spirit of a place

Place Experiencea phenomenological inquiry into the nature of architecture

Dedicated to my parents and

my loved ones

A place articulates the Being of the humans.

acknowledgments

There are innumerous people who might have knowingly- unknowingly helped

me in my endeavour. I thank all of them if at all I have missed out to specifically

mention the names.

Foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to our thesis committee i.e.

Prof. Devang Parekh and Prof. Riddhi Shah, for putting faith in me and

allowing me to take up a subject so nuanced, for a theoritical research and for

their support and encouragment throughout the dissertation.

I sincerely thank my guide Prof. Gauri Bharat for her invaluable guidance

and helpful criticisms during the study and helping me to understand a

complex subject with simplicity.

I am extremly grateful to Dr. David Seamon (Professor of Environment-

Behaviour and Place Studies at Kansas State University, Manhattan) for his

invaluable courtesy, support, criticism, inputs and guidance throughout the

dissertation without which I would not have been able to have a grasp on the

subject.

I would also like to thank Ar. Shirish Beri and Ar. Dean de Cruz for their

courtesy, criticism and recommendations at the beginning of the study, which

helped me to develop an approach and a focus for my study.

I specially thank Prof. Juhani Pallasmaa (Former Professor of architecture and

Dean at Helsinki University of Technology, Finland), for his invaluable courtesy

and inputs at the beginning and the end of my study.

I am also thankful to the members of final jury panel, Prof. Jaimini Mehta

and Ar. Riyaz Tayyibji for pointing out the voids in my work, which also

happened to be an invaluable learning.

I sincerely thank Akshay Anand for his spellbinding discussions and

invaluable references and Manashree Parekh for being a helpful critique to

my work throughout its growth.

I am also thankful to my seniors for documenting the Jubilee area for the

LIK Trophy, which has been a helpful base for making various illustration and

drawings in the dissertation.

I specially thank Ronak Patel, for being a mentor and a mate starting from

NATA classes till the end of my dissertation and inspiring me to move towards

the subject of my dissertation.

I owe my utmost gratitude to late German thinker Martin Heidegger for

laying the roots of a radical approach in the conception of architecture.

Finally, I sincerely thank to my family, myself and all those helped me in every

tiny way and led me to a satifying completion of my dissertation.

a

“Every week, as I head towards the old city, sense of time seems to get suspended. The chaos of the ruthless traffic slowly turns into a serene atmosphere as I enter into the gates of the jubilee garden. The flock of pigeons flying continuously and welcoming each one entering the place reminds me of a kid offering the grains to them almost a decade ago. It’s healing to believe that it’s the same flock that is still hovering over the place. Slowly as I move inside, the sculpted lions on the entrance of the Museum suddenly seem to come alive. I can feel the grains of his mane and the pride of sitting over the lion is relived in me.

As I step outside the car, I can feel coolness of the place and slowly, its warmth. I stand under the huge tree besides the museum and stretch myself and allow the place to flow within me. The prayer bells turn louder as I head towards the vegetable market. The smell of the dhoop together with the chanting of prayers forces me to pause and mentally bow in front of the temple and thank god for whatever I have. I walk down a few steps and climb up the market and I can feel and breathe in the coolness of the freshly washed vegetables. Suddenly it becomes a different place. It seems that the calmness and the coolness of the place are on account of the fresh vegetables. A single breathe of the place gives us more life than the vegetables do, by getting inside the stomach.

As I start walking out, the charisma of the place seems to have sunken with the sun. It feels that the place has slept. It is trying to tell me that it’s time for me to leave. I suddenly feel that I no more belong to that place until the next seven days. I slowly move towards the ocean of chaos for the next week.”

preface

The Eye (1945)Fig. 0 Dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali in the film Spellbound(1945) based on his painting

B a c k g r o u n d

P r o p o s a l

T h e o r i t i c a l p r e m i s e

Int roduct ion to phenomenology

Nature o f ‘exper ience’

The phenomenon of a rch i tec ture

Concept ion of ‘p l ace ’

A p r o l o g u e t o J u b i l e e g a r d e n a r e a

Genes is o f a p l ace

C r i te r ia for case se lec t ion

C a s e S t u d y

Part 1 : Mapping the place

Mapping the p l ace as i t is

Part 2 : Analysing the layers of place-experience

P resence

Human Act iv i t ies and Movements

Bui l t env i ronment I n f e r e n c e s

A p p e n d i x

G l o s s a r y

W o r k s C i t e d

i n g r e d i e n t s

07

11

15

17

23

25

29

47

49

85

01

03

06

22

28

45

104

111

115

117

1.

1.1

1.2

1.3

1.4

2.

2.1

2.2

3.

3.1

3.2.1

3.2.2

3.2.3

Is reality real ?

Fig. 0 Dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali in the film Spellbound (1945) based on his painting

Place-Experience : a phenomenological inquiry into the nature of architecture Smi t 2409 IPSA, Rajkot

Genesis of a place cannot be anticipated; time, being one of the factors governing it. But in order to become sensitive designers, we must have an idea about how places happen. Intimate experience of place makes our memories, which are not just in form of visual imagery. It’s the lived experience at the place that we remember and also makes us that place remember. The physical settings of the place along with its spatial constructs generate the character of a place. It is this character of that place and our being in the place that is captured in our experience. For example, the older parts of Rajkot city has a character that is absent in the urbanized areas of the city. Though, it doesn’t have any dramatically aesthetic character, but it feels soothing.

Again, the understanding of the character of the place is not complete in itself. One can’t acknowledge any character of place unless one is in the place. In order to understand this, one needs to delve into phenomenology. ”Phenomenology is the interpretive study of human situations, meanings and events as they spontaneously occur in the course of daily lives.” 2 Phenomenology as a theory is too complex to delve into deeply as it has its roots and a wider scope of study in philosophy and psychology. However, the core idea of phenomenological thinking in the realm of architecture, which is the study of the nature of place-experience, shall be explored in this dissertation.

2. Seamon, David. Theoretical Perspectives in Environment-Behaviour Research. New York:

Plenum, pp. 157-78, 2000). and so forth.

During the course of my architectural education, it has felt that there remains a gap between architecture as conceived and architecture as experienced. We never experience any built space as a separate designed space. It sits fused within the surrounding environment which is full of natural as well as man-made phenomena1. A mere construction of building may not be enough to understand the realization of architecture. Architecture starts when the designed space is inhibited by people. As the place grows, designed space gradually loses its identity as designed. It then becomes a concrete place which is filled up with people, their activities and various inter-woven phenomena which gives the place a unique identity and distinctiveness. It has life within itself. It becomes an inevitable part of people’s lives and the everyday experience. This is how architecture is realized.

