Phenomenological Perspectives on Place, Lifeworlds, and Lived Emplacement

Phenomenological Perspectives on Place, Lifeworlds, and Lived Emplacement
Author: David Seamon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2023-03-17
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000854175

Phenomenological Perspectives on Place, Lifeworlds and Lived Emplacement is a compilation of seventeen previously published articles and chapters by David Seamon, one of the foremost researchers in environmental, architectural, and place phenomenology. These entries discuss such topics as body-subject, the lived body, place ballets, environmental serendipity, homeworlds, and the pedagogy of place and placemaking. The volume's chapters are broken into three parts. Part I includes four entries that consider what phenomenology offers studies of place and placemaking. These chapters illustrate the theoretical and practical value of phenomenological concepts like lifeworld, natural attitude, and bodily actions in place. Part II incorporates five chapters that aim to understand place and lived emplacement phenomenologically. Topics covered include environmental situatedness, architectural phenomenology, environmental serendipity, and the value of phenomenology for a pedagogy of place and placemaking. Part III presents a number of explications of real-world places and place experience, drawing on examples from photography (André Kertész’s Meudon), television (Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under), film (John Sayles’ Limbo and Sunshine State), and imaginative literature (Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City and Louis Bromfield’s The World We Live in). Seamon is a major figure in environment-behavior research, particularly as that work has applied value for design professionals. This volume will be of interest to geographers, environmental psychologists, architects, planners, policymakers, and other researchers and practitioners concerned with place, place experience, place meaning, and place making.

Life Takes Place

Life Takes Place
Author: David Seamon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1351212494

Life Takes Place argues that, even in our mobile, hypermodern world, human life is impossible without place. Seamon asks the question: why does life take 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," Seamon defines places as spatial fields that gather, activate, sustain, identify, and interconnect things, human beings, experiences, meanings, and events. Throughout his phenomenological explication, Seamon recognizes that places are multivalent in their constitution and sophisticated in their dynamics. Drawing on British philosopher J. G. Bennett’s method of progressive approximation, he considers place and place experience in terms of their holistic, dialectical, and processual dimensions. 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. This book is a significant contribution to the growing research literature in "place and place making studies."

Dwelling, Place and Environment

Dwelling, Place and Environment
Author: David Seamon
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401092516

themes among the essays resurface and resonate. Though our request for essays was broad and open-ended, we found that topics such as seeing, authenticity, interpretation, wholeness, care, and dwelling ran as undercur rents throughout. Our major hope is that each essay plays a part in revealing a larger whole of meaning which says much about a more humane relation ship with places, environments and the earth as our home. Part I. Beginnings and directions At the start, we recognize the tremendous debt this volume owes to philosopher Martin Heidegger (1890-1976), whose ontological excavations into the nature of human existence and meaning provide the philosophical foundations for many of the essays, particularly those in Part I of the volume. Above all else, Heidegger was regarded by his students and colleagues as a master teacher. He not only thought deeply but was also able to show others how to think and to question. Since he, perhaps more than anyone else in this century, provides the instruction for dOing a phenomenology and hermeneutic of humanity's existential situation, he is seminal for phenomenological and hermeneutical research in the environmental disci plines. He presents in his writings what conventional scholarly work, especially the scientific approach, lacks; he helps us to evoke and under stand things through a method that allows them to come forth as they are; he provides a new way to speak about and care for our human nature and environment.

Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing

Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing
Author: David Seamon
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780791412770

This volume focuses on the question of how people might see and understand the natural and built environments in a deeper, more perceptive way. Why are places important to people, and can designers and policy-makers create better places? Contributors include architects, philosophers and architects.

The Routledge Handbook of Urban Design Research Methods

The Routledge Handbook of Urban Design Research Methods
Author: Hesam Kamalipour
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 579
Release: 2023-08-24
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000917622

As an evolving and contested field, urban design has been made, unmade, and remade at the intersections of multiple disciplines and professions. It is now a decisive moment for urban design to reflect on its rigour and relevance. This handbook is an attempt to seize this moment for urban design to further develop its theoretical and methodological knowledge base and engage with the question of "what urban design can be" with a primary focus on its research. This handbook includes contributions from both established and emerging scholars across the global North and global South to provide a more field-specific entry point by introducing a range of topics and lines of inquiry and discussing how they can be explored with a focus on the related research designs and methods. The specific aim, scope, and structure of this handbook are appealing to a range of audiences interested and/or involved in shaping places and public spaces. What makes this book quite distinctive from conventional handbooks on research methods is the way it has been structured in relation to some key research topics and questions in the field of urban design regarding the issues of agency, affordance, place, informality, and performance. In addition to the introduction chapter, this handbook includes 80 contributors and 52 chapters organised into five parts. The commissioned chapters showcase a wide range of topics, research designs, and methods with references to relevant scholarly works on the related topics and methods.

