A compendium of new work in the field of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and the built environment
Architecture and environmental design are among the last professional fields to develop a sustained and nuanced discussion concerning ethics. Hemmed in by politics and powerful clients on one side and the often unscrupulous practices of the construction industry on the other, environmental designers have been traditionally reluctant to address ethical issues head on. And yet the rapid urbanization of the world's population continues to swell into new megacities, each less healthy, welcoming, secure, or environmentally sustainable than the next.
Green, carbon-reduced, and sustainable building practices are important ways architects have recently responded to the symptoms of the crisis, but are these efforts really addressing the core issues? Taking the Diné (Navajo) "Hogan Song"—a song used to protect and nourish the personhood of newly constructed dwellings—as their inspiration, the architects, philosophers, poets, and other contemporary scholars contributing to this volume demonstrate that a deeper, more radical change in our relationship to the built world needs to occur.
While offering a careful critique of modernist, corporate, or techno-enthralled design practices, these essays investigate an alternative "relational ecology" whose wisdom draws from ancient and often-marginalized voices, if not the whisperings of the earth itself.
Contributors include: Richard Kearney, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Juhani Pallasmaa, Karsten Harries, Edward Casey, Susan Stewart, David Abram, Stacy Alaimo, Jace and Laura Weaver, Philip Sheldrake, and Sebnem Yucel Young.
“A compendium of some of the best thinkers currently working in the area of phenomenology and the built environment.”—Thomas Fisher, Dean, College of Design, University of Minnesota
“Recently, it has become obvious that that good architecture results from dialogue, from open-minded yet passionate exchange between designers, builders, clients, and others. The essays in this book open the conversation still further, welcoming marginalized peoples, non-human living beings, and the forces of the natural world into the conversation. A radically new—radically just—sense of architecture emerges from this account; ethical and energizing because entirely engaging.”—David Leatherbarrow, Professor of Architecture, Chairman, Graduate Group in Architecture, University of Pennsylvania
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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GREGORY CAICCO held the Lincoln Chair of Ethics in Architecture and Environmental Design at Arizona State University from 2001 to 2004.
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