Architectural Phenomenology

“Bauen Wohnen Denken” was originally published from a lecture Heidegger presented in 1951. The goal of this translation is to overcome some of the issues found in other English translations of Heidegger's lectures from this period. Occasionally, I have re-worded sentences in order to use non-gendered language, however, overall I have attempted render the English as close to the original German as possible, while also aiming to make the text readable and clear. To that end, I have also changed much of the formatting. Furthermore, I have provided commentary to explain some of my translation decisions, as well as some basic information about the text.

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.

[The edited volume of which this chapter is a part is now available. Contact the author for a PDF of the published version].

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 a constellation of actions, events, situations, and experiences associated with individuals and groups that use that building. Architecture as atmosphere refers to the fact that a building can be understood to include a certain ineffable character or ambience that contributes to the particularity or uniqueness of that building as a place. Architecture as environmental and place wholeness refers to the fact that a building can be understood as it facilitates or undermines a lived integration and connectedness between architecture and users. This chapter highlights these three themes because they have been given only minimal attention in the growing literature on architectural phenomenology, which can be defined as the phenomenological study of architectural experiences, actions, and meanings as constituted by qualities and features of both the built environment and human life.

Key words: architecture, architectural archetypes, architectural phenomenology, atmosphere, buildings, lifeworlds, natural symbols, pattern languages, phenomenology, place, sense of place, space syntax, spirit of place, wholeness.

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The first part of the paper develops the argument that geographers should learn to decompose human memory into its constituent parts because then and then alone will we become attuned to the full range of ways in which we incorporate places into our beings. The second part of the paper articulates Stephen Hill's comments on episodic memory with my recent work on wisdom.

The historically rich and diverse tradition of phenomenology has contributed broadly to the emergence of environmental thought across the humanities and social sciences and is increasingly influential on environmental ethics and philosophy. Emphasizing the primacy of experience and inquiry into the epistemological and ontological assumptions that inform the historical and contemporary relationship with nature, phenomenology takes a critical distance from metaphysical naturalism and the instrumental framing of environmental problems in resourcist, technological, economic, and managerial terms. The tradition's distinctive contributions to environmental ethics include its focus on the epistemic and ontological revindication of experience, its critique of metaphysical and modernist assumptions, and its aim to articulate a post-metaphysical conception of the self-world relation and an alternative ethos appropriate to our experience of nature. Key concepts that inform current phenomenological research in environmental ethics include the lifeworld, the earth and elements, the chiasm, and poetic dwelling.

In this chapter, I consider place, place experience, and place attachment as they might be understood phenomenologically from three different 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 these holistic, dialectical, and generative perspectives provide a range of useful ways for thinking about and understanding place attachment.

This book is a scholarly collection of essays on contemporary perspectives regarding the nature and significance of the sacred in the built environment. Recognized experts in the fields of architecture, urbanism, landscape architecture, and religious studies bring unique perspectives to a range of topics and examples. The book’s primary argument is that even though the post-modern condition has transgressed, degraded or superseded shared belief systems and symbolic languages, the experience, significance and meaning of the built environment retains a certain kind of veracity, potency and latent receptivity. Even though the authors approach the subject from a range of disciplines and theoretical positions, all share interests in the need to rediscover, redefine or reclaim the sacred in everyday experience, scholarly analysis, and design.

To illustrate what phenomenology and hermeneutics offer architectural research, I examine the Seattle Public 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 building on the part of laypersons who have never before seen the building. Second, I ask how the Seattle Public Library might be interpreted and better understood via Norwegian architect Thomas Thiis-Evensen’s hermeneutic phenomenology of architectural experience, of which a central premise is that architecture is the making of an inside in the midst of an outside (Thiis-Evensen 1989). Third, drawing on over 200 social-media “reviews” of the building by voluntary contributors, I delineate possibilities for a phenomenology of place as these accounts provide one kind of interpretive evidence. Last, I examine three reviews of the building written by Seattle architectural critic Lawrence Cheek. Using these reviews as an illustration, I suggest that our experience and understanding of a building may shift over time and that a comprehensive phenomenological and hermeneutical interpretation of architecture must incorporate the lived history of any building, including its design origins and uses and users over time.

