Architecture is bound to situation. Unlike music, painting, sculpture, film, and literature, a construction (non-mobile) is entwined with the experience of place¹

 A common criticism of contemporary urban developments is the lack of a ‘sense of place’. Peter Buchanan argues that creation of place, ‘somewhere memorably distinctive that is rooted in, and shaped by, the many specificities of its larger setting’, is an integral part of the way humanity made its home on the earth.² Art and Architecture serve to articulate these ‘experiences of being-in-the world’, mediating between the self and the world in an ‘intense experiential and existential encounter’.³Buchanan argues that the environmental crises and the need to create a sustainable culture compels us to ‘come back home’, to rekindle this sense of belonging and respectful relationship with the earth, which  cannot be achieved in ‘the alienating and placeless world’ we have created’.⁴ Gunnar Asplund’s Woodland Chapel (pictured below) is exemplary of an architecture bound to place.⁵

The Loss of Place

The past two centuries have seen a ‘major change in the relationship between humanity and the earth’, arguably changing all aspects of human life and lifestyles, as we shift from an agrarian society towards one that is industrial and urban.⁶ This ‘acceleration away from nature’, Suzannah Hagan argues, has its intellectual origins in the Western scientific and philosophical revolutions of the 17^th Century. Between Francis Bacon’s Materialism and René Descartes’ Idealism, nature became something definitely ‘Other’, separated as we were from it both materially and conceptually.⁷

The 19^th and 20^th Centuries increased this acceleration dramatically.⁸ In particular, the 19^th Century began a period characterised by the ‘dramatic evaporation of traditional communities, where social sciences of all intellectual persuasions predicted increased polarity between ‘community’ and ‘society’.⁹ Steven Moore argues that writers as intellectually diverse as Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer saw ‘community’ as coercive, intellectually limiting, and even idiotic, whilst seeing ‘national societies’ as ultimately liberating.¹⁰ Although conservatives such as Auguste Comte equated the loss of traditional village forms to the loss of an idealised social type, the politics of Nation Building, and the Enlightenment Project, became an ideology of ‘anti traditionalism’:¹¹

Moore argues that this logic ‘conspired to devalue place as a concept relevant to the conditions of everyday life’. ‘Becoming modern’ meant ridding oneself of all ties to place: in work, recreation, and one’s sense of identity, instead ‘adopting an “achievement oriented” self that is placeless’.¹² The inherent irony in this, according to Edward Soja, is that this move to devalue ‘place’ was promoted most heavily by Marxist ideology, because to consider Environmental Determinism would be, Moore points out, to ‘subvert the dialectic order of causality.¹³ The irony arises when one recognises that ‘it has been market forces that have effectively devalued real places’.¹⁴

This devaluation of ‘place’ can be witnessed in the contemporary urban policy discourse in the United Kingdom, despite being an ‘amorphous concept’.¹⁵ Phil Jones and James Evans argue that, during the New Labour Governments, ‘place’ and ‘sense of place’ became almost as ubiquitous as the notion of ‘sustainability’ in planning policy.¹⁶

The 1969 Maud Report used ‘place’ as part of a reaction to British post-war  modernism and offered some enlightened insights about individual attachment to ‘place’ as subjective community-based experience.¹⁷ However, it appears that this conception of ‘place’ had been muddied by the time they were used in New Labour’s urban policies. For example, UTF’s Final Report suggested that ‘place’ was essentially driven by safety and beauty, and a way of achieving economic development.¹⁸ The Sustainable Communities Plan deemed that ‘sense of place’ was important enough to be considered as one of the twelve ‘key requirements’, but is only mentioned twice in the document, and never defined.¹⁹

‘CABE: By Design’, included an uncritical and undefined use of ‘sense of place’, implicitly about shallow aesthetic factors, including the decrees that ‘works of art and well-designed street furniture integrated into the design of public spaces give identity and enhance the sense of place’²⁰ and that ‘natural features can help give shape to a development and integrate it into the wider area, contributing to a sense of place’.²¹

Most perniciously, Jones and Evans cite Leather et al., suggesting that there were numerous examples of Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders which ‘explicitly sought to efface existing place associations, pursuing strategies of tabula rasa demolition and construction for a new population’.²² New Urbanism in America is also criticised for using place-making to merely provide for a middle / ‘creative’ class ideal of urban life.²³

 

Obfuscated meanings of ‘place’ are almost understandable (for example Martin Heidegger’s overt mysticism and dense circularity of prose is decided impenetrable), but compel us to return to Heidegger’s original text, and its intellectual progeny, to decipher the essence of the term, redefine the concept, and return to an architecture that re-establishes the connections between humanity and environment.

