Environmental & Architectural
Phenomenology Newsletter
A Map of Phenomenology for the Design Disciplines
David Wang & Sarah Wagner
Wang is a Professor of Architecture in the Interdisciplinary Design Institute at Washington State University in Spokane. Wagner is a doctoral student in that program. david.wang.wsu@gmail.com; yellowsarah@wsu.edu. © 2007 David Wang & Sarah Wagner.
This paper proposes a “map” of phenomenological studies relating to the design disciplines. This map is needed because phenomenology, although often invoked by designers, tends to be difficult to define. The word is often conflated with creative spontaneity or with indeterminate feelings associated with sensually stimulating locales—for example, Fay Jones’ Chapel in the Woods or Steven Holl’s St. Ignatius Chapel, come to mind.
But the spontaneity of creativity and charged aesthetic experiences at special locales are just a portion of a larger domain of phenomenology that can inform the design fields. Hence, our map highlights the fact that phenomenology pertaining to the design disciplines overlaps a much larger domain of interdisciplinary inquiry.
Overviews of phenomenology pertaining to design are already on offer in the literature. David Seamon’s “Phenomenology, Place, Environment, and Architecture” summarizes recent developments in the field. [1] Even mapping of phenomenological domains can be found; one is available at Phenomenology Online. [2]
Our aim here differs from these by sorting phenomenological material into four conceptual regions illustrated by a “map” (figure 1, below) that, in turn, acts as a tool to situate extant works in sliding-scale fashion among these regions. “Extant works” encompasses both written articles and built forms. Our map not only clarifies the ideas motivating these works but also maps them, in graphic terms, on an overall geography of phenomenology.
In what follows, we first define phenomenology’s philosophical roots. The four quadrants of the map are then explained step by step with illustrative examples from the literature. [3]
We conclude with thoughts on the map’s (and phenomenology’s) uses and limitations. Additionally, it is obvious that we can only cite representative works. It is hoped that the categories and examples proposed might stir readers to make more connections and to fill in the map with other examples.
Phenomenology as Immediacy
Phenomenology emerged at the dawn of the 20th century as a response to the hegemony of “scientific method” with its requirements for analytic description, taxonomy, and experimentation. The critique was that this Cartesian vetting of experience can only yield knowledge of a reduced kind. A more immediate engagement with phenomena, understood equally as knowledge, was needed.
It was largely in response to this need that Edmund Husserl first proposed the intentionality of consciousness in his Logical Investigations (1901) and Ideas (1913). Husserl held that there already exists a subject-object unity at the level of consciousness prior to a Cartesian definition of a thing (e.g., “this is a house”). In this way, he sought to bridge the Cartesian dichotomy between observer and observed.
Martin Heidegger, whose early work drew from Husserl, connected phenomenology to the Greek phanesthai, meaning to reveal or unveil. [4] This emphasis is important because, in the many ways “phenomenology” has come to inform a wide range of inquiry, a common thread in all cases is the axiom that phenomena have an existence prior to their description by means of language, and so the only access to them is by a spontaneous phanesthai.
This background sketch is already enough theoretical material to inform design in multifaceted ways. To this end, from our survey of the literature, our map consists of four quadrants summarizing the main areas of phenomenology in relation to design inquiry. These quadrants are as follows:
1. individual phenomenology;
2. phenomenology of history and culture;
3. phenomenology of design production;
4. phenomenology related to metaphysics.
As figure 1 indicates, the lines between the nodes, both orthogonal and diagonal, are sliding scales along which extant works in the literature can be situated. As well, the regions in between the lines are fields within which appropriate extant works can be mapped. The common denominator to all these regions is the immediate, or spontaneous, experiences previous to propositional constraints imposed upon them by conventions of communication.
1. Individual Phenomenology
Individual phenomenology involves the immediate subjective engagement of a person with his or her surrounds. This approach is mapped at the lower left pole on the map. This was primarily the focus of Husserl and Heidegger. From this starting point come many of the now-established technical terms of phenomenology: Husserl’s intentionality of consciousness, Heidegger’s being-in-the-world and Dasein (“there being,” or “being there”), and Merleau-Ponty’s flesh-of-the-world (chiasm).