Architecture is experienced as distinct places of distinct character. It is never possible to fully represent architecture through the conventional mediums of plans, sections, elevations and models because any two or three dimensional medium of representation tries to isolate it from a complex whole and present it as an abstraction, drawn away from reality, while missing the experiential, existential and temporal dimensions of the nature of architecture. In order to understand its full dimensions, one must understand the concept of a place which brings us closer to the nature of architecture.

1. Phenomena refer to things or experiences as human beings experience them. Any object,

event, situation or experience that a person can see, hear, touch, smell, taste, feel, intuit,

know, understand, or live through is a legitimate topic for phenomenological investigation.

There can be a phenomenology of light, of color, of architecture, of landscape, of place, of

home, of travel, of seeing, of learning, of blindness, of jealousy, of change, of relationship,

of friendship, of power, of economy, of sociability, and so forth. (Seamon, David.

Perspectives in Environment-Behaviour Research, pg. 158-178, 2000.)

B a c k g r o u n d

Fig. 1. Backdrop Fig. 2. Backdrop

Place-Experience : a phenomenological inquiry into the nature of architecture Smi t 2409 IPSA, Rajkot Proposal

Scope and Limitations

• This dissertation aims to bring out the how a place happens and how it is constituted in our experience.

• It shall be demonstrated through a selected case only.

• It is an attempt to bring out various aspects of the nature of place experience rather than suggesting how the place experience was.

• It will delve into everyday environmental experience of a place and not on extraordinary aesthetic experiences and hence acknowledge the ontological dimension of the place experience.

• The inherent limitation of the experience of place is that it’s impossible to translate the lived experience by words or by any two or dimensional medium of representation as experience is to be lived and by its very nature is temporal, ephemeral and lived through the embodiment of people and place.

• The study aims to capture the real essence of the place, hence, the photo documentation in the case study has been done using a secret camera pen, to avoid people getting self conscious; due to which the aesthetic quality of photos might seem compromised. Also, the date and time imprint in the photographs is irrelevant.

• It hence, attempts to provide a more comprehensive perspective for conceiving and understanding the nature of architecture.

Aim

To explore the nature of a everyday place-experience1 through phenomenology and demonstrate its significance in architecture.

Objectives

• To understand the genesis of place-experience.• To identify the role of elements (of the place and within people) that generates the place-experience.• To demonstrate the primacy of the phenomenology of a place in architecture.

Methodology

• Exploring various mediums like films, intallation arts, literary texts to understand the nature of phenomenology and its relevance and scope in architecture.• A phenomenological approach has mainly four methods of research i.e. first person phenomenological research, hermeneutic phenomenological research, existential phenomenological research and commingling methods, of which the first two shall be used here.- First Person Phenomenological Research: The researcher uses his/her own first hand experiences and observations.- Hermeneutic Phenomenological Research: Interpretation of existing literary works.• Mapping the place as it is and skimming out various layers of the place-experience and analysing them.

P r o p o s a l

1. Place and experience can’t be divorced because of the intentionality of

experience. Meaning to say, realization of a place is because of its experience

and experience is always of something, here, a place. Here, both of them have

been specified for as a conscious attempt to highlight this intentionality.

03

T h e o r i t i c a l p r e m i s e

1.1 Int roduct ion to phenomenology

1.2 Nature o f ‘exper ience’

1.3 The phenomenon of a rch i tec ture

1.4 Concept ion of ‘p l ace ’

What is the obvious? It is that which is taken for granted and never spoken of as such; yet, the obvious everywhere and always guides and supports our culture. The obvious is that which we already agree, the base from which all action, individual and social, proceeds. Since it is never explicitly discussed nor articulated, the obvious is the most difficult to identify, even though in a disguised manner it lies all around us. To uncover the obvious we must take a step back from the assumptions and attitudes that entwine us.

- Seamon (1979, p.9), Grange (1977, p.136)

01chapter


Fig. 3. Frisbee as an object

Lets consider a simple example to illustrate

studying objects phenomenologically.

The above image shows a frisbee as an

object. Factual science would say that it is

made of X materal, with Y thickness, Z radius

and that it is designed aerodynamicallly and

is lying on the grass.

Phenomenologically studying it, we would

say that playing with a flying dish is a

wonderful game. After stickng our vision to

the dish like a sniper’s, the sudden jump

of the air to grab it feels amazing. Landing

back again on the wet grass is relieving

haptic experience. This is how frisbee(flying

dish) is understood as an object versus

phenomenon. Similarly, with architecture.

Fig. 4. Frisbee as a phenomenon In experience, the conscious, sub-conscious and the unconscious are inseperably intermixed and

objective time-space-reality are suspended. Memories of past experiences gives meanings to phenomena.

Reality is what is presented to us in our experience and its the construct of one’s mind. Experience

fuses the two worlds in which people dwell, inner mental world(the surreal) to the outer material world

(conventionally presumed as the real). Objective reality is not phenomenologically acceptable, rather, it

resides in the essence of each phenomenon.The surrealist style of Salvador Dali’s paintings is perhaps

the best representation of the nature of experience and how our mind involuntarily draws objects from the

sub-conscious and unconscious mind and then sews a meaning to the occurences.

Experience of anything happens on the account of consciousness of the human mind and body. In order to understand this, one needs to delve into the theory of phenomenology1. Before Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), who initiated the twentieth century European philosophy of phenomenology, there were several precursors of phenomenological thinking in the 18th century like Johann Heinrich Lambert, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Ernst Mach and Franz Brentano. Popularly known as philosophical movement, its rather a radical way of doing philosophy, that encompasses varying themes. Its more of a practice and a method of inquiring into phenomena as they appear to us in our experience.

Edmund Husserl introduced phenomenology as a rigorous science that aimed to study the invariable structures of consciousness (that he considered as cerebral), governing the forever-in-flux experience. Even in his oeuvre, there seemed an observable turn in his approach towards phenomenology (which lies beyond the scope of this dissertation). He laid the foundations of the predominant themes of approaching phenomenology that are eidetic reduction and presuppositionless starting point (suspending our natural attitudes, prejudice, biases and preconceptions about things or phenomena) and intentionality (consciousness is always about something and it doesn’t exist in itself). While Martin Heidegger, in his magnum opus Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) argued that consciousness was not different from our existence and before attempting to study how the world is presented to us in consciousness, first we must acknowledge that we as human beings exist in the world through a dialectic relation. The human’s Being is being-in-the-world (human beings and the world as a part and parcel of each other), that is also known as the human-immersion-in-the-world and the world is given to us through our experience of it.

