David Seamon – Geographer, Phenomenologist & Author

Publications

Journal Articles and Chapters in Edited Collections

  • 2024 Phenomenological Research Methods and Urban Design, a chapter in Hesam Kamalipour, Patricia Aelbrecht, and Nastaran Peimani (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Urban Design Research Methods. London: Routledge, pp. 224-231.
  • 2024 Ways of Understanding Wholeness: Place, Christopher Alexander, and Synergistic Relationality, World Futures: Journal of New Paradigm Research, 80 (2). DOI: 10.1080/02604027.2024.2330288
  • 2024 Architecture and Phenomenology, a chapter in Duanfang Lu (ed.), Routledge Companion to Contemporary Architectural History. London: Routledge, pp. 218-229.
  • 2023 Holism and the Gurdjieff Work: Henri Bortoft’s Authentic Wholeness and J.G. Bennett’s Systematics, Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review, 14 (2): 47-71.
  • 2023 Helping to Write a Dissertation: Bernd Jager’s Presentation of the Dwelling-Journey Relationship. Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology, 3 (1): 1-5.
  • 2022 Finding the Center: Christopher Alexander’s Concept of Center, The Side View, 3: 1-8; Finding the Center (thesideview.co).
  • 2021 Sense of Place, an encyclopedia entry in Douglas Richardson (editor-in-chief), International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology. NY: Wiley.
  • 2021 Place Attachment and Phenomenology: The Dynamic Complexity of Place, a chapter in Lynne Manzo and Patrick Devine-Wright (eds.), Place Attachment: Advances in Theory, Methods and Research, 2nd edition. New York: Routledge/Francis & Taylor, pp. 29-44.
  • 2021 “Awakening to the World as Phenomenon”: The Value of Phenomenology for a Pedagogy of Place and Place Making, a chapter in Patrick Howard, Tone Saevi, Andrew Foran, and Gert Biesta (eds.), Phenomenology and Educational Theory in Conversation. New York: Routledge, pp. 164-178.
  • 2021 Setting Forth a Canon of the Gurdjieff Work, Postscripts, 12 (2): 261-287.
  • 2021 Serendipitous Events in Place: The Weave of Bodies and Context via Environmental Unexpectedness and Chance, in Intertwining: Weaving Body Context, No. 3 (2021): pp. 120-133 [edited by Alessandro Gattara, Sarah Robinson, and Davide Ruzzon]. Milan: Mimesis International.
  • 2020 Understanding the Esoteric through Progressive Awareness: The Case of Gurdjieff’s Law of Three as Elaborated by J.G. Bennett’s Six Triads, Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, 20 (1):81-107.
  • 2019 Christopher Alexander’s Theory of Wholeness as a Tetrad of Creative Activity: The Examples of A New Theory of Urban Design and The Nature of Order, Urban Science [special issue of architect Christopher Alexander], Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 1-13. DOI:10.3390/urbansci3020046.
  • 2019 A Phenomenological Reading of Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities, Mediapolis: An On-Line Journal of Cities and Culture, October 4.
  • 2019 Atmosphere, Place, and Phenomenology: Depictions of London Place Settings in Three Writings by British-African Novelist Doris Lessing, a chapter in T. Griffero and M. Tedeschini (eds.), Atmosphere and Aesthetics (pp. 133-146). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • 2019 Whither Phenomenology: Thirty Years of EAP [editorial], Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 37-44 [special 30th-anniversary issue].
  • 2019 Glimpses of a Place Spirituality in American Filmmaker John Sayles’ Limbo: Authenticity, Inauthenticity and Modes of Place Engagement, a chapter in V. Counted and F. Watts (eds.), The Psychology of Religion and Place: Emerging Perspectives (pp. 239-259). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • 2018 Merleau-Ponty, Lived Body and Place: Toward a Phenomenology of Human Situatedness, a chapter in T. Hünefeldt and A. Schlitte (eds.), Situatedness and Place (pp. 41-66). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
  • 2018 Well-being and Phenomenology: Lifeworld, Natural Attitude, Homeworld and Place, a chapter in Kathleen Galvin (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Well-being (pp. 103-111). London: Routledge.