A Geography of the Lifeworld (Routledge Revivals)

A Geography of the Lifeworld (Routledge Revivals)
Author: David Seamon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2015-06-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317504771

Within the modern Western lifestyle increasing conflict is becoming apparent between that patchwork of isolated points such as the home or the office, which are linked by a mechanical system of transportation and communication devices, and a growing sense of homelessness and isolation. This work, first published in 1979, adopts a phenomenological perspective illustrating that this malaise may have partial roots in the deepening rupture between people and place. Whereas the problems of terrestrial space may have been overcome technologically and economically, it has been less successful regarding people. Experience indicates that people become bound to locality, and the quality of their life is thus reduced if these bonds are disrupted or broken in any way. The relationship between community and place is investigated, as is the opportunity for improving the environment, both from a human and an ecological perspective. This book will be of interest to students of human geography.

Resettling America

Resettling America
Author: Gary J. Coates
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 585
Release: 2023-06-10
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1000920895

Every movement has its bellweathers, the ideas that lead the way and rally its adherents towards a set of shared values and visions. Resettling America was one such beacon – a publication for its time and ahead of its time. Those of us doing the work of sustainability and the transformation of communities feel grateful for Gary’s early and prescient contribution that has shaped the thinking of so many around the US and beyond. Essential reading for all green warriors! Jason F. McLennan, Chief Sustainability Officer – Perkins & Will. Founder, Living Building Challenge. Originally published in 1981 and now reissued with a new Preface by Gary J. Coates, Resettling America was one of the first comprehensive, transdisciplinary books on the crisis of sustainability and the implications of that crisis for the re-design of buildings, towns, cities and regions. Through essays by Coates, which provide a theory of ecological design, and case studies written by leading authors and activists of the time, the book presents a strategic vision of how it would be possible to create a sustainable and livable society through a process of cooperative community development rooted in a radical re-visioning of nature, self and society. By providing a strategic vision, as well offering practical means for creating a sustainable society worth sustaining, Resettling America remains more relevant and inspiring than ever to those who face the ecology of crises that now surround us in the 21st Century.

Goethe's Way of Science

Goethe's Way of Science
Author: David Seamon
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 1998-04-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791436820

Examines Goethe's neglected but sizable body of scientific work, considers the philosophical foundations of his approach, and applies his method to the real world of nature.

Innovative Approaches to Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Urban Development: Integrating Tradition and Modernity

Innovative Approaches to Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Urban Development: Integrating Tradition and Modernity
Author: Hourakhsh Ahmad Nia and Rokhsaneh Rahbarianyazd
Publisher: Cinius Yayınları
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2024-07-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 6256072936

The Book explores the intricate balance of preserving cultural heritage while fostering sustainable urban growth. This comprehensive volume presents a diverse array of chapters, each exploring unique facets of this critical intersection. From the contextual preservation methods in Italy's military landscapes and advanced data fusion techniques in Selinunte, to the phenomenological exploration of Bahrain's architectural identity and the environmental frameworks for its primary health care centers, the book offers multifaceted insights. It navigates through the urban transformations in historic sites like Thamugadi and Tripoli, the digitization for conservation in Algeria, and the sustainable urban futures informed by indigenous knowledge systems. Furthermore, it examines public space dynamics, urban green infrastructure, and the integration of sustainable development into urban planning, with case studies spanning from Turkey to Tehran. The book also addresses contemporary architectural discourse, mobility in architecture, and the significance of unacknowledged tributaries in urban planning. Through a rich tapestry of empirical research, case studies, and theoretical analysis, this book is an essential resource for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers dedicated to the advancement of cultural heritage and sustainable urban development.