRESPONDENCES, 2020

Published version is now available at: https://correspondencesjournal.com/volume-8/issue-2/ Stan... more Published version is now available at: https://correspondencesjournal.com/volume-8/issue-2/

Standard summaries of Gurdjieff’s methods of self-development identify three central components: his writings, facilitating students’ intellectual development; his music, facilitating students’ emotional development; and his sacred dances, or “Movements,” facilitating students’ bodily development, especially a deeper mode of corporeal awareness, engagement and presence. Azize’s book is an innovative addition to the Gurdjieff literature because he offers convincing evidence for a fourth key component that Gurdjieff introduced in his teaching starting around 1930—what he called “transformed-contemplation” exercises; i.e., precisely directed inner exercises strengthening students’ attention, intention, will, and self-awareness. Azize explains that these exercises were provided by Gurdjieff “so that the outer life (life in the social domain) and the inner life should be harmonized by the development of one’s individual reality, with consciousness, conscience, and will” (304).
Drawing on published works, unpublished archival sources, and firsthand accounts from students who worked directly with Gurdjieff, Azize aims to “introduce Gurdjieff’s inner exercises… to a wider world” (80). He attempts to “expound the nature and basis of Gurdjieff’s contemplative methods and to explore his sources, to the degree that is possible” (5). Azize contends that, from one perspective, Gurdjieff can be understood as “a ‘mystic’ who, in his earliest efforts, tried to fashion a workable system [of spiritual development] without contemplative methods, but later found them necessary supplements to his practical methods.”

Understanding the Esoteric through Progressive Awareness: The Case of Gurdjieff’s Law of Three as Elaborated by J. G. Bennett’s Six Triads (2020)

ARIES: THE JOURNAL OF WESTERN ESOTERICISM, 2020

Many researchers of Western esotericism today assume a "methodological agnosticism" whereby they ... more Many researchers of Western esotericism today assume a "methodological agnosticism" whereby they limit themselves to historical and textual verification. They do not adjudicate whether the specific esoteric tradition studied is genuine or spurious, reasonable or unsound, grounded in a spiritual reality or premised in fantastical impossibilities. In this article, I draw on G. I. Gurdjieff's understanding of the "Law of Three" as extended by British philosopher and Gurdjieff associate J. G. Bennett to argue that a phenomenological approach is a valuable interpretive complement to methodological agnosticism because it offers a reliable conceptual and methodological means for probing esoteric claims as they might be understood via firsthand encounter and experience. Bennett particularized Gurdjieff's presentation of the Law of Three by describing it in terms of six triads—i.e., systems of three forces that interact to sustain a specific action, process, or happening. In this article, I draw on my ongoing understanding of Gurdjieff's Law of Three and Bennett's six triads to suggest that esoteric knowledge is not necessarily " hidden " or " beyond the ordinary " but can unfold in a process of progressive awareness whereby the student engages in an empathetic, deepening understanding of phenomena. Instead of the " outsider " perspective of methodological agnosticism, one draws on an " insider " perspective of committed, first-person involvement.

This article is now published; readers who would like a PDF, please contact the author at:
triad@ksu.edu
He will forward you a copy.

" Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes " : Understanding Aesthetic Experience via Gurdjieff's Phenomenology of Human Being (2017)

In this article, I draw on Gurdjieff's philosophy to initiate a phenomenology of aesthetic experi... more In this article, I draw on Gurdjieff's philosophy to initiate a phenomenology of aesthetic experience, which I define as any intense emotional engagement that one feels in encountering or creating an artistic work, whether a painting, poem, song, dance, sculpture, or something else. To consider how aesthetic experience might be understood in a Gurdjieffian framework, I begin with an overview of phenomenology, emphasizing the phenomenological concepts of lifeworld and natural attitude, about which Gurdjieff said much, though not using phenomenological language. I then discuss Gurdjieff's 'psychology of human beings' as it might be interpreted phenomenologically, emphasizing three major claims: first, that, human beings are 'asleep'; second, that they are 'machines'; and, third, that they are 'three-centered beings.' I draw on the last claim—human 'three-centeredness'—to highlight how aesthetic experiences might be interpreted via Gurdjieff's philosophy. Drawing on accounts from British philosopher and Gurdjieff associate J. G. Bennett, I end by considering how a Gurdjieffian perspective understands the role of the artistic work in contributing to aesthetic experience.

Gurdjieff's Presentation of Emotion: Toward a Phenomenology of Affective Experience (1990)

HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGIST, 1990

This article presents a phenomenology of emotion by drawing on the psychological account of human... more This article presents a phenomenology of emotion by drawing on the psychological account of human beings provided by the Armenian philosopher and spiritual teacher George I. Gurdjieff (c. 1877-1949), whose work until recently was largely ignored by conventional academics. In his writings and teachings, Gurdjieff presents a detailed picture of the essential constitution of human experience, including the emotional dimension. Although not explicitly phenomenological, his work depicts five affective modes that point toward a holistic, experientially verifiable conception of human emotion.

Gurdjieff and Esotericism

by Carole Cusack and David Seamon

Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism, Vol. 8, 2020

This special issue contains four articles (by Joseph Azize, Michael Pittman, Vrasidas Karalis, an... more This special issue contains four articles (by Joseph Azize, Michael Pittman, Vrasidas Karalis, and Carole M. Cusack) that address various aspects of esotericism, secrecy and hiddenness in the Fourth Way tradition of G. I. Gurdjieff (1866?-1949). There is also a special feature, an essay by Anthony Blake, and four themed book reviews.

Gurdjieff and Scriptures

by David Seamon and Carole Cusack

Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 2021

This special issue investigates the role of texts in the Fourth Way or the Work, the teaching tra... more This special issue investigates the role of texts in the Fourth Way or the Work, the teaching tradition established by G. I. Gurdjieff (1866?-1949). Gurdjieff's books, and especially Beelzebub'sTales to His Grandson (1950), rae examined in terms of their relation to other religious texts (Christian, Sufi, and so on). Attention is paid to what constitutes a canonical Fourth. Way text, and also to whether Gurdjieff was engaged in crafting a theology. Finally, literary portraits of Gurdjieff are contextualised in the study of saints and the hagiography as a literary form.

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