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.

Addressing the voluminous and multifarious expressions of architecture and spirituality is a daunting task. Consequently, three focused perspectives inform our discussion. The first con­ siders the "objecthood" of architecture-the functional, typological, and material ways that buildings express and facilitate spiritualiry. Second, the phenomenological dimension of spiritual settings is addressed, including bodily experiences and feelings produced by. interactions with buildings. Third, are considerations of the cultural and social aspects of architecture, visa -vis spiritualiry, and its ethical, communicative, and symbolic fi.111ctions. These three positions align with the fundamental ways human reality unfolds: first person, individual, internal, or subjective reality (I, me); second person, collective, dialogical, or intersubjective reality (you, we, us); and third-person, empirical, external, or objective reality (it).

A number of impulses define contemporary spirituaLiry, including aesthetic, ethical, and ontological emphases.The first conceives of spirituality and spiritual experiences as growing out of the beauty and presence of creation. The second offers sustainable and restorative perspec­tives and aims to address the grand problems of the age - global climate change, economic and political disparities, warfare and displacement, and other contemporary imperatives that demand holistic solutions. The third seeks psychic reorientations where the world and one's place in it arc revealed, and reverence is paired with inquiry to seek inner development and outer realiza­tion regarding the nature of being, purpose, and place in tbe cosmos.

Besides items of interest and “citations received,” this issue of ENVIRONMENTAL & ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY includes the following entries:
• A “book note” on Jane Jacobs’ VITAL LITTLE PLANS, a recently published posthumous collection of her unpublished articles, lectures, and portions of uncompleted books.
• Museum curator Robert Barzan’s personal consideration of the relationship between ethics and place.
• Anthropologist Jenny Quillien’s account of her recent travel experiences in Bhutan and what they might mean for understanding “place-ness.”
• Environmental educator John Cameron’s twelfth and final “Letter from Far South.”
• Philosopher Isis Brook’s review of Cameron’s recently published BLACKSTONE CHRONICLES: PLACE-MAKING ON A TASMANIAN ISLAND, a compilation of his twelve letters in book form.
Since the last EAP, two major figures associated with phenomenological work have died—in January, philosopher Lester Embree (1938-2017); in July, geographer Anne Buttimer (1983-2017). Both thinkers were devoted advocates of phenomenological research, and they are remembered in this issue.

"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, and environmental embodiment to describe the intimate lived relationship between human bodies and the physical worlds in which they find themselves. Particularly relevant in this regard is the phenomenological concept of place, which is defined as any environmental locus that gathers human actions, experiences, and meanings spatially.

The article uses the work of urban critic Jane Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961) and sociologist Eric Klinenberg (Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, 2002) to illustrate how environmental embodiment and vibrant urban places are supported or stymied by material and spatial qualities like street configuration, population density, and mix of activities.  The author concludes by considering what a phenomenological perspective on environmental embodiment and place might mean for human rights and environmental justice. The possibility of place justice is proposed: the use of indirect means like environmental design, public policy, and place-oriented law to protect vibrant places and to invigorate moribund environments.

Key words: phenomenology, lifeworld, natural attitude, lived body, body-subject, environmental embodiment, place, place ballet, Jane Jacobs, Eric Klinenberg, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, place justice"

This EAP include “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 existential significance of doors and thresholds, particularly as they are encountered by residents in congregate living situations. He argues for the design value of “placing images and personal articles at the en-trance to a resident’s room to trigger his or her memory and identity of ownership.”
In the second essay this issue, environmental educator John Cameron writes his tenth “Letter from Far South.”  Continuing his focus on “looking and seeing” highlighted in earlier letters, he recounts a series of recent eye operations and what they have meant in terms of how visually and experientially he encounters the world.

This article uses two seminal 20th-century houses—Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and Alvar Aalto’s Villa Mairea—to examine the natural symbol of inside and outside, which for Karsten Harries (1988, 1993, 1997)  is one important lived relationship sustaining successful architecture and place.

