David Seamon Profile Page | World Architecture Community

David Seamon is an environment-behavior researcher and Professor of Architecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. His research and writings focus on the ways that the natural and built environments contribute to human well-being. He is particularly interested in phenomenology as a conceptual and methodological means for understanding architectural and environmental issues.

Key themes in which Seamon is interested include:
Human aspects of design;
Place and place-making;
The nature of environmental and architectural experience;
Evironmental and architectural aesthetics; The use of artistic media as a means for understanding environment, place, and nature;
Christopher Alexander’s theory and practice of wholeness;
Bill Hillier’s "space syntax," especially as the approach helps to understand human co-presence, encounter, and place regularity; The "phenomenology of nature" developed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Phenomenology as a method of inquiry in the human sciences and environment-behavior research.

Seamon is author or editor of A GEOGRAPHY OF THE LIFEWORLD (1979); DWELLING, PLACE, AND ENVIRONMENT (1985); DWELLING, SEEING, AND DESIGNING (1993); and GOETHE`S WAY OF SCIENCE (1998). He is editor of ENVIRONMENTAL AND ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY, a newsletter published three times a year since 1990 (www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/EAP.html).