1.1 Introduction to phenomenology

1. Phenomenology explained here is simplified to avoid ambiguities. In order to

explore the complete range of phenomenological inquiry, refer Introduction to

Phenomenology by Dermot Moran.

2. Inherent limitation of the arguement put forward by Martin Heidegger is that

in English language there doesn’t exist any term equivalent to dasein or da-sein

in German. Da stands for there/here and Sein stands for being, meaning being

here/ being there.

07

Fig. 5.

Persistence of Memory

Surrealism,

24.1 cm X 33 cm, oil on canvas,

Salvador Dali,1931.

Museum of Modern Art,

New York City.


Heidegger has specifically addressed architectural issues in his essay Building, dwelling, thinking (Buan, Wohnen, Dunken) in which he argues that places provide humans with an existential foothold and the human’s Being is necessarily a Being-in-a-place. He has critiqued the modernist approach to the environmental design saying that architecture isn’t enough. The conception of architecture according to him was problematic as it was primarily based on form making, visual seduction and utilitarian aspects while it seemed to ignore the aspects of inhabitation and experience. The sole purpose of human is to dwell on earth, which is manifested by building(building here means to build oneself). The words ‘build’ and ‘dwell’ come from the same German root bauen. Places allow man to dwell on earth and hence become a legimate topic of phenomenological investigation in the domain of architecture.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty broadened this understanding by argueing that human consciousness represents the embodiment of human body and mind. In his major work Phenomenology of Perception, he signified the active role of the human body in the experience through the idea of body–subject and tried to remove the gap between physiological and psychological actions, which were rather embodied and that this embodiment is lived through the experience equally by the body and the mind. He has explained the role of human senses and body in the perception of space and also has concretized the dialectic nature of the experience saying that while experiencing, man is in the place and place is in the man.

1.There were many contributors to the phenomenological movement. Here, only

those phenomenologists have been mentioned whose works have a foundational

base for architecture i.e. Edmund Husserl, Martin Heiddeger and Maurice

Merleau-Ponty.

Fig. 6. Manuel Molina, Being-in-the-world

Being - in - the - world refers to a transcendental

experience in which there remains no

seperation between the human and the

world that is when a person is completely

absorbed, immersed and drawn into what

is doing. In this transcendental experience,

one can observe how human consciousness

is an embodied consciousness and is lived

through the embodiment of body-mind and

object-subject.

Manuel Molina ia a Spanish flamenco

master, artist, a poet, a singer and a master

guitarist (Fig.6). This screenshot from the

movie Being-in-the-World represents the

embodiment of human body and mind and

also what was referred to as being-in-the-world.

the World

09

This sculpture is a ironical representation of the Cartesian ideology of body-mind

dualism(human being is made up of mind and body). While in reality, the experience

is lived through the embodiment of the body and mind and that either of them can’t be

acknowledge independently

Fig. 7.

Emotional Detox from

The Seven Deadly Sins IV

Marc Quinn, 1995.


Experience is an intricately interwoven phenomenon made up by the fusion of sensation-perception-conception-response/behavior which is founded by thoughts, grounded on memories and flavoured by emotions. It occurs on the account of consciousness and hence the intentionality follows. Its a continuous dialogue between the ‘experiencer’ and the ‘thing being experienced’. Here, experience would mean experience of a place. A person present in a place governs the experience. It can be understood as a dimension of the engagement of man with his surroundings, as it occurs in the course of everyday life. It can’t exist without ‘man’ present in a ‘place’. Presence of human beings is brought to light by the phenomenological approach.

Experience is similar to the notions about time and also both are inseperably intertwined. We understand time in form of fragments of memories and through idea of intervals and durations. There is no sublime answer about what time really is. It has also been argued by scholars that time doesn’t exist. Its just a notion created by ‘change’. Babies in their mother’s wombs don’t experience time nor do we experience time when we are unconscious or sleeping. Its a product of human consciousness and it is not absolute but relative in nature.

“What then is time? If no one asks, I know: if I want to explain it to a questioner, I do not know...We measure times. But how can we measure what doesn’t exist? This past is no longer, the future is not yet. And what of present? The present has not duration.”2 (St. Augustine)

Similar is with experience. We can’t explain experience as a singular independent entity. We can understand it on account of perception and feeling about experienced objects. Experience occurs on account of our consciousness. In this way, experience and time are intertwined.

1.2 Nature of the ‘experience’ 1 (verb)

1. The word experience is used for varying purposes. Experience here, means

experience of a place. It would be inquired as it occurs in everyday life.

2. Holl Steven. Questions of Perception : A phenomenology of architecture.

T h e o r i t i c a l p r e m i s e : N a t u re o f t h e ‘ e x p e r i e n c e ’ 11

Fifty sheets of striped transparent and mirrored glass extend over the first and second floors,

creating a mesmerizing visual experience. ‘Seeing yourself sensing’ probes the notion of seeing as

a phenomenological process and an action realized in time. As we look through the window, we can

partly see ourselves. It metaphorically represents the core idea of phenomenological thinking i.e.

how the subject and the object merge in the experience.

Fig. 8.

Seeing yourself Sensing,

Installation art ,

Olafur Eliasson, 2001.

The Museum of Modern Art,

New York.


Sensation, Perception and Conception

Senses are the windows of our mind. Everything around us is perceived by all the senses in totality. There is an interconnection between all the senses (known as synaesthesia). The interpretation of all the sense data received by the sense organs happens in mind and is called perception. Together, senses form the basis of all the knowledge. Reasoning, judgement, emotions and behaviour, every psychological aspects of being a human is based on the senses. We can’t perceive, reason, judge, feel or take a call of an action without the senses. This can be precisely understood by looking at how a visually disabled person behaves in comparison to person with eyesight.

Conception of a phenomenon is based on numerous factors, to say a few, age, memory, culture and language. Under architectural scope, one needs to understand that these aspects determine conception rather than how they occur. As one conceives the sense data, he/she reacts to it which is called the behavior.

Schematization1

As explained by psychologist Jean Piaget, schematization is a definite set of responses developed by a person to act in a particular situation in the environment. It determines what things mean and how one responds to it. A person learns this definite set of responses from the surrounding environment, society and culture as he grows. These are deeply rooted in culture, memory, language and past experiences. It determines the order of our thinking and this is how every person is unique in himself. This is precisely the reason of the difference in the experience of the same place by different persons.