  • 2018 Physical and Virtual Environments: Meaning of Place and Space, in Willard & Spackman’s Occupational Therapy, 13th Edition, B. Schell & G. Gillen, editors (pp. 330-339). Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer [original 2014 chapter (see 2014 entry below) updated by Noralyn D. Pickens, Cynthia L. Evetts, and David Seamon].
  • 2017 A Phenomenological and Hermeneutic Reading of Rem Koolhaas’s Seattle Central Library, a chapter in Ruth Conway Dalton and Christopher Hölscher (eds.), Take One Building: Interdisciplinary Research Perspectives on the Seattle Central Library (pp. 67-94). London: Routledge.
  • 2017 Architecture, Place, and Phenomenology: Buildings as Lifeworlds, Atmospheres, and Environmental Wholes, a chapter in Janet Donohoe (ed.), Phenomenology and Place (pp. 247-263). Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield.
  • 2017 Hermeneutics and Architecture: Buildings-in-Themselves and Interpretive Trustworthiness, a chapter in Bruce Janz (ed.), Hermeneutics, Space, and Place (pp. 347-360). NY: Springer.
  • 2017 Humanistic Geography, an encyclopedia entry co-authored with Adam Lundberg in Douglas Richardson (editor-in-chief), International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology .NY: Wiley.
  • 2017 “Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes”: Understanding Aesthetic Experience via Gurdjieff’s Phenomenology of Human Being, Religion and the Arts, vol. 21, pp. 150-175 [special issue on G.I. Gurdjieff, the Arts and the Production of Culture, Carole M. Cusack, ed.].
  • 2016 Qualitative Approaches to Environment-Behavior Research: Understanding Environmental and Place Experiences, Meanings, and Actions, a chapter co-authored with Harneet Gill in Robert Gifford (ed.), Research Methods for Environmental Psychology (pp. 115-135). New York: Wiley/Blackwell.
  • 2016 Christopher Alexander and a Phenomenology of Wholeness, a chapter in Kyriakos Pontikis & Yodan Rofѐ (eds.), In Pursuit of a Living Architecture: Continuing Christopher Alexander’s Quest for a Humane and Sustainable Building Culture (pp. 50-66). Champaign, IL: Common Ground.
  • 2016 Integrating Wonderment and Practicality: Lifeworld, Architectural Design, and Christopher Alexander’s Phenomenology of Wholeness, in Arckitektur & Designpaedagogik [“Architecture & Design Pedagogy”], Finn Thorbjørn Hansen, editor (pp. 354-369). Aarhus, Denmark : Arkitektskolen Aarhus, Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole Københaven, og Designskolen Kolding.
  • 2015 Understanding Place Holistically: Cities, Synergistic Relationality, and Space Syntax, Journal of Space Syntax [special issue on conceptual approaches edited by S. Griffiths and V. Netto], vol. 6, no. 1 (summer), pp. 32-43.
  • 2015 The Phenomenological Contribution to Interior Design Education and Research: Place, Environmental Embodiment, and Architectural Sustenance, in The Handbook of Interior Design, Jo An Asher Thompson and Nancy H. Blossom, editors (pp. 417-31). Oxford: Wiley/Blackwell.
  • 2015 Situated Cognition and the Phenomenology of Place: Lifeworld, Environmental Embodiment, and Immersion-in-World, Cognitive Processes. Vol. 16, no. 1 (supplement), pp. 389-92. DOI: 10.1007/s10339-015-0678-9.
  • 2015 Lived Emplacement and the Locality of Being: A Return to Humanistic Geography? in Approaches to Human Geography, 2nd edition, Stuart Aitken and Gill Valentine, editors (pp. 35-48). London: Sage.