Christian Norberg-Shulz was largely responsible for translating this material—mostly from Heidegger—into the realm of architectural theory, though he did not get the translation quite right. Heidegger’s phenomenology does not reserve “phenomenological experiences” as those only encountered in heightened sensualized places (like Rome). Heidegger’s Dasein—being-in-the-world or “thrown-ness”—describes the immediate phenomenological experiences of all persons, regardless of locale.
But even a casual reading of Norberg-Schulz’ Genius Loci makes clear this is not what he had in mind. For Norberg-Schulz, phenomenological experiences come much more readily in (what can be regarded as) special places, such as Khartoum or Prague or Rome. [5] Francis Violich’s analysis of four towns in Dalmatia is exemplary in illustrating a Norberg-Schulzian approach to comprehending a locale. [6]
The churches by Holl and Jones, mentioned at the outset, can be mapped at this pole, in that they certainly stir heightened sensual experience. These can be architectural (formal) illustrations of what can be regarded as a Norberg-Schulzian “phenomenology of special places.”
Emphasis on special individual experience can be seen in the works of Steen Eiler Rasmussen [7] and, more recently, Juhani Pallasmaa. [8] Both writers situate phenomenological possibility in the experiencing subject—both by way of the senses—rather than in external locales.
In this way, phenomenological experience is restored more to a universal possibility (rather than just indexed to certain places). Gaston Bachelard also falls into this group; but, rather than basing phenomenological possibility on the senses, he looks to memory. [9]
Perhaps even closer to Heidegger in accuracy is Clare Cooper Marcus’ method for accessing the in-most feelings of residents toward their homes. This work returns to recognizing that Heidegger’s being-in-the-world is an immediate reality for all persons regardless of locale. Cooper Marcus invokes this philosopher as the wellspring for her thoughts:
…I attempted to approach this material via what philosopher Martin Heidegger called ‘pre-logical thought’. This is not ‘illogical’ or ‘irrational’, but rather a mode of approaching being-in-the-world that permeated early Greek thinkers at a time before the categorization of our world into mind and matter, cause and effect, in-here and out-there had gripped … the Western mind. I firmly believe that a deeper level of person/environment interaction can be approached only by means of a thought process that attempts to eliminate observer and object. [10]
2. History & Culture
G.W.F. Hegel’s theory of absolute spirit giving “shape” to discrete cultural periods is another category of phenomenology. The wellspring work here is his early Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), in many ways the key to comprehending all of Hegel’s philosophy. Absolute spirit is an unreflective (and hence self-revealing) corporate geist motivating all cultural processes, subordinating individual identities even as it spawns “world historical individuals” along with the empirical shapes of material culture.
Clearly not a phenomenology of individual subjective experience, Hegel’s theory profoundly influenced analyses of communal realities. This is represented by the lower right pole of the map. Hegelianism revolutionized analyses of political history and process and greatly informed how stylistic periods in art and architecture can be explained.
The work of such major art historians as Jacob Burckhardt and Heinrich Wolfflin are indebted to Hegel in this regard. [11] As for architecture, the manifesto spirit of early modernism—from Loos to Sant E’lia to Le Corbusier—would not have been what it was without Hegelianism.
Hegelian phenomenology also resonates with structuralist theory, the idea that systems of cultural meaning—such as language (de Saussure), familial roles, myth, even cuisine (all Levi-Strauss)—are self-defining and self-transforming within cultural systems. This is essentially a phanesthai point of view at the scale of cultural process.
A good illustration is Grant McCracken’s “Diderot Unities and Effects,” the theory that individuals and social classes immerse themselves within a certain band-width of material objects to define their social identity—the Diderot Unity. BMW automobiles go with Rolex watches and less so with Timex watches, for example. And when a differing object of meaning is inserted into a static unity of objects of meaning, things (read: styles) can radically change—the Diderot Effect.
Architectural history can be assessed through this unity-effect dialectic. When the English theorist A. W. Pugin (1812-1852) promoted a “Christian” architecture, by which he meant revival of the Gothic style, he was stirring a sense of national identity. [12] More recently, Daniel Libeskind defended his use of zinc panels on his Jewish Museum by saying they were “Berlin-like.” [13]
Both of these are examples that appeal to a corporate geist as the basis for design action. The cases can be regarded as Diderot disruptions seeking to change static Diderot unities of communal opinion. These two examples illustrate how phenomenological process can be discerned in literature or built forms usually not grouped under this heading.