This forms the base for all the subjectivity associated with humans.

1. Noberg-Schulz, Christian. Intentions in Architecture.

T h e o r i t i c a l p r e m i s e : N a t u re o f t h e ‘ e x p e r i e n c e ’13

Man Consciousness Place

A

BC

Time

A: Sensation and Perception(Fused inter-sensory data offered to mind)B: Conception(Judgement based on schema/schemata)C: Feelings and emotions(Behaviour/response)

It doesn’t exist as an independent entity. Its experienced by people and is about the place; fused with the flow of time. It flows with time as shown. The arrows represent the continuity of the experience.

Fig. 9.

Nature of experience


Architecture in its very essence is phenomenological. The manner of its engagement with human is phenomenological and it is presented to us through it’s experience. Architectural phenomenology aims to study the lived space and time (also known as existential space which is manifested through experience) which is lived by people. It brings before us the dialectic relation between architecture and people.

“Houses are built in the world of Euclidian geometry, but lived space always transcends the rules of geometry. Architecture structures and ‘tames’ meaningless Euclidian space for human habitation by inserting into it existential meanings. Lived space resembles the structures of dream and the unconscious, organized independently of the boundaries of physical space and time. Lived space is always a combination of external space and inner mental space, actuality and mental projection. In experiencing lived space, memory and dream, fear and desire, value and meaning, fuse with the actual perception. Lived space is space that is inseparably integrated with the subject’s concurrent life situation. We do not live separately in material and mental worlds; these experiential dimensions are fully intertwined. Neither do we live in an objective world. We live in mental worlds, in which the experienced, remembered and imagined, as well as the past, present and future are inseparably intermixed.”1

Within architectural phenomenology there are varying approaches. The reason behind is that architecture isn’t a monovalent phenomena. There are phenomena within each phenomenon. The other reason behind it is that conception of both architecture and phenomenology differs with architects and hence varying phenomenological approaches towards architecture.

The following page illustrates an example of a deliberate application of phenomenological thinking in architecture by Peter Zumthor.

1.3 The phenomenon of architecture : the lived space and time

1. Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema.

T h e o r i t i c a l p r e m i s e : The phenomenon o f a rch i t ec tu re

i m a g e

Fig. 10. Sections

Fig. 11.

Plan of the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel

Architectural drawings are a tool that try to

objectify architecture, rather one should

say the built form. Architectural drawings

generally follow the orthogonal grid. The

reason behind is that orthogonal grids

provide us with the true dimensions or

the true length of the designed spaces,

which help us in executing the construction

process. We fail to understand that the real

nature of our engagment with architecture

is not through these true lengths. In reality

we are never even going to experience a 4

meter wall as 4 a meter wall.

Another aspect that tries to objectify

architecture is its visual form, though not

universally. But a good looking building is

generally agreed to by most of the people.

The phenomenology of architecture helps

us in understanding the real nature of

architecture more lucidly by studying how we

experience it.

15

Fig. 12. The external view

Fig. 13. the symbolism through skylight

Fig. 14. atmosphere of mysticism

Figure 15 box of mysticism

Fig. 16. sitted alone in landscape

Fig. 17. sections

Fig. 18. Plan

Fig. 19. the directionality

Fig. 20. during construction(above)

Bruder Klaus Field Chapel is a landmark in a Germany’s natural landscape in which a mysitcal space

is masked within a rectangular cuboid dedicated to Swiss Saint Nicholasvon der Flue also known

as Brother Claus. It was made up by pouring concrete into tent like structure made by tree trunks.

After layers of concrete were set, the structure was set on a smouldering fire for three weeks.

The burnt wood was then removed giving the interior a charred look.The gaze of the observer is

pulled up at the light entering from the roof opening due to the deliberatly designed directionality

in the interior space. The sunlight and rain entering from the top gives the place an atmosphere of

mysticism and spirituality. The roof looks like a fireball symbolising the flare of a star, in reference to

Brother Klaus’s vision in the womb.This feeling becomes inevitable as a user travels into the space

and looks up. It gives a feeling of transcendance ,making it a masterpiece of religious architecture.

Bruder Klaus Field Chapel,

Wachendarf,Germany.

Peter Zumthor

New York,

Olafur Eliasson,2001


Places have always acted as a backdrop to our existence even before architecture as a profession existed. They have never been an entity of any wonder. We have taken its existence as granted. But it is impossible to imagine ourselves without being in any place. If at all we imagine any imaginary place in our minds on account of our memories, it automatically means that we are in the place in of imagination. Our Being is essentially being-in-a-place and this being-in-a-place is the on the account of the experience of the place. A place moulds our daily life worlds and we as humans are constituted as a part of the place itself. We are not conscious about the significance of the place in our lives. In order to understand its significance, we must understand its anti-thesis placelessness 2 (feeling of being lost). Place concretizes our existence. We are ‘ourselves’ on account of a place. We lose our orientation and identification when we come across a completely new place, which can be also understood as alienation.

The sense of a place is captured and manifested through our experience of the place. A place can be understood in threefold manner. First is the physical built environment or the Euclidian space that exists as a physical setting, which is fused with the natural phenomena (rising of the sun, seasonal changes, the flora and fauna). One or more user groups act on this space and hence animate the space that becomes a place which together with the former is understood as the phenomena of a place. The third is the presence of an people to experience the phenomena.

1.4 C o n c e p t i o n o f ‘ p l a c e 1 ’

T h e o r i t i c a l p r e m i s e : Concep t i on o f a ‘P l ace ’

i m a g e

B u i l te n v i r o n m e n t

H u m a n A c t i v i t i e s

andM o v e m e n t s

Place Experience

17

1. Place here refers to man-made places only that is the places which have human

intervention. The study of natural places is out of the scope of this dissertation.

2. Relph, Edward. Place and Placelessness.

P r e s e n c e

Fig. 22. BackdropFig. 21. Backdrop

Peter Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus Field Chapel is an example of a preconceived and deliberate application

of phenomenological thinking in architecture. While phenomenology of a place aims to study how

a designed building is fused within the surroundings, generating a place of a distinct character and

how these places provide existential meaning to human beings. The above figure is the framework

for studying the place selected here.

Fig. 23.

Conception of‘Place Experience’


Place : A People-Space-Time continuum

Time is an unavoidable aspect of the experience and our existence. The idea of time can be understood by multiple means in the context of experience of a place.