  • 2014 Place Attachment and Phenomenology: The Synergistic Dynamism of Place, in Place Attachment: Advances in Theory, Methods and Research, Lynne Manzo and Patrick Devine-Wright, editors (pp. 11-22). New York: Routledge/Francis & Taylor.
  • 2014 Looking at a Photograph—André Kertész’s 1928 Meudon: Interpreting Aesthetic Experience Phenomenologically, Academic Quarter [Akademisk Kvarter], vol. 9 (Autumn), pp. 322-35.
  • 2014 Physical and Virtual Environments: Meaning of Place and Space, in Willard & Spackman’s Occupational Therapy, 12th Edition, B. Schell & M. Scaffa, editors (pp. 202-14). Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkens.
  • 2013 Environmental Embodiment, Merleau-Ponty, and Bill Hillier’s Theory of Space Syntax: Toward a Phenomenology of People-in-Place, in Rethinking Aesthetics: The Role of Body in Design, Ritu Bhatt, editor (pp. 204-13). New York: Routledge.
  • 2013 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology: Implications for Human Rights and Environmental Justice, Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, vol. 4, no. 2 (September) pp. 143-66 [invited, blind-peer reviewed article for a special issue on “human bodies and material space”].
  • 2013 Phenomenology and Uncanny Homecoming: Homeworld, Alienworld, and Being-at- Home in Alan Ball’s HBO Television Series, Six Feet Under, in Resisting the Place of Belonging, Daniel Boscaljon, editor (pp. 155-70). Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate.
  • 2012 “A Jumping, Joyous Urban Jumble”: Jane Jacobs’s Death and Life of Great American Cities as a Phenomenology of Urban Place, Journal of Space Syntax, vol. 3 (fall), pp. 139-49.
  • 2012 Place, Place Identity, and Phenomenology, a chapter in The Role of Place Identity in the Perception, Understanding, and Design of the Built Environment, Hernan Casakin et al., editors (pp. 3-21). London: Betham Science Publishers.
  • 2011 Seeing and Animating the City: A Phenomenological Ecology of Natural and Built Worlds, a chapter in The Natural City, Ingrid Stefanovic, editor (pp. 231-256). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  • 2010 Gaston Bachelard’s Topoanalysis in the 21st Century: The Lived Reciprocity between Houses and Inhabitants as Portrayed by American Writer Louis Bromfield. In Phenomenology 2010, ed. Lester Embree (pp. 225-43). Bucharest: Zeta Books.
  • 2010 Phenomenology. In B. Warf, ed., Encyclopedia of Geography, vol. 4 (pp. 2165-69), London: Sage.
  • 2010 Relph, Edward (1944–). In B. Warf, ed., Encyclopedia of Geography, vol. 5 (pp. 2410-11), London: Sage.
  • 2009 Existential geography, co-authored with Jacob Sowers. In R. Kitchin and N. Thrift, eds. International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. vol. 3 (pp. 666-71), Oxford: Elsevier.
  • 2008 Place, Placelessness, Insideness, and Outsideness in John Sayles’ Sunshine State. In Aether [blind peer-reviewed on-line “Journal of Media Geography”] vol. 3 (June), pp. 1-19.
  • 2008 Place, Belonging, and Environmental Humility: The Experience of “Teched” as Portrayed by American Novelist and Agrarian Reformer Louis Bromfield. In Writings in Place: John Burroughs and his Legacy, ed. D. Payne (pp. 158-73). Newcastle, Great Britain: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • 2008 A Phenomenology of Inhabitation: The Lived Reciprocity between Houses and Inhabitants as Portrayed by American Writer Louis Bromfield, Proceedings: 2008 ACSA Annual Meeting, Houston, Washington, DC: ACSA Press.
  • 2008 Place and Placelessness by Edward C. Relph, co-authored with Jacob Sowers. An entry in Key Texts in Human Geography, Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchen, and Gil Valentine, eds. (pp. 43-51). London: Sage.