3. Design Production
The phenomenology of design production is located at the upper left pole of the map. It is curious that the process itself of design does not receive more explicit attention as a phenomenological process in the literature. But works in which this fact is implicit abound.
Peter Rowe’s Design Thinking is one example. Rowe documented the give-and-take decisions of three design teams in “real time.” [14] As well, Donald Schon’s theory of reflection-in-action can be situated in this region. [15]
Again, these works are typically not regarded under the umbrella of “phenomenology,” but because they presume design production as a phanisthai sort of emergence, reason for including them on the map should be clear. Rowe, for instance, writes of the “interior situational logic [of[ the decision-making processes” (italics added). Or, he argues that any on-the-ground explanation of those processes needs to “go beyond matters of procedure” [16]—which is to say, prior to conventionalized methodologies.
Another group of works are those connecting “deep structure” with design. Drawing from the work of Noam Chomsky, students of deep structure posit innate frameworks within human cognition giving shape to external forms. Broadbent argues for a priori categories within which all built forms fall (pragmatic, typologic, analogic, canonic). [17]
Both Thomas Thiis-Evensen’s and Bill Hillier/Julienne Hanson’s work also assume deep structure; Thiis-Evensen using the term archetype [18] and Hillier and Hanson the term syntax. [19] Insofar as these reveal (read: phanisthai) patterns of design behavior, these theories address the phenomenology of design production.
In a previous article in this journal, Wang and Keen contributed to this region of the map by using Husserl’s intentionality of consciousness to explain the design of a house. [20] The article exemplifies how the sliding scale of the map works. We noted earlier that Husserl’s intentionality of consciousness basically concerns individual subjective experience. The full scope of his Ideas, however, sets individual experience in context of how corporate intentionalities work to produce built forms. Wang/Keen is situated on the map to reflect this indebtedness to Husserl even as the article pushes more toward the upper left pole as it focuses primarily on design production in lieu of subjective experience per se.
4. Metaphysics
In elevating immediate experience, phenomenology often interfaces with religious themes, and this is the fourth pole of the map, at the upper right. For sake of breadth, we use the term “metaphysics” in the sense of that which is beyond the physical. From the standpoint of design, this usually brings the focus to “sacred space,” variously defined.
Mircea Eliade is often the thinker invoked as having defined this term. Richard Lang, for instance, analyzes the phenomenology of the threshold through the lens of Eliade’s division between the sacred and the profane. [21] Eliade’s theory of sacred space, however, is of much larger scale, positing that the very possibility of an inhabited world is based upon a process of sanctifying (separating) from an a priori chaotic condition. [22]
In this respect, Eliade’s theory returns almost full circle back to Heidegger’s formulation of the four-fold (earth, sky, mortals, divinities) in his Building Dwelling Thinking. [23] Heidegger holds that dwelling itself has the quality of separating from—or making a clearing in—a previously amorphous space, and that quality is the quality of the four-fold.
It is important to note that metaphysical experience, as defined here, seems to make the experience of time elastic, even as it renders experience of a location special. Sometimes the literature looks to Hans-Georg Gadamer for theoretical explanation of this phenomenon, particularly in his theory of how “festival” interprets special experience as always-present experience. In the words of one commentator:
… the ordering of time occurs due to the returning of the festival. In this manner our temporal being is given rhythm through festivals, whether we are expressively aware of it or not. In a festival it is clear that those who participate… are embedded in a play that goes beyond their subjective choice, activity, and intending. Who would ever want to ‘objectify’ a festive mood? [24]
In this fluidity, Heidegger’s emphasis upon individual subjective experience has a way of morphing into communal experience.
In the way of built forms, one is reminded of the work of (or more precisely, the testimony of) the Abbot Suger (1081-1151) in his renovation of the St. Denis Cathedral in the 12th century. Motivated by the Platonic tradition, Suger sought to transform the existing structure into one filled with “… wonderful and uninterrupted light … pervading the interior with beauty” [25] and “[urging] us onward from the material to the immaterial.” [26] The result of his efforts contributed to the beginnings of Gothic architecture.Closer to home, we can again cite Holl’s and Jones’ works under individual phenomenological experience. It is in the nature of phenomenological fluidity that that which is special in individual subjective experience can also become a kind of festival-as-presence when instantiated into architectural form.
