In this game called ENVS 397 I was making moves. Then I took some time to rest. And that’s when I encountered….
Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology!
The title of this post is taken from the title of Dr. David Seamon‘s doctoral dissertation on the phenomenology of everyday environmental experience. My initial reading of Dr. Seamon’s scholarship has shed light on the intellectual work of phenomenology in architecture. In fact, Dr. Seamon has written a paper exploring the Seattle Public Library as a way of demonstrating how phenomenology and hermeneutics contribute to architectural research. My finding is that Dr. Seamon’s work places architectural phenomenology firmly in the realm of legitimate intellectual work in architecture. In fact, according to Google Scholar, an early paper of Seamon’s “A geography of the lifeworld: Movement, rest, and encounter” has garnered many citations.
Frankly, encountering Dr. Seamon’s work has come as a bit of a relief during my review of the literature around architectural theory. That is, I have read articles concerned with phenomenology as a theoretical and philosophical frame or method, but haven’t found many examples of current scholarship dealing expressly with the completion of phenomenologies of specific buildings. I’m excited to dig more into Seamon’s work and understand this specific scholar’s approach to phenomenology, including how he executes phenomenological analysis of buildings and the philosophical underpinnings of his chosen mode of inquiry.
I’m excited to move forward not only with more reading, but also by completing a phenomenology of Howard Hall here at LC as sort of a “trial run” of my methodology and as an exercise of my sensitivities to the experience of architecture!