  • 2007 Karsten Harries’ Natural Symbols as a Means for Interpreting Architecture: Inside and Outside in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and Alvar Aalto’s Villa Mairea, co-authored with Enku Mulugeta Assefa. In Wolkenkuckucksheim, [on-line architectural journal] vol. 12, no. 1 (August), pp. 1-7.
  • 2007 A Lived Hermetic of People and Place: Phenomenology and Space Syntax [keynote address], in A. Sema Kubat et al., eds., Proceedings, 6th International Space Syntax Symposium, vol. 1, pp. iii-1-16. Istanbul: ITU, Faculty of Architecture; available at: http://www.spacesyntaxistanbul.itu.edu.tr/papers/invitedpapers/david_seamon.pdf.
  • 2006 Interconnections, Relationships, and Environmental Wholes: A Phenomenological Ecology of Natural and Built Worlds, in Melissa Geib (ed.), To Renew the Face of the Earth: Phenomenology and Ecology (pp. 53-86). Pittsburgh: Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center.
  • 2006 A Geography of Lifeworld in Retrospect: A Response to Shaun Moores, Particip@tions, 3, 2 (November) [Particip@tions is an on-line peer-reviewed professional journal of media and communication studies; available at: www.participations.org/].
  • 2005 Goethe’s Way of Science as a Phenomenology of Nature, Janus Head, 8 (1): 86-101 [Janus Head is a biannual journal of “interdisciplinary studies in literature, continental philosophy, phenomenological psychology and the arts”].
  • 2004 Grasping the Dynamism of Urban Place: Contributions from the Work of Christopher Alexander, Bill Hillier, and Daniel Kemmis, in Tom Mels (ed.), Reanimating Places (pp. 123-45). Burlington, Vt: Ashgate.
  • 2004 Revealing Environmental and Place Wholes: Lessons from Christopher Alexander’s Theory of Wholeness and Bill Hillier’s Space Syntax, Environmental Philosophy, 1 (1): 13-33.
  • 2003 Connections that Have a Quality of Necessity: Goethe’s Way of Science as a Phenomenology of Nature, in Back to Earth, March, 4 (1): 3-11 [journal of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy].
  • 2002 Physical Comminglings: Body, Habit, and Space Transformed into Place, in Occupational Therapy Journal of Research, 22 (winter): 42S-51S.
  • 2001 Olana after Frederic Church, co-written with Karen Zukowski, in Frederic Church’s Olana: Architecture and Landscape as Art. (pp. 67-74). Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press.
  • 2000 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 Environment-Behavior Research (pp. 157-78). New York: Plenum [reprinted in Turkish in Mimarlik Kulturu Dergisi [Magazine of Architectural Culture], 2 (spring-summer 2003): 36-53; reprinted in Portuguese as “Uma maneira de ver as pessoas e o lugar: A fenomenologia na pesquisa do comportamento ambiental,”Geograficidade, 9(1): 4-28, Verão 2019].
  • 2000 Concretizing Heidegger’s Notion of Dwelling: The Contributions of Thomas Thiis-Evensen and Christopher Alexander, in Building and Dwelling [Bauen und Wohnen], edited by Eduard Führ. Munich, Germany: Waxmann Verlag GmbH; New York: Waxmann, 2000, pp. 189-202.
  • 1998 Goethe, Nature, and Phenomenology: An Introduction, in Goethe’s Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature [see books above].
  • 1997 Environment [Phenomenology and], in Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, Lester Embree et al., eds. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers), in press [an international encyclopedia on the history and practice of phenomenology; includes entries by some 100 contributors– all key figures in phenomenological research].
  • 1996 To Open Feeling: Phenomenology, Emotional Experience, and Humane Habitats, Laboratorio di Geografia e Letteratura [Studies in Geography and Literature], 1 (1): 15-21.
  • 1994 The Life of the Place: A Phenomenological Commentary on Bill Hillier’s Theory of Space Syntax, Nordisk Arkitekturforskning [Nordic Journal of Architectural Research], 7, 1: 35-48.