Besides “items of interest,” and “citations received,” this issue includes the following items:
 An “in memoriam” for phenomenological sociologist George Psathas, who died last November;
 A “book note” on philosopher Dan Zahavi’s just-published Phenomenology: The Basics, an introduction to phenomenological principles and methods (Routledge, 2019);
 A “book note” on naturalist Paul Krafel’s recent Roaming Upward, a text that continues his novel efforts to reverse environmental and human entropy;
 The third part of the late philosopher Henri Bortoft’s 1999 conference presentation on Goethean science;
 Sociologist Julia Bennett’s overview of her doctoral research relating to belonging among families who have lived in one English town for multiple generations;
 Environmental educator John Cameron’s continuing discussion of “lived interiority” via consideration of landscape character as understood by several well-known thinkers and writers;
 Australian artist and photograph Sue Michael’s introductory text and several works that were part of her recent painting and photography exhibit, “Settled Areas”;
 To mark EAP’s 30th year of publication, editor David Seamon’s discussion of current conceptual and methodological concerns relating to phenomenology as a philosophy and conceptual approach. He considers: (1) placing phenomenology; (2) displacing phenomenology; and (3) evaluating phenomenology.

This issue also includes a list of 23 definitions of phenomenology.

It is impossible to consider spirituality in architecture without coming to terms with materiality. This presents us with a fundamental paradox: how can the most ethereal, evanescent, and 'purest' dimension of our humanity be at all connected to, even dependent on our most heavy, permanent, and measurable expression? Our inherited dualist narratives (i.e., Earth vs. Heaven, body vs. mind, flesh vs. soul) seem to preclude their reconciliation except during some momentary mystical or miraculous event or ritual.

But what our 'classical' philosophy (whether Platonic, Aristotelian, Thomist, or Cartesian) and Abrahamic religions present as incommensurable ontologies are not so in the eyes of alternative philosophies (e.g., Deweyian pragmatism, Merleau-Pontyan phenomenology, Whitehead's process philosophy) and theologies (e.g., Buddhism, Taoism). From these perspectives spirituality and embodiment are not mutually exclusive or loosely 'linked' but an indivisible whole. This is not far fetched. Developments in neuroscience, psychoanalysis, psychology, and medicine tend to support non-dualist interpretations of the binary matter-consciousness. Needless to say that this non-dual perspective is not how we consider, discuss, or engage architecture today.

In this paper, we explore the relationship between architectural materiality and spirituality using this alternative viewpoint and refer to Brutalism, undoubtedly the most tectonic of the architectural languages of Modernity, to illuminate the close bond between spirituality and materiality.

Recent developments within phenomenology have brought to light the indebtedness of phenomenological scientific philosophy to Ancient Greek philosophy. The recent trend that builds on the ancient precedents found in the theories of forms, for example, has demonstrated the importance of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle for contemporary manifestations of the development of phenomenological eidetic science. This thesis builds on three parallel developments in the phenomenology of time that equally indicate the significance of the ancient Hellenic exact mathematical science of spherical cosmology for the further propagation of phenomenological philosophy. The hypothesis of the infinite sphere gives phenomenology an external foundation capable of accounting for the constitution of the phenomenal universe, possible worlds, and the harmonic continuum of life spanning the inner and outer cosmos. Phenomenological cosmology offers a unified metaphysical framework for first philosophy and the special sciences, with particularly interesting implications for empirical cosmology and theoretical physics. Phenomenology of the spheres brings these phenomenological cosmological insights together in the geometric comprehension of the infinite sphere.

