David Seamon

Kansas State University | KSU · Department of Architecture

This chapter focuses on Christopher Alexander's contribution to a phenomenology of wholeness, by which is meant finding conceptual and practical ways for understanding how things belong together so that they can indeed belong, whether one speaks of the parts of a well made building, the steps in an effective construction process, or the elements of...

This article considers how a phenomenological perspective contributes to the theme of ‘human bodies in material space’. The author reviews several central phenomenological concepts, including lifeworld, natural attitude, epoché, and the phenomenological reduction. The author then draws on the phenomenological discussion of lived body, body-subject,...

This chapter draws on a phenomenological approach to examine three ways in which buildings work as places: first, as lifeworlds; second, as architectural atmospheres; and, third, as physical and spatial fields sustaining or stymying environmental and place wholeness. Architecture as lifeworld refers to the fact that a building can be understood as...

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 experienc...

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,” he...

This article discusses two complementary approaches to wholeness at least partly indebted to the system of self-transformation developed by spiritual teacher G. I. Gurdjieff: first, British philosopher of science Henri Bortoft’s discussion of authentic wholeness; and second, British philosopher J. G. Bennett’s systematics, a method for describing p...

This winter/spring issue provides four book reviews and three essays: • Cognitive scientist Andrea Hiott reviews psychotherapist Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter with Things; • Architect Susan Ingham reviews Lisa Heschong’s Visual Delight in Architecture; • Anthropologist Jenny Quillien reviews architect Howard Davis’s edited collection of Early and...

The issue includes four essays:  Zoologist Stephen Wood examines jizz—the singular presence of a living being instantly recognizable without the involvement of conscious attention; Wood’s focus is the jizz of birds.  Geographer Edward Relph considers aspects of a phenomenology of climate change by examining how the phenomenon is understood and ex...

An anthology of 17 chapters incorporating previously published articles and chapters by David Seamon. https://www.routledge.com/Phenomenological-Perspectives-on-Place-Lifeworlds-and-Lived-Emplacement/Seamon/p/book/9781032357294

The 2023 winter/spring issue of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology includes the following items: 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,...

2022 winter/spring & summer/fall issues of ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY--Vol. 33

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, atypicalit...

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 concentra...

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 entries from philosopher Ingrid Leman Stefanovic, anthropologist Jenny Quil...

Sense of place is closely related to genius loci (spirit of place) and can be defined as the specific character 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 by these experiential dimensions alone. S...

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-tr...

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 fri...

Este artigo busca esclarecer o conceito fenomenológico de mundo da vida por meio dos temas geográficos lugar, experiência de lugar e sentido de lugar. De modo mais simples, mundo da vida se refere à experiências consideradas, por pessoas ou grupos, como dadas a priori e, portanto, não visadas. Um objetivo da pesquisa fenomenológica é examinar o mun...

A review of recent research relating to a phenomenological approach to place attachment.

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, It...

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. Recognizing that human involvement with the geographical world is complex and multidimensional,...

The summer/fall 2020 issue of ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY.

To be published in CORRESPONDENCES, 2020

Summer/spring issue OF ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY.

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,...

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 translation is published in Mimarlik Kulturu Dergisi [Magazine of Architectural Culture], 2 (spring-summer 2003): 36-53. The entry was originally published as a chapter, “A Way of Seeing People and Place: Phenomenology in Environment-Behavior Research,” in S. Wapner, J. Demick, T. Yamamoto, and H Minami, eds., Theoretical Perspectives in Envir...

This winter/spring 2020 issue includes the following items:  An “in memoriam” for architectural theorist Bill Hillier, who died in November.  Entries relating to Goethean science as a phenomenology of nature, including three “book notes” on recently-published volumes as well as the last part of philosopher Henri Bortoft’s essay, “Goethean Science...

In this chapter, I focus on a phenomenology of atmosphere as related to place. By “atmosphere,” I refer to a diffuse ineffability that regularly attaches itself to particular things, situations, spaces, and environments. By “place,” I refer to any environmental locus gathering experiences, actions, events, and meanings spatially and temporally. Fol...

Though he has never tackled religious themes directly, independent filmmaker John Sayles is one of America’s most spiritually astute directors. His character-driven films regularly explore self-transformation stymied or propelled by personal misfortune, social change or the mystery of fate. Several of his films explicate the hazardous relationships...