  • 1994 A Thiis-Evensen Interpretation of Two Churches by Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright (co-authored with Yuan Lin), in R. M. Feldman, G. Hardie, and D. G. Saile, eds., Power by Design: EDRA Proceedings 24, Oklahoma City: Environmental Design Research Association, pp. 130-142.
  • 1993 Dwelling, Seeing and Designing: An Introduction, in Dwelling, Seeing and Designing: Toward a Phenomenological Ecology, pp. 1-21, [see books above].
  • 1993 Promoting a Foundational Ecology Practically Through Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language: The Example of Meadowcreek (co-authored with Gary J. Coates), in Dwelling, Seeing and Designing: Toward a Phenomenological Ecology, pp. 331-55, [see books above].
  • 1993 Different Worlds Coming Together: A Phenomenology of Relationship as Portrayed in Doris Lessing’s Diaries of Jane Somers, in Dwelling, Seeing and Designing: Toward a Phenomenological Ecology, pp. 219-46, [see books above].
  • 1992 A Diary Interpretation of Place: Artist Frederic Church’s Olana, in Geographical Snapshots of North America, edited by Donald G. Janelle. New York: Guilford Press, pp. 78-82 [a collection of 93 essays commemorating the 27th Congress of the International Geographical Union and Assembly in Washington, D. C., August].
  • 1991 Toward a Phenomenology of Citiness: Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City and Beyond, National Geographical Journal of India, 37 (March-June): 178-188.
  • 1991 Toward a Phenomenology of the Architectural Lifeworld, in Architecture: Back..to…Life (Proceedings of the 79th Annual Meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture), edited by John Hancock & William Miller. Wash., D. C.: ACSA Press, pp. 3-7.
  • 1990 Architecture, Experience, and Phenomenology: Toward Reconciling Order and Freedom, paper no. 1, Person-Environment Theory Series, edited by R. Ellis. Berkeley: Center for Environmental Design Research, University of California, Berkeley.
  • 1990 Using Pattern Language to Identify Sense of Place: American Landscape Painter Frederic Church’s Olana as a Test Case, in Coming of Age: Proceedings, EDRA, 1990, edited by R. Selby. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois, pp. 171-179.
  • 1990 Awareness and Reunion: A Phenomenology of the Person-Environment Relationship as Portrayed in the New York Photographs of André Kertész, in Place Images in the Media, edited by Leo Zonn. Totowa, New Jersey: Roman and Littlefield, pp. 87-107.
  • 1990 Gurdjieff’s Presentation of Emotions: Toward a Phenomenology of Affective Experience, Humanistic Psychologist, 18 (Autumn): 279-300.
  • 1989 Humanistic and Phenomenological Advances in Environmental Design: The Case of Genius Loci, The Humanistic Psychologist, 17 (Autumn): 280-293.
  • 1988 Towards a Phenomenology of Environmental Meaning: The Example of Flowforms, The National Geographical Journal of India [special issue on Environmental Meaning and Aesthetics], 34 (March): 65-74.
  • 1987 Phenomenology and the Clark Experience, Journal of Environmental Psychology [special issue on Clark University as a center of innovation for research in environment and behavior], 7 (December, 1987): 367-377.
  • 1987 Phenomenology and Environment-Behavior Research, in Gary T. Moore and Ervin Zube, eds., Advances in Environment, Behavior, and Design, vol. 1. New York: Plenum, pp. 3-27.
  • 1987 Phenomenology and Vernacular Lifeworlds, in David Saile, ed., Architecture in Cultural Change. Lawrence, Kansas: School of Architecture, University of Kansas, pp. 17-24 [reprinted in The Trumpeter, 8, 4 (Fall 1991): 201-206].
  • 1987 Christopher Alexander and the Nature of Architecture, Orion Nature Quarterly, 6, (Spring): 20-33 (co-authored with Gary J. Coates and Susanne Siepl).
