Life Takes Place

Life Takes Place argues that, even in our hypermodern world, human life is impossible without place. 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.

Autorentext

David Seamon is a Professor of Architecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, USA. Trained in geography and environment-behavior research, he is interested in a phenomenological approach to place, architecture, and environmental design as place making. His books include A Geography of the Lifeworld (Routledge Revivals Series, 2015). He is on the editorial boards of Environmental Philosophy; Phenomenology & Practice; Journal of Environmental Psychology; and Journal of Architectural and Planning Research. He edits Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, which in 2014 celebrated twenty-five years of publication.

Klappentext

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."

Inhalt

List of Tables and Figures

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Life Takes Place: An Introduction

Chapter 2. Preliminaries for a Phenomenology of Place: Principles, Concepts, and Method

Chapter 3. Understanding Place Holistically: Analytic vs. Synergistic Relationality

Chapter 4. Explicating Wholeness: Belonging, Progressive Approximation, and Systematics

Chapter 5. The Monad of Place

Chapter 6. The Dyad of Place

Chapter 7. Understanding the Triad: Relationships, Resolutions, and Processes

Chapter 8. Three Place Impulses and Six Place Triads

Chapter 9. The Triad of Place Interaction

Chapter 10. The Triad of Place Identity

Chapter 11. The Triad of Place Release

Chapter 12. The Triad of Place Realization

Chapter 13. The Triad of Place Intensification

Chapter 14. The Triad of Place Creation

Chapter 15. Integrating the Six Place Processes

Chapter 16. Life Takes Place: Criticisms, Concerns, and the Future of Places

References

Index