In this chapter, I focus on a phenomenology of atmosphere as related to place. By “atmosphere,” I refer to a diffuse ineffability that regularly attaches itself to particular things, situations, spaces, and environments” By “place,” I refer to any environmental locus gathering experiences, actions, events, and meanings spatially and temporally (Sea...

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 th...

To celebrate thirty years of publication of ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, editor David Seamon overviews research developments by focusing on three major topics: 1. Placing phenomenology: What is phenomenology as a philosophy, research method, and way of understanding? One would suppose this question had long since been answered but,...

This special 30th-anniversary issue of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology (summer/fall 2019) includes the following items:  An “in memoriam” for phenomenological sociologist George Psathas, who died last November;  “Book notes” on philosopher Dan Zahavi’s Phenomenology: The Basics; and naturalist Paul Krafel’s Roaming Upward;  The t...

To identify and evaluate architect Christopher Alexander’s theory of wholeness, this article draws on the work of British philosopher J.G. Bennett, who developed a conceptual method—what he called systematics—to clarify phenomena by drawing upon the qualitative significance of number. A central assumption of systematics is that there is something i...

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...

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 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 sou...

cumulative index for ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, 1990-2018

This summer/fall 2018 issue of Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology includes the following items: • A “book note” on the recently published 2nd edition of philosopher Jeff Malpas’ groundbreaking Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography, originally published in 1999. This expanded version includes a new chapter on place and technologi...

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," Sea...

This chapter delineates some key issues that a hermeneutics of architecture must address. Jones’ The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture (2000) is used as a heuristic context for explicating two central research concerns: first, the contentious question of whether buildings-in-themselves, as opposed to the personal, social, and cultural experiences...

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. Recognizing that human involvement with the geographical world is complex and multidimensional,...

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 Gur...

The fill text is available at my web page at academia.edu

This EAP includes three essays that begin with Lena Hopsch and Ulf Cronquist’s “Walking Architecture,” which presents a method of diagramming environmental and place experiences in urban settings. Next, museum curator Robert Barzan overviews the sacred significance of labyrinths and suggests some of the ways they work to facilitate transformative e...

This chapter reviews qualitative research in environmental psychology and environment?behavior research. Qualitative research refers to conceptual and methodological approaches that draw on real-world experiences, actions, and meanings to understand people's relationships with environments and places. This chapter delineates some of the conceptual...

Summer/Fall ▪ 2016 his EAP completes 27 years of publication and marks the first digital-only edition of a sum-mer/fall issue. Shorter entries in this EAP include " citations received " and a brief obituary of German sociologist Thomas Luckmann (see next column). Longer entries begin with EAP editor David Seamon's review of architectural historian...

To dwell on earth in a human way means to enter into a rhythm that alternates between work and celebration, between conquering obstacles and seeking to come into the revealing presence of what surrounds, undergirds, and overarches us. To enter into this rhythm means to move back and forth between, on one hand, the fields and orchards that demand ou...

The winter 2016 issue of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology is now available at the two following links: https://www.academia.edu/20125362/ENVIRONMENTAL_and_ARCHITECTURAL_PHENOMENOLOGY_winter_2016_ http://www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/79%2016%20wint%201.pdf Besides “comments from readers,” “items of interest,” and “citations received,” this...

This article discusses two contrasting conceptual understandings of place. The approach of analytic relationality interprets places as sets of interconnected parts and their relationships. In contrast, synergistic relationality interprets places as integrated, generative fields, the parts of which are only parts as they both sustain and are sustain...

Presentation prepared for a special conference session, “25 Years of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology,” held at the 19th annual meeting of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP), October 11, 2015, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

In this chapter, I consider the significance of hermeneutics for architecture. [2] I begin by locating some key concerns that a hermeneutics of buildings and other architectural works entails. As a heuristic context for discussing these concerns, I draw on comparative-religion scholar Lindsay Jones’ The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture, a two-vo...

To illustrate what phenomenology and hermeneutics offer architectural research, I examine Rem Koolhaas’s Seattle Central Library from four different perspectives for which I procure real-world evidence via a range of research methods. I begin with a phenomenology of naïve architectural encounter in which I draw on visceral, visual reactions to the...

This EAP includes “items of interest,” “citations received,” and a “book note” on architects Alban Janson and Florian Tigges’s 2014 Fundamental Concepts of Architecture: The Vocabulary of Spatial Situations. Also included in this EAP issue are two feature essays, the first by architect Randy Sovich, who discusses the existen-tial significance of do...

This article 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.