  • 1985 Dwelling, Place and Environment: An Introduction, co-authored with Robert Mugerauer, in David Seamon and Robert Mugerauer, eds., Dwelling, Place and Environment [see books above], pp. 1-12.
  • 1985 Reconciling Old and New Worlds: The Dwelling-Journey Relationship as Portrayed in Vilhelm Moberg’s “Emigrant” Novels, in David Seamon and Robert Mugerauer, eds., Dwelling, Place and Environment [see books above], pp. 227-245.
  • 1984 Heidegger’s Notion of Dwelling and One Concrete Interpretation as Indicated by Hassan Fathy’s Architecture for the Poor, Geosciences and Man, 24 (April): 43-53.
  • 1984 Emotional Experience of the Environment, American Behavioral Scientist, 27 (July/August): 757-770.
  • 1984 Phenomenologies of Place and Environment, Phenomenology and Pedagogy, 2: 130-135.
  • 1984 Toward a Phenomenology of Place and Place-Making: Interpreting Landscape, Lifeworld and Aesthetics (co-authored with Gary J. Coates), Oz, 6 (May): 6-9.
  • 1984 Philosophical Directions in Behavioral Geography with an Emphasis on the Phenomenological Contribution, in Environmental Perception and Behavior: Inventory and Prospect, co-edited with Thomas Saarinen and James Sell. Chicago: University of Chicago Department of Geography Series, No. 209, pp. 167-178.
  • 1983 Creativity: Center and Horizon, in Anne Buttimer, ed., Creativity and Context (Lund, Sweden: Gleerup), pp. 54-64.
  • 1983 A Soft-Spoken Hero: The Phenomenological Contribution to Architectural Education, in N. Harm and J. Kudra, eds. Proceedings: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, West Central Regional Conference, 1982 (Norman: University of Oklahoma College of Environmental Design, 1983), pp. 128-136.
  • 1982 The Phenomenological Contribution to Environmental Psychology, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2 (June): 119-140.
  • 1982 Heidegger, Environment and Dwelling, Environment and Planning A, 14 (March): 419-423.
  • 1981 Newcomers, Existential Outsiders and Insiders: Their Portrayal in Two Books by Doris Lessing, in D.C.D. Pocock, ed., Humanistic Geography and Literature (London: Croom Helm), pp. 85-100.
  • 1980 Market Place as Place Ballet: A Swedish Example (co-authored with Christina Nordin), Landscape 24 (October): 35-41.
  • 1980 Body Ballets, Time-space Routines and Place Ballets, in The Human Experience of Space and Place [see books above], pp. 146-65 [published in Portuguese as Corpo-Sujeito, Rotinas Espaço-Temporais e Danças-do-Lugar, in the Brazilian geographical journal Geograpficidade, 3, 2 (2013): 4-18; translated by P. M. Rangel Gonçalves].
  • 1980 Afterward: Community, Place and Environment, in The Human Experience of Space and Place [see books above], pp. 188-96.
  • 1979 Phenomenology, Geography and Geographic Education, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 3 (Autumn): 40-50.
  • 1978 Goethe’s Approach to the Natural World: Implications for Environmental Theory and Education, in David Ley and Marwyn Samuels, eds., Humanistic Geography: Prospects and Problems (Chicago: Maaroufa Press), pp. 238-50.
  • 1976 Phenomenological Investigation of Imaginative Literature, in G.T. Moore and R.G. Golledge, eds., Environmental Knowing: Theories, Research, and Methods (Stroudsburg, PA: Dowden, Hutchison and Ross) pp. 286-90.
  • 1976 Extending the Man-Environment Relationship: Wordsworth and Goethe’s Experience of the Natural World, Monadnock, 50: 38-50.
  • 1975 The Phenomenological Investigation of Lived-Space, Monadnock, 49: 38-45.
  • 1972 Environmental Imagery: An Overview and Tentative Ordering, in W.J. Mitchell, ed., Environmental Design: Research and Practice (Los Angeles: School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of California, Los Angeles) pp. 7-1-1—7-1-7.