Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing: Toward a Phenomenological Ecology

by David Seamon (Editor)

Overview

Contributors include architects, philosophers, landscape architects, and geographers, who focus on the question of how people might see and understand the natural and built environments in a deeper, more perceptive way. What is a sense of place and how can it be supported by architecture, policy, and education? Why are places important to people, and can designers and policy-makers create better places? Is there a way to see and understand what might help to make buildings, landscapes, and places that are beautiful, alive, and humane? What role do the geographical and architectural environments play in human life?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791412787
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	01/22/1993
Series:	SUNY series in Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

David Seamon is Associate Professor of Architecture at Kansas State University. He is the author of A Geography of the Lifeworld, and Dwelling, Place, and Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World.

Table of Contents

Illustrations

Tables

Acknowledgments

1. Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing: An Introduction
David Seamon

Part I. Modernity and the Built Environment: Problems and Possibilities

2. Modernity and the Reclamation of Place
Edward Relph

3. Thoughts on a Non-Arbitrary Architecture
Karsten Harries

4. "If the Doors of Perception Were Cleansed": Toward an Experiential Aesthetics for the Designed Landscape
Catherine Howett

Part II. Interpreting Architecture and Landscape

5. The First Roof: Interpreting a Spatial Pattern
Murray Silverstein

6. Toward an Architectural Vocabulary: The Porch as a Between
Robert Mugerauer

7. A Lesson in Continuity: The Legacy of the Builders' Guild in Northern Greece
Ronald Walkey

8. Toward a Phenomenology of Landscape and Landscape Experience: An Example from Catalonia
Joan Nogue i Font

9. Toward a Holistic Understanding of Place: Reading a Landscape Through Its Flora and Fauna
Mark Riegner

Part III. Living, Understanding, and Designing

10. Different Worlds Coming Together: A Phenomenology of Relationship as Portrayed in Doris Lessing's Diaries of Jane Somers
David Seamon

11. Putting Geometry in its Place: Toward a Phenomenology of the Design Process
Kimberly Dovey

12. Sacred Structures and Everyday Life: A Return to Manteo, North Carolina
Randolph T. Hester Jr.

13. Designing for a Commitment to Place: Lessons from the Alternative Community Findhorn
Clare Cooper Marcus

14. Promoting a Foundational Ecology Practically Through Christopher Alexander's Patterm Language: The Example of Meadowcreek
Gary J. Coates and David Seamon

Contributors

Index

Editorial Reviews

Architects, philosophers, landscape architects, and geographers explore how people might see and understand the natural and built environments in a deeper, more perceptive way. Among the topics are traditional building in northern Greece, sacred structures in a small North Carolina town, the intentional community at Findhorn, reading a landscape through its flora and fauna, Doris Lessing's portrayal of relationships, and Christopher Alexander's pattern language. Some of the 14 essays have been previously published. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"The rifts Seamon seeks to heal in this anthology are not only between disciplines or between knowledge and action or designing and building. They are, most fundamentally, the rifts between us and all that we see as not us. Without the greater empathy and care in designing, planning, and understanding environments that these essays illustrate, there can be little hope of change or of survival." — Karen A. Franck, New Jersey Institute of Technology

From the Publisher