The first and the foremost aspect of time is that experience and time are intertwined. One can’t describe any experience of a place without time neither can understand time devoid of any experience. The dynamism of experience is on the account of time. One can’t imagine any ‘static’ experience of a place. Time and the character of the place are continuously changing and hence its experience. Even with the scales of time, the experience and character of the place changes. For e.g., the character and the experience of the same place changes with morning to evening to night, to normal day and festive days, to seasons of a year and the place will completely change in span of hundred years. Fig. 24 to Fig. 28 shows how dramatically the same place (entrance of the Jubilee Garden Area) changes with time.

Another aspect of time is the consciousness about time. Intimate experiences of place suspend the sense of time. It fuses man in the place where in, there no more remains a distinction between man and place. The place becomes just unified whole and we are not aware how much time has passed. While at certain instances, the experience of a place is so terrible that we become self conscious and somehow time doesn’t seem to flow. This is the psychological aspect of time. Hence we can say that, good places have a potential to manipulate the sense of time, which is an unavoidable learning for architects.

T h e o r i t i c a l p r e m i s e : Concep t i on o f a ‘P l ace ’

Past Present Future

Man Consciousness Place

Time Consciousness Experience

is gone has no duration is yet to comeHence, at any point of time, time doesn’t exist. Its described in form of duration of memories and experience.

Similarly, experience doesn’t exist within itself independently.

of Experience is lived through about

19

Fig. 24.

Fig. 25.

Fig. 26.

Fig. 27.

Fig. 28. Hence, at any point of time, experience is lived through the embodiment of people and place and is described in terms of memory of the experiencer.

Fig. 29.

Relation Between

Time- Consciousness and Place

13

A P r o l o g u e to

Jubilee Garden Area ,Rajkot

2.1 Genes is o f ‘p l ace ’ 2.2 C r i te r ia for case se lec t ion

This chapter explains how a place is generated and rooted in the habitual behaviour of people. It further explains how the case selected here has the potential of a phenomenological inquiry as the case selection criteria for such a study is critical.

02chapter


Places are rooted in what is known as a Place Ballet. Place ballet is a practical phenomenological notion developed by architect and theorist David Seamon in his phenomenological work on everday environmental experience The Geography of the Lifeworld: Movement, Rest and Encounter, that helps us to understand how places happen. Places can be understood as place ballet. A place ballet is generated by coming together of people’s time-space routines and body ballets, in a particular space and time. They can be found on various scales like corridors, tea-stalls, city parks, a street, various housing blocks to an entire town, region or a city.

Body-ballet: The precognitive but intentional activities performed by humans that are involuntary, mechanical and habitual.Time-space routines: The set of habitual behaviour of human beings that may incorporate a set of body-ballets

The coming together of various body-ballets and time-space routines generates dynamic places and hence gives place its distinct qualities, character and essence. It suggests how places are born out of people’s everyday activities and how built environment houses, nurtures and nourishes them providing people with their existential foothold.

2.1 G e n e s i s o f a P l a c e

A P r o l o g u e t o J u b i l e e G a r d e n a r e a23

Fig. 32. Co-incidental coming together of people creating an

exclusive event at the place

Fig. 30. Vendors selling grains at the entrance

Fig. 31. People inside the garden


Every place can be studied phenomenologically. The following are the criterias which logically suggest how the case selected here has the potential of a phenomenological investigation.

• Since the case has to be studied through phenomenology, the place must have been experienced by me. Jubilee garden is such a place which has been visited by me every once a week. It has been a part of my everyday life and in a way my lifeworld.

• The case cannot be a physically defined building . It starts from where one perceives it, for e.g. the odor of various food dishes would mark the beginning of an eat street like Law Garden (at night) in Ahmedabad. • The case should not be monotonous functionally. It should be housing a diverse nature of activities and hence a diverse number of users so that it gives a rich intermix of activities of varying nature to be explored phenomenologically.

The Jubilee garden area is a place that has grown over a period of time. It has a distinct sense of a place that is retained and acquired with time. The foundation of this place was done by construction of the Connaught hall, Watson Museum and the Lang Library during the colonial times. After independence, the building has lost its political importance but the surrounding places have been slowly grown by new activities. It now has Regional information office, archeological surveying office, a vegetable market, a nursery, 2 temples, few more gardens, 2 overhead water tanks serving the area and its corresponding office. There is a place (that also acts as a thoroughfare) where most of these functions open up and hence lend it a rich and distinct character; which also has been selected as the specific site for studying and understanding place-experience.

2.2 C r i t e r i a f o r c a s e s e l e c t i o n

25

Fig. 33. The Watson Museum Fig. 34. The vendors on the entrance to the area

Fig. 35. Inside the garden Fig. 36. The Band Stand inside the garden

A P r o l o g u e t o J u b i l e e G a r d e n a r e a

Inferences here refers to the comprehensive learnings discovered during the journey of the dissertation.

inferences


Consciousness is analogous to light. One can see because of light but not ‘the light’. Similarly, consciousness makes us experience places. A place is because of our consciousness about it and is manifested and lived by us through our experience of it and its through our place-experience that we ‘act upon’ the place and in turn create the place. This is a continuously ongoing process which also marks the most predominant aspects of the nature of a place-experience i.e. temporality and ephemerality. A place experience is necessarily temporal and ephemeral. It is not something that is absolute. Hence it can’t be studied independently. It’s like a rope made up of many strands. Hence exploring a place experience brings before us the following themes.

A sense of a place and placelessness

A sense of a place is regarded as the distinct character a place has or a spirit of a place as Christian Nonerg-Schulz claims. The sense of a place is captured through our experience and we during our experience are also the contributors to the making of the place (the dialectical relation). Each place is distinct in itself. The sense of a place is a inseparable combination of the qualities of the built environment and the events taking place there. The place studied here has a distinct character. The place has room for people to do many kinds of activities there. Hence a different number of users occupy varying spots in the place and engage themselves with many activities. As a result, the places hold smaller places within them. The most common example is how people choose a spot to sit in the Jubilee garden. The spot is identified and emerges out as a ‘place’ within the garden itself. A shaded bench under a tree is the most common place that is easily occupied. It’s a place within the place. A place is born when we experience it as a place and this is subjective in nature. Hence varying places are identified by varying users. Hence, the place experience is hierarchical in nature.

There are several exemplary themes that came into light during the course of the dissertation. Phenomenology as a research method tends to bring them out in some or more extent. The following essay illustrates the encounters with various themes (though embodied) during the phenomenological inquiry into the everyday place-experience.