The history of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House (c. 1947–50) is as complex and problematic as the property’s past states of preservation. From the changing of early design
details by the structure’s patron Dr. Edith Farnsworth, to complete overhauls after bouts of severe flooding, the building stands as a manifestation of the many issues inherent to
architectural conservation. This text explores the theoretical underpinnings of the property’s various physical states,  conservators' embrace of contradictory principles, and, perhaps above all, the ever-changing position of the Farnsworth House within historiography. By exploring the
building’s ongoing biography, this text analyzes the varying legitimacies of the structure’s past functions--a resident’s functional house versus an architect’s idealistic design. The paper further considers varying perceptions of authenticity with regard to the building's past material states--a functional house that develops a patina versus a symbolic structure that is continually restored to various interpretations of its “original” form.

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.

"This study gathers and interprets the earliest extant references to architects in ancient Greek philosophy, as found in select works of Plato and Aristotle.  Throughout this review, Plato and Aristotle [are] shown to consistently present architectonic agents as exemplary civic and intellectual leaders, acting in awareness of their own (and others’) limits, with knowledge of the most appropriate archē, and with a view to the most comprehensive aims—the common good. This discloses an alternative and more accurate etymology of architects: not as master-builders but as leaders and makers of beginnings (archai). The aim of this essay has been not only to rediscover the discursive beginnings for a renewed philosophy of architecture, but to suggest how these philosophical 'archai' might help present-day architects reimagine the full relevance of their still contested role."

Since the 1994 publication of Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture , contemporary architectural thought has been marked by a sustained interest in the German and French traditions of phenomenological philosophy. Figures such as Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have served as rich conceptual reserves from which the contemporary architectural theorists Juhani Pallasmaa, Steven Holl, and Alberto Pérez-Gómez have drawn. One reason for their interest is the methodological primacy phenomenology awards to experience. Specifically, their interest lies in phenomenology's insistence on the constitutive role of the body for our everyday experience of the world -an insistence that is by no means incidental, for as Merleau-Ponty writes in his Phenomenology of Perception , "The body is our basic means of having a world" (147).

The paper explores the emergence of architectural postmodernism in Belgrade (Serbia) and its sources, that is to say, the web of different socio-political, artistic and intellectual tributaries to the new architectural outlook. The focus on ‘sources’ terminologically and methodologically relates to the classic formulation of Nikolaus Pevsner’s book The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design from 1968. If, according to Pevsner, printing and clocking-in or, rather, mass communication and mass production sourced the aesthetic production he wrote about, which were the streams that bespoke a river and the basin beyond modern architecture and design, that we want to explore in this particular conference session on postmodernism in late socialism? I will examine several timelines which I argue to be indicative of profound changes that effected the emergence of postmodernism in Belgrade architecture: socio-economic, discursive and aesthetic. The paper will focus specifically on the architectural discourse which culminated in 1980s with a series of translations of key texts by Christian Norberg-Schulz, Robert Venturi and Charles Jencks, and exhibitions and events in Belgrade galleries, such as Group of architects MEČ show at the Student Cultural Centre (1980), and a series of collective exhibitions held at Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, namely Solar Architecture (1980), Earth Architecture (1981) and Water Architecture (1983). The paper asks how at that time of economic stagnation and socio-political disillusionment, uncertainty about the future and imminent crisis of the socialist system as a whole, the architectural discourse of postmodernism emerged and detached itself from realities of economy, construction, technology and production, and transferred into domain of arts and culture.

When the word „expressionism” is mentioned in science, it usually refers to style movement which appeared in architecture and the arts at the beginning of the XX century and lasted until 1930. However, there is a wider interpretation of the term, which defines expressionism not only as a style movement but as one of the key creative tendencies, i.e. the essential factor in all arts throughout history. By relying on the wider interpretation, this paper discussed potential presence of expressionism in architectural culture in Serbia during the XX century, even though the prevailing opinion claimed that expressionism did not have a more significant influence on the architecture in Serbia. By critically analyzing theoretical positions in literature, we examined the similarities and differences between basic aesthetic categories: „expression” and „expressiveness”. We also confirmed their relation to the phenomenon of expressionism, with an aim of providing a clearer interpretation of it, as well as establishing its presence in Serbian architecture. By studying most prominent expressionist achievements in world architecture, we extracted expressionistic principles and characteristics whose presence we examined on leading architectural examples in Serbia. By comparative analysis of selected architectural objects, made in XX century in Serbia and marked in reference books as expressionist, our paper concludes that expressionism represents the key principle and one of the essential creative tendencies in XX century architecture in Serbia. Moreover, expressionism in Serbia did not emerge at the same time as in other parts of Europe (1905-1930), the turning point leading to its appearance was the beginning of the sixties in the XX century, when the first projects and realizations appeared, implementing complete expressionist articulation, which opposed the existing viewpoints in science.

