Interpretations on Behalf of Place

Environmental Displacements and Alternative Responses

By Robert Mugerauer

Subjects: Environmental Studies
Series: SUNY series in Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology
Paperback : 9780791419441, 254 pages, July 1994
Hardcover : 9780791419434, 254 pages, July 1994

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Table of contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Part I. Theoretical Possibilities

1. The Dance of Disassembling and Gathering

2. Foucault: Exposing the Localizations of Bio-Technio-Power

3. Derrida: Deconstruction and Reconstruction

4. Eliade: Restoring the Possibilities of Place

5. Heiddegger: Retrieving the Still-Coming Source

Part II. Practical Directions

6. Using Heidegger: A Critique and Shift toward Praxis

7. Taking Responsibility for the Technological Landscape

8. Fitting Placement

9. Homelessness and the Human Condition

10. A Homecoming: Design on Behalf of Place

Notes

Index

Description

In this book, Mugerauer emphasizes the interplay between European continental philosophy and North American environments and architecture. Drawing on a keen understanding of conceptual trends in both scholarship and the design professions, he clarifies various competing philosophical visions and their considerably different perspectives on environment, place, and architecture. The book covers Derrida's deconstruction, Foucault's genealogy, Heidegger's originary thinking, and Eliade's hermeneutics in order to interpret cultural displacements and the possible recovery of "place," especially through interpretation of dwelling, sense of place, landscapes, architecture, planning, urban design, and technology.

Mugerauer identifies a series of design principles that might facilitate mutual understanding.

Robert Mugerauer is Associate Professor in the School of Architecture, the Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning, and the Departments of Geography and Philosophy at The University of Texas-Austin and is the Director of Tri logics, an environmental and employment consulting firm. He is co-editor (with David Seamon) of Dwelling, Place, and Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Place and World and he is author of Heidegger's Language and Thinking.