Presence and its manner

The most taken for granted condition of our existence is the human presence. Before one jumps into the research, one must consciously identify that he/she is present and the place is the product of his presence. The presence usually stands for consciousness and hence the intentionality follows. We are conscious about ‘somewhere’ because we are present ‘here, there’; dasein as Heidegger claims. Any experience of a place is because of the presence and the manner of presence determines how one experiences the place. One can walk, sit, drive through and sleep in a place. All these are various manners of the presence which would further determine the experience of the place.

The dialectical relation of people-place

Presence of people in a place in turn creates places. Both people and place are continuously feeding into one another and hence this establishes a complex dialectical relation. The relation is said to be complex because places are created by the presence of ’n’ number of people. For example the tea-stall here is a place which is created by a group of people present in a particular space at a particular time. This place slowly changes and may diminish at a particular time because nobody is present. Similar is with the entrance, the bird yard and the garden. People present in the place makes the place.

105 I n f e rences


For example, the ‘restaurants’ have their origin in France. In 1765, a man by the name of Boulanger opened a shop near Louvre, where he sold what was known as restaurants or bouilians restaurants - which was a meat based food that helps to ‘restore’ ones health. Similarly ‘kitlis’ are the places popular to the Indian culture where people gather to talk and have tea; tea being one of the favourite drinks and the atmosphere of the ‘kitlis’ being lively. Both kinds of places are specific to the cultures. If we see today here in Rajkot itself, there are ‘restaurants that specifically serve tea’. This is a very common example of how manufactured spaces can penetrate into the culture of the place and clad it . Not that one shouldn’t learn from different cultures, but that one shouldn’t allow the culture of a place to get washed away. It is the role of architecture to create places that can sustain these values everywhere instead of creating and replicating ‘manufactured spaces’.

The replication of spaces as it is happening today due to globalization slowly leads us towards placelessness. Such spaces have imposed conditions like, the similar visual and light qualities, similar air conditioning, similar odor and similar ambience, which is actually an outcome of the modernism.(Modernism refers to the movement observed in various arts, literature and architecture which is grounded on the idea of leaving behind the past and creating a new present. Modernism has its roots in ’modo’ meaning just now. It aimed to leave behind all the old, traditional and regional manners of thinking and making). The Subways, McDonalds, various shopping malls are the most commonly observed spaces that contribute to the placelessness. Placelessness can be understood as the ‘sameness’ in spaces. This sameness and conditioned places kills the chances of wonder and amazement in our experience. Conditioned spaces are already constructed in our memories and the places has nothing to reveal or narrate to us in its experience. Such spaces are ‘less’ places.

Habituality

Places grow out of people’s everyday activities. Habituality is an intrinsic property of every place. The coming together of various people in specific space and time create places. The habitual activities like selling and buying vegetables, going to the temple, having tea at the kitli, casual chit chatting with friends, visiting the museum and so on, forms the core of the places. A space without an event is like a body without the soul.

Social and Cultural values

A place holds the cultural and social values of a region. Places in India hold elements specific to its cultural values, while places somewhere else have represented their cultural values.

All McDonalds look similar, wherever they

may belong to. Such spaces kill the local

and regional character of the place and start

imparting placelessness.

I n f e rences107

Fig. 40.

Fig. 41.

Fig. 42.

Fig. 44.

An illustration by Jim Powell representing the

atmosphere in the French cafes and restaurants.

For decades, restaurants, cafes and sidewalks

in France have been a place for philisophising.

Intellects used to gather over a table and carry

out top notch discussion like whether a table is?

While Fig. 43. is a photograph of a tea stall,

the most common site in India present places

of every scale like street, roads, railway stations

and chowks. It is indeed the most important place

Fig. 43.

Fig. 44.


Closer to Architecture and its representation.

A phenomenology of place brings us closer to the essence of architecture. A visit to the market place creates chances of meeting some old friends or relatives. It may just give us a refreshing experience. A place is filled up with so many such minute unexpected details that might not be represented on paper. Experiencing a place brings us closer to architecture and reminds us how architecture is an amalgamation of various phenomena.

The austerity of the representational aspect of architecture sometimes makes the representation confused with architecture itself. Representation communicates only certain information. It is never possible to fully represent architecture itself because architecture is something that is lived. Architecture is here and now. It’s not something that can be ‘represented’. While learning architecture, since the most common dimension of representation is a paper, it sub consciously affects our conception of architecture. Sometimes, it might happen that we start designing plans-elevations and sections and forget to design the spaces. Hence, if not dealt with sensitively, the representational aspect itself becomes a very dangerous and highly misleading tool in the architectural education. The most common conceptual error observed in most of the representations of architecture is that no drawing suggests the ‘time’ in the space. If a drawing represents only space and not time, what the drawing is representing isn’t architecture. Space and time can never be divorced. ‘Time’ is something that should be included along with the details like north-scale-etc. It is more significant than the later ones and one must design spaces keeping in mind the time. Only then the full range of architectural design can be explored. It would surprise us if somebody shows up with drawings of a space at night. So it is very important to keep in mind that representation is abstraction and architecture is a lived reality. The various modes of representation used in the study tries to reflect this nature of architecture.

Fig. 45.

Fig. 47. and Fig. 45. are the examples

of tautochronos series done by German

photographer Michel Lamoller. In this

series, Lamoller clicks the photos of the

same place at different times and then he

cuts each layer so that the underlying layer

is exposed. He continues this cutting of the

layers until the lowermost layer is exposed.

In this way, he tries to illustrate how space

changes with time. He symbolically tries

to compress time in the same space . He

wants to reflect how space and time and

inseperable dimensions, they are rather

one but are notions created by human

mind. Tautos means ‘same’ and chronos

means ‘time’ and the title tautochronos.

This artwork is an important learning for

architecture as architectural space too

is deeply intertwined with time, and the

experience of the architectural space is of

a ‘space’ at a particular ‘time’. Architectural

space is in continuous flux because it is

fused with time.

In the Fig. 46. the place is represented

as a collage of all the activities happening

throught the day in the place. These

activities are activities when viewed from

a vantange point. But in reality, the place

houses the daily lives of the people. A place

in this way articulates the Being of people.

Fig. 46.

Fig. 47.