Kada se u nauci pominje reč „ekspresionizam”, u većini slučajeva se misli na stilski pravac, koji se javio u arhitekturi i umetnostima početkom XX veka i koji je trajao do 1930. godine. Sa druge strane, postoji i šire tumačenje pojma, po kome ekspresionizam nije samo stilski pravac, već jedna od ključnih stvaralačkih tendencija, tj. temeljni činilac u svim umetnostima tokom istorije. Oslanjajući se na šire tumačenje, u radu je razmatrana mogućnost postojanja ekspresionizma u arhitektonskoj kulturi u Srbiji tokom XX veka i pored uvreženog mišljenja, da on nije imao značajnijeg uticaja na arhitekturu u našoj sredini. Kritičkom analizom teorijskih stavova u literaturi, razmotrene su sličnosti i razlike između osnovnih estetskih kategorija „ekspresije” i „ekspresivnosti”. Takođe, je konstatovana njihova relacija sa fenomenom ekspresionizma, a sve sa ciljem jasnijeg tumačenja i evidentiranja njegove pojave u arhitekturi u Srbiji. Studijom najznačajnijih ekspresionističkih ostvarenja u arhitekturi u svetu, su ekstrahovani ekspresionistički principi i obeležja, čije je postojanje istraženo na referentnim arhitektonskim primerima iz Srbije. Komparativnom analizom odabranih arhitektonskih ostvarenja, koji su nastali tokom XX veka u Srbiji i koji su u literaturi označeni kao ekspresionistički, u istraživanju je izveden zaključak, da ekspresionizam predstavlja temeljni princip i jednu od ključnih stvaralačkih tendencija u arhitekturi XX veka u Srbiji. Takođe, ekspresionizam se ne javlja u istom periodu kad i u drugim delovima Evrope (1905-1930), već je prelomni trenutak za njegovu pojavu početak šezdesetih godina XX veka, kada se javljaju prvi projekti i realizacije, kod kojih je ekspresionistički izraz u celosti sproveden, što je suprotno onome što je do sada važilo u nauci.

The volume investigates the stone carved shrines for the scrolls of the Mosaic Law from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century synagogues in the former Polish Kingdom. Created on the margin of mainstream art and at a crossroad of diverse cultures, artistic traditions, aesthetic attitudes and languages, these indoor architectural structures have hitherto not been the subject of a monographic study. Revisiting and integrating multiple sources, the author re-evaluates the relationship of the Jewish culture in Renaissance Poland with the medieval Jewish heritage, sepulchral art of the Polish court and nobles, and earlier adaptations of the Christian revival of classical antiquity by Italian Jews. The book uncovers the evolution of artistic patronage, aesthetics, expressions of identities, and emerging visions among a religious minority on the cusp of the modern age.

The subject of this paper is the aesthetic reception of architecture, in particular, profound experiences of buildings.  Using the results of two large survey on Extraordinary Architectural Experiences, the article offers strong empirical evidence that (psychological, cultural and physical) ‘distancing’ plays a central role in enabling profound aesthetics — thus validating pre-modern over modern or postmodern claims on the matter.