Conclusions & Limitations
In eschewing the propositional, phenomenological studies have elevated many facets of human experience to the level of rigorous knowledge (or at least to the level of rigorous academic consideration of these facets as knowledge). This approach is useful for the design disciplines in that these domains stress the spontaneous, the creative, and the aesthetic—all resonant with phenomenology’s emphasis upon phanesthai.
The map proposed here aims at an objective mapping of the extant literature as well as built forms that have connections to this way of assessing experience. We propose the map as an objective tool; we do not promote any portion of its contents as representative of our own convictions about the nature of knowledge or experience.
The map’s usefulness lies in its ability to clarify extant domains of phenomenological inquiry even as it provides a chassis upon which additional works can be mapped or additional conceptual linkages made, proving its interdisciplinary value in the process.
As for the limitations of phenomenology, perhaps the idea of a map itself is a critique. Without this propositional tool, we would have more difficulty sorting out all this material that eschews the restrictions of propositional knowledge. And so we ought not to elevate phenomenological inquiry to a totalizing position.
Notes
1.D. Seamon, “A Way of Seeing People and Place: Phenomenology in Environment-Behavior Research,” in S. Wapner, J. Demick, T. Yamamoto, & H Minami, eds., Theoretical Perspectives in Environment-Behavior Research (NY: Plenum, 2000), 157-78; longer version available online at: http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/articles/seamon1.html;
2. http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/1.html
3. We must note here that the examples cited for the map are by definition illustrative and not exhaustive; one goal of proposing this map is to invite further mapping of the extant literature.
4. Heidegger took this to mean “that wherein something can become manifest, visible in itself.” M. Heidegger, Being and Time, 1927, J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, trans. (NY: Harper and Row, 1962), 51.
5. Khartoum, Prague, and Rome all receive systematic attention in C. Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (NY: Rizzoli, 1980).
6. F. Violich, “Four Dalmatian Towns” in D. Seamon & R. Mugurauer, eds. Dwelling, Place and Environment (Malabar, Florida: Krieger, 2000), 113-136.
7. S. E. Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture (Cambridge.: MIT Press, 1964)
8. J. Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (London: Wiley, 2005).
9. G. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).
10. C. Cooper Marcus, House as a Mirror of Self (Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 1995), pp. 10-11.
11. E.g., H. Wolfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, K. Simon, trans. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1966)
12. A. W. Pugin, True Principles of Pointed Christian Architecture, 1841 (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1973).
13. D. Libeskind, 1995 Raoul Wallenberg Lecture (Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1995), 40.
14. P. Rowe, Design Thinking (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 1-37.
15. D. Schon, The Reflective Practitioner (NY: Basic Books, 1983), 30-69.
16. Rowe, op. cit., 1, 2, 37.
17. G. Broadbent, “The Structures of Architecture” in Broadbent and Jencks, Signs, Symbols and Architecture (NY: Wiley, 1980).
18. T. Thiis-Evensen, Archetypes in Architecture (Oslo: Norwegian Univ. Press, 1987).
19. B. Hillier & J. Hanson, The Social Logic of Space (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984).
20. D. Wang & J. Keen, “Intentionality and the Production of Architectural Designs,” in EAP, 12, 3, Fall 2001.
21. R. Lang, “Phenomenology of Transition” in D. Seamon & R. Mugerauer, eds., op. cit., 206-207.
22. M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, trans. W. Trask (NY: Harcourt Brace Janovich, 1959), 21-65.
23. M. Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking” in D. F. Krell, ed., Basic Writings (Harper San Francisco, 1992), 347-363.
24. J. Grondin, “Play, Festival, and Ritual in Gadamer,” in Language and Linguisticality in Gadamer's Hermeneutics, L. K. Schmidt, ed., (NY: Lexington Books, 2000); available at: http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/grondinj/
25. Abbot Suger, “De Consecratione IV” in E. Panofsky, Erwin, trans., Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St. Denis and its Art Treasures (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1946), 101.
26. Abbot Suger, “De Administratione, XXXIV,” in ibid., 75.