I n f e rences109

Place-Experience : a phenomenological inquiry into the nature of architecture Smi t 2409 IPSA, Rajkot111

My experience is the reflection of my presence. The presence of the human observer/experiencer/user completes the experience.To be more precise, the manner of presence of the human experiencer determines the manner of appearances1 of the phenomena. Manner of presence means the way in which a human is present during the experience. It also includes noematic structures, to say a few culture, language, memory, age, community and sex. Since the noematic structures fall out of the domain of architecture, they wont be illustrated here.

M o v e m e n t t h r o u g h t h e p l a c e

A narrative of Space-TimeMovement through the place is the manner in which the place unfolds to us in our experience. It further determines the manner in which we would come across various encounters of the place. Movement through the place is like the script of the movie. For the same movie, if the events in the script are re-arranged, then what the movie communicates to us will change dramatically. Similarly, various people using a different path in the place experience the place in a different manner. One can say that movement through the place is like a narrative.

The following illustration is an attempt to represent my experience of the place.

Representing my experience of the place

A p p e n d i x

Ana l y s i s : P re s e n c e o f t h e e x p e r i e n c e r / o b s e r v e r / u s e r

E d m u n d H u s s e r l

Edmund Gustav Albretch Husserl (1859-1938) was the principal founder of phenomenology and thus

one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. He has made important contributions to almost all

the areas of philosophy and anticipated the central ideas of its neighbouring disciplines such as linguistics,

sociology, and cognitive psychology.

M a r t i n H e i d e g g e r

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated

with phenomenology and exitentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical

movement only with extreme care. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of

contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in

architectural theory, literary criticism, theology, psychotherapy and cognitive science.

Heidegger’s important works include Being and Time (1927), On the Essence of Truth (1930), The Origin of the

Work of Art (1935), Building Dwelling Thinking (1951), An Introduction to Metaphysics (1953), The Question

Concerning Technology (1954), What is called Thinking (1954), What is Philosophy (1956), On the Way to

Language (1959), The End of Philosophy (1964)

M a u r i c e M e r l e a u - P o n t y

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by

Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest

and he wrote on perception, art and politics. He emphasised the body as the primary site of knowing the

world, a corrective to the long philosophical traditions of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge,

and maintained that the body and that which percieved it could not be disentangled from each other. The

articulation of the primacy of embodiment led him away from phenomenology towards what he was to call

‘indirect ontology’ or the ontology of ‘the flesh and the world’, seen in his last complete work , The visible and

the invisible, and his last published essay, ‘Eye and mind’.

43113 Place-Experience : a phenomenological inquiry into the nature of architecture Smi t 2409 IPSA, Rajkot

D a v i d S e a m o n

David Seamon is Professor of Architecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan. Trained in geography

and environment-behavior research, he is interested in pheomenological approach to place, architecture and

environmental design as place making. His books include A Geography of theLifeworld: Movement, rest and

encounter(1979), Dwelling, Place and Environment: Towards a phenomenology of person and World(1985),

Dwellin, Seeing and Designing: Towards a Phenomenological Ecology (1993), Goethe’s Way of Science: A

Phenomenology of Nature (1998). He edits the Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter.

E n d N o t e

C o v e r p a g e

The cover page has been conceptualised to be a medium that is capable of illustrateing the essence of

phenomenological approach. There are five major observable traits of the nature of experience that the cover

page is trying to capture and reflect : presence of self, subjectivity, temporality, ephemerality and

infinity.

Presence of self : The silver foil reflects one’s own self reminding him of his ‘presence’, which is one of

the most taken for granted existential condition.

Subjectivity: The person using the dissertation will see his/her own self, trying to remind that what he/ she

sees is from his/her perspective and not an objective reality. It will change with the user.

Temporality and ephemerality : Experience itself by its very nature is temporal and ephemeral. By no

means any static 2 or 3 dimensional medium can portray this aspect. But the silver foil, capable of producing

reflection can reflect the motion, change and will itself change with time.

Infinity: Experience is infinite. By no means is ther any tool that can capture it as it is lived except our

consciousness. And since we are thrown into time, we can not re-live the same moment twice. Neither is

there any known beginning or any known end of the experience. It lasts till our consciousness does. In this

way its infinite. Same is with the reflection. It will change with time to person to place.

Fig. 0 (Overlay and underlay)

This figure is a dream sequence design by Salvador Dali in which the experience of an amnesic patient’s

dream is represented. It very well puts the notions of ‘reality’ as being objective, material in a radical doubt. It

reflects how our mind tries to find depth in a paper just by adding lines in a perspective, because it is trained

to see in a three dimensional Euclidean space. This is how ‘reality’ is always distorted by our perception.

Append i x

Dhoop : The traditional incense stick used frequently in Indian temples.

Hermenuetic : Interpretation or explanation of literary text.

Ontological : Related to the metaphysical study of the nature of Being and human existence.

Aesthetic : Dealing with total sense experience.

Synaesthesia : A sensation that normally occurs in one sense modality when another sense modality is stimulated (the inter-connection between the senses).

Being (Sein) : In the state of existence.

Being-in-the-world : The inseperable existential condition in which human beings present in the world are a part and parcel of each other and parcel of each other.

Lifeworld : The world ‘as lived’ prior to a conscious, deliberate and an intentional reflection upon it.

Dialectic : The relation in which action-reaction or reactant-product are inseperable.

Existential : Intentional reflection upon the meaning and nature of human existence.

Exitential foothold : Grounding,foundation and the rootedness of the human beings in ‘places’.

Orientation : To be aware about the ones relative presence in a given environment.

Identification : To be aware about the surrounding environment and its phenomena.

(Both orientation and identification are psychological functions of a total man-environment relationship, through which man is able to gain an existential foothold)

Temporal : Relating to time, short lived.

Ephemeral : In a state of continuous flux.

Kitli : The sociofugal spaces in the Indian culture where people are served with tea and other foods

Transcendental : To ascend beyond the material and physical world.

Noematic : Thought or what is thought about. (Husserl’s noema).

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G l o s s a r y


L i s t o f i l l u s t r a t i o n s

Fig. 0 (Overlay and underlay)

“My Life in the Glow of The Outer Limits: Episode Spotlight: “Don’t Open Till Doomsday” (1/20/1964).” My Life in the Glow of The Outer Limits: Episode Spotlight: “Don’t Open Till Doomsday” (1/20/1964). Web. 17 Sept. 2015.

Fig. 1. and Fig. 2.

“Paintings.” Painting with a Humanistic Geography Interface. 19 May 2014. Web. 3 March 2015. Fig. 3. and Fig. 4.

“Flying Disc.” - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 11 Oct. 2014. Fig. 5.