This paper presents part of an ongoing project of area conservation and community
development in the historic district of Al-Darb Al-Ahmar. Besides a brief outline of the
project’s scope of intervention in physical and environmental upgrading and socio-economic
revitalization, the authors relate their first-hand experience in improving housing quality and
provision of affordable housing for the, relatively poor, population of this district. The
objective of this paper is to demonstrate the learning experience the project went through
during the implementation of Phase I of the project; the difficulties, the challenge, and the
remedies that contributed to the ongoing development of this program. The initial studies in
preparation for the Housing Rehabilitation Program are explained, to show the basis upon
which the program was initially designed. This section portrays how users’ perceived value
of the area, needs and preferences, were taken into account all along the project, to ensure
affordability, cultural appropriateness, and consequently sustainable positive impact of
rehabilitation efforts. This is followed by an outline of the tasks, the procedures, and the
happenings that occurred during implementation. In conclusion the paper presents the lessons
learnt from this experience in the rehabilitation of the older housing stock that represents a
valuable resource going to waste.

Archaeological landscapes are a growing world trend, initiated by the increasing commercialism of culture heritage. Recently, Egypt has seen major overdevelopment of historic sites, culminating in aesthetically oppressive urban spaces that force the relocation of local populations for the purpose of increasing revenue from associated archaeological sites. In an effort to accommodate more visitors, the Temples at Karnak and Edfu, have seen extensive overdevelopment to define new, urban archaeological "spaces," intended to the circulation flow of the site and accommodate more individuals. Each begun as part of a nationalistic movement to reclaim cultural patrimony, the construction of these landscapes resulted in the displacement of local and financially poor populations, at the expense of the poorly planned "public" areas, often featuring heat islands and desolate urban plazas. In some cases, the new spaces are not only unpleasant for visitors, but also environmentally detrimental to the ancient remains, creating problems with water seepage and pollution.

This is the full text and map book (image document separate from and attached to the end of the text) of my undergraduate Bachelor's thesis completed and defended in May 2010. I received high honors and the Alumni Award in the History of Art for this project.

Architecture in the late XX century is criticized for the rationality, universalization and inconsistency of reality. As an alternative, the theoretician of architecture Perez-Gomez suggests the concept of love. Love is a principle that could unite inside the architectural activity knowledge and ignorance, rationality and madness, consciousness and body.

This chapter explores the relationship between the phenomenological pedagogy of Dalibor Vesely in England (1968-1988) and his studies in phenomenology in the underground seminars of Jan Patočka in Prague (1960-1968). It shows how the Central European context of Soviet oppression, in which phenomenology continued to develop, amplified the metaphorics of the underground within phenomenology itself. The metaphor of the underground has lingered within phenomenology since Husserl’s attempt, in his last works, to treat the social ills of interwar Germany by using his phenomenology to diagnose the crisis as having its roots in the fateful suppression of the life-world by modern instrumental science. Such suppression, he believed, had led to the false division of modernity between objectivism and subjectivism and the loss of rationality as the very mediation between the two.

The chapter argues that despite Vesely’s efforts to reconcile modernity’s “division” by theorizing the “continuity” between architecture and deeper cultural traditions, his own formation and fidelity to the underground culture of Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia, tended to reproduce this very same division, treating objectivity as if it were an “official culture” to be negated and eventually over-thrown rather than as a constitutive part of the life-world as a whole.

The essence of the neurophenomenological “twist” in architecture resides in its particular
strength for a more concrete approach to the issue of architectural experience in its multisensorial
richness. By placing human experience at the centre of architectural design –
acknowledging the phenomenal body as the only genuine architectural subject – this specific
union of the latest neuroscientific research with the extensive phenomenological legacy
can offer valuable insights for interpreting our embodiment and how we relate with our
architectural environment. Accordingly, the notion of “pre-reflective” architecture emphasizes
the fundamentally embodied and largely pre-conscious interdependence of architectural
spaces and our perceptual experience. In a nutshell, the neurophenomenological investigations
of architecture aim to identify and approximate the conditions of embodied experience of
architecture, while revealing that a purely conceptual engagement with architectural spaces is
only a misconception. Also, it raises awareness of the embodied nature of the design process
itself, and the need to be attentive to the discordance between the architectural tools for design
and representation, designed on the basis of a physical-mathematical conception of space, and
the spatiality of the phenomenal world in which we live.