“MoMA Learning.” MoMA. Web. 21 June 2015.

Fig. 6.

Screenshot taken from the movie Being in the World, Dir: Tao Ruspoli.

Fig. 7.

“Strawberige: Exploring Mind-body Dualism.” Strawberige: Exploring Mind-body Dualism. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.

Fig. 8.

“Seeing Yourself Sensing, Artwork, Studio Olafur Eliasson.” Seeing Yourself Sensing Artwork, Studio Olafur Eliasson. Web. 12 June 2014.

Fig. 9. to Fig. 16. “Bruder Klaus Field Chapel.” - Architecture of the World. Web. 27 Dec. 2014.

Fig. 21. and Fig, 22.“Paintings.” Painting with a Humanistic Geography Interface. 19 May 2014. Web. 3 March 2015.

Fig.38.

Lemay, Eric and Jeniffer Pitts, Heidegger for BEGINNERS. Orient BlackSwan Private Limited, New Delhi. 2010. Print.

Fig.43.

“I’ll Bring More Rain.” Flickr. Yahoo! Web. 22 June 2015.

Fig. 40. to Fig. 42. “Mcd Pictures, Images & Photos on Photobucket.” Photobucket. Web. 15 May 2015.

Fig.45. and Fig. 47. “Michel Lamoller.” VisualArts :. Web. 22 Apr. 2015.

Append i x

Books Beri, Shirish and Yashwant Pitkar. Spaces Inspired by Nature. Super Book House, 2013. Print. Holl, Steven, and Juhani Pallasmaa. Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture. [New ed. San Francisco, CA: William Stout, 2006. Print. Detmer, David. Phenomenology Explained: From Experience to Insight. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2013. Print. Hall, Edward. The Hidden Dimension. Anchor Books, United States, 1982. Print

Want, Christopher. Introducing Aesthetics. Thriplow: Icon, 2007. Print.

Lobell, John, and Louis I. Kahn. Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn. Boulder: Shambhala, 1979. Print. Lemay, Eric and Jeniffer Pitts. Heidegger for BEGINNERS. Orient BlackSwan Private Limited, New Delhi. 2010. Print.

Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1960. Print. Malnar, Joy Monice, and Frank Vodvarka. Sensory Design. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2004. Print. Moran, Dermot. Introduction to Phenomenology. London: Routledge, 2000. Print.

Noberg-Schulz, Christian. Existence, Space & Architecture. New York: Praeger, 1971. Print. ---. Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. New York: Rizzoli, 1980. Print.

---. Intentions in Architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T., 1966. Print. Pallasmaa, Juhaani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2005. Print.

Palmer, Donald. Sartre for BEGGINERS. Orient BlackSwan Private Limited, New Delhi,2003. Print

Powell, Jim. Derrida for BEGINNERS. Orient BlackSwan Private Limited, New Delhi, 2010. Print.

Relph, Edward. Place and Placelessness. Pion Limited, London, 1983. Print

Robinson, Dave and Bill Mayblin. Introducing Empiricism. Icon Books, London, 2013. Print.

Seamon, David. A Geography of the Lifeworld: Movement, Rest, and Encounter. London: Crook Helm, 1979. Print. Sharr, Adam. Heidegger for Architects. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.

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Wo r k s c i t e d


* Wo r k s c i t e d c o n s i s t s o f s e l e c t e d b i b l i o g r a p h y o n l y .

Sherazi, Mohammad Reza. Towards an Articulated Phenomenological Interpretation of Architecture: Phenomenal Phenomenology. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print. Tuan, Yi- Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1977. Print. --- Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974. Print.

Zumthor, Peter and Maureen Turner. Thinking Architecture. 2nd Expanded ed. Basel: Birkhauser, 2006. Print.

Research Papers/Scholarly Articles

Bermudez, Julio. Non-Ordinary Architectural Phenomenologies: Non-Dualist Experiences and Husserl’s reduction. Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter (2008) n.pag.Web.7 July, 2014.

Marie-Jose Dozio, Pierre Fedderson and Kaj Noschis. Everyday life in insignificant public square: Venice, Ekistics 298, pg.no 66-76. 1983. Print.

Mehta, Vikas. Lively Streets: Determining Environmental Characteristics to support Social Behavior. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 2013. Print.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. Space, Place and Atmosphere. web.n.pag., 14 June, 2014.

Rachel McCann, Roy Malcolm Porter, Jr. and Hopsch, Lena. Perceptual/Spatial Unfolding: Body, Rhythm, Depth. Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter (2008) n.pag.Web.7 July, 2011.

Seamon, David and Christina Nordin. Marketplace as a Place Ballet: A Swedish Example.web.pag 35-41, 13 March, 1980.

Sherazi, M. Reza. On phenomenological discourse in Architecture, ed. David Seamon. Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter (2012)n.pag.Web.7 July,2014.

Violich, Francis. ‘Urban Reading’ and the Design of Small Urban Places: The Village of Sutivan, The Town Planning Review, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Jan., 1983), pp. 41-62, 08/03/2014.

Wo rks C i t ed

Forum Micheal, Sue. “Viewing Two Sides.” Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology 2014 Volume 25 No.3 : 15-17.Web. 26 March, 2015.

Mausner, Claudia. Review of “Lively Streets” , Vikas Mehta. Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology Winter 2015: 08-10. Web. 14 March, 2015.

Films

What dreams may come. Dir. Vincent Ward, Perf. Robin Williams, Annabella Sciora, Written by Richard Matheson, 1998. Film.

Being-in-the-World. Dir. Tao Ruspoli, 2010. Film.

Human, All Too Human. Dir. Simon Chu. Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 2004. Film.

13 conversations about one thing. Dir. Jill Sprecher, Written by Jill Sprecher and Karen Sprecher, 2001. Film.

Un Chien Andalou. Dir. Luis Bunuel, Written by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel, 1929. Film.

Meshes of the afternoon. Dir. Maya Daren, Written bu Maya Daren and Alexender Hammid, 1943. Film.

Waking Life. Dir. Richard Linklater, 2005. Film.

Midnight in Paris. Dir. Woody Allen. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2011. Film.

The Cell. Dir. Tarsem Singh. New Line Home Video, 2000. Film.

Spellbound. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock and Salvador Dali. Twentieth Century Home Entertainment, 1945. Film.

Wo r k s C i t e d

119 Place-Experience : a phenomenological inquiry into the nature of architecture Smi t 2409 IPSA, Rajkot Wo rks C i t ed

Architecture articulates the Being of the humans.

spirit of a place

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