In this this essay, I discuss what I see as central to the advancement of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology in the next quarter century: developing a sophisticated, robust phenomenological dialogue with analytic science. This dialogue is necessary because it is increasingly difficult, if not impossible (theoretically and practically), to ad-vance insights, observations, or allegations without offering empirical evidence.

This essay is part of a special, guest edited issue of "The Journal of Architectural Education" entitled "#SMLXL." This special issue's publication coincided, down to the month, with the 20th anniversary of the publication of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture's self-described 1,000+ page architectural novel," "S, M, L, XL"

Mimari fenomenoloji, Modern mimarlığın kartezyen ve soyut mekân algısına karşı,
tasarımı ‘yer’e özgü, olarak yeniden yorumlamanın yollarını arar. Bu çalışma, ODTÜ
yerleşkesi ve Mimarlık Fakültesi yapısı üzerinden, ‘yer’ kavramını araştırır. ‘Yer’in
bileşenlerini sorgulayarak fenomenolojik bir değerlendirme yapar. Çalışmanın amacı, bu
bağlamda bileşenleriyle ‘yer’ kavramını analiz etmek, ve ‘yer’in potansiyel anlamını ortaya
çıkaran olguları tanımlamaktır. Bir ‘yer’in anlamı, insanın ‘yer’i algılaması ve
deneyimlemesiyle açığa çıkarılabilir ve görünür kılınabilir. Bu bağlamda çalışmanın
yöntemi, hermenötik fenomenolojidir. Bu çerçevede yapılı çevreyi deneyimler, analiz eder
ve elde ettiği bir dizi olguyu kategorize ederek ‘yer’in anlamını ve bileşenlerini ortaya koyar.
Çalışmada ODTÜ yerleşkesi ve Mimarlık Fakültesi kesitinde algılanan ve deneyimlenen
olgular, ‘yer’in konsepti başlığı altında ‘grid’ ve ‘doku - yapı’, ‘yer’-leşme başlığı altında
‘topografya’, ‘sınır’ ve ‘yeşil doku’, ‘yer’in tektoniği başlığı altında ‘tekniğin örgütlenmesi’,
‘mimari elemanlar’, ‘malzeme’, ‘detay’ ve ‘yer’in karakteri başlığı altında ‘zaman’ ve
‘gelenek - etnografya’ kavramları üzerinden incelenmektedir.

The urban and archaeological sites of Bergama, that is, the historical city that has been mentioned with admiration, researched and put into writing, and praised by scientists, archaeologists, architectures, art historians, city planners, sculptors and the like for more than two thousand years, faces the threat of destruction today in places…

The paper explores Tati's use of new film media in 'Playtime' in ways that reveal more fundamental modes of social, mimetic and situational mediation as performed in the film by architects, and architect-like characters, and by the architectural settings which Jacques Tati devised.

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.

Built environments can induce contemplative states, but direct evidence for their impact on the brain is lacking. This exploratory work investigated brain correlates of internal states elicited by architecture designed for contemplative experience. Functional MRI and self-reports of 12 architects were assessed to study their responses to photographs of ordinary and contemplative architectures. Images of contemplative buildings: (1) induced attentive, receptive, and absorbing experiences and diminished internal dialogue; (2) involved decreased engagement of prefrontal cortex; and (3) activated the occipital lobe, precentral gyrus, and inferior parietal lobule. They suggest that viewing buildings designed for contemplation may evoke experiential and brain signatures that consistently differ from those induced by buildings that serve everyday functions. The depth of such externally induced states was inversely correlated with the engagement of the Default Mode Network. Our study points toward a novel avenue for investigating how contemplation can be cultivated in the human brain/mind.

Design studio curriculum has great potential in creating a platform for design students develop their design skills, thinking and knowledge that set the groundwork for achieving the graduate attributes required for professional practice. However, for many years, concerns have been raised regarding the scope of design studio models in responding to broader issues of human habitation such as emotional and psychological dimensions of person-place relationships. This paper will report on a 2012 research study in the curriculum design and implementation of a 14 week first year tertiary spatial design studies course based on embodied learning theory where the objective was to address these criticisms.