The (Intellectual) Origins of Place

Architectural thinking about place, through the philosophical lens of Phenomenology (the ‘study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view’²⁵) arose in direct response to the ‘loss of the “real”’ and aimed to ‘enrich the abstraction of mainstream modernism’.²⁶ Martin Heidegger felt that contemporary language offered a ‘revealing commentary’ about a systematised building industry where ‘a distant professional procures buildings for a market of unknown consumers’, and phrases such as ‘easy to keep’ and ‘attractively cheap’, missed the point of building as dwelling. In his 1951 conference paper and essay, ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’, Heidegger attempted to conceptualise buildings in more than aesthetic or technical terms, and using the words ‘building’ and ‘dwelling’ (as opposed to ‘architecture’) allowed him to emphasise inhabitation and experiences. Heidegger ‘pleaded that the immediacies of human experience shouldn’t be forgotten’.²⁷ ‘Buildings’ were seen to be built with the specificity of place and their inhabitants, shaped by ‘its physical and human topography, and literally constructed from the ‘fruits of the earth’ (such as stone, timber, and metals).²⁸

 

Heidegger made a key distinction²⁹between ‘space’ and ‘place’, with ‘space’ viewed mathematically, and ‘place’, which was ‘appreciated through human experience’.³⁰ His example of a bridge makes the point that its impact is much greater than it might first appear, with its phenomenological significance much more than the sum of its technical expediencies (such as its constructional, logistical, and economic rational).³¹ Before the bridge there are two banks and a river. The banks are not far apart in mathematical distance, but are far apart in terms of practical access. The bridge’s construction allows people to cross at that spot, creating a ‘place’ that ‘changed irrevocably patterns of people’s everyday lives’: as Sharr notes, individuals could get to work more easily, forge new trade links, make new friend, and court lovers.³² The bridge, therefore, is more than a mere ‘object’ but an Heideggerian ‘thing’, whose significance arises in how its physical presence can influence the parameters of people’s everyday lives.³³

The Rise and Fall of Phenomenology

In the 1970s and 1980s, post Building Dwelling Thinking, phenomenology was borrowed by architecture, to ‘enrich the abstraction of mainstream Modernism’, aiming to bridge the connection between place and the materials indigenous to that place.³⁴ Hagan argues that, at its best, architects’ translation of phenomenology produced a number of important pieces of writing.³⁵ These were written in direct opposition to much post-structuralist writing on architecture, with its interest in the dematerialising effect of information technology. As Hagan contends, ‘phenomenology demands a return – it is always a return – to an emphasis on the material business of making, of tectonics, in the interests of a re-reified community, relocated in identifiable places’.³⁶

Hagan argues that this was never fully accepted into the wider body of architectural thinking, because ‘much of this [phenomenological] writing based its arguments on a reductive view of modernity, an outdated view of science, and a nostalgia for metaphysical architecture’.³⁷ In Genius Loci, Christian Norberg-Schulz sets out a number of appealing examples of vernacular building. However, this catalogue necessitated an act of generalisation, which – ironically – ‘removes the luscious particularity for which the examples had been chosen in the first place’.³⁸ The key issue, adeptly articulated by Hagen is:³⁹

Norberg-Schulz explicitly rejected these socio-economic conditions, which he believed to merely fulfil the role of a picture frame, allowing space for life to take part, but not determining life’s existential meanings. These meanings, he argues, are ‘determined by the structures of our being in the world.⁴⁰ Rather than socio-economic structures, these ‘structures of being-in-the-world’ are, in Norberg-Schulz’s view, the structures of consciousness itself. This thinking is an inherent to Phenomenology, with Merleau-Ponty arguing that these structures of consciousness exist at the deeper level than the ‘cultural’.⁴¹

Hagan finds two fundamental problems with a model prejudicing consciousness over socio-economic structures. First, that it assumes that the ‘unresolvable’ debate – whether consciousness structures the world or the world structures consciousness – is simply resolvable, and offers a reductive model of consciousness.⁴² For Norberg-Schulz’s argument to have any validity, Hagan argues, we must accept that consciousness is formed by nature and not culture, rendering the culture we are born into as having no influence whatsoever on the form of human consciousness. Second, Hagan continues, going ‘deeper’ than socio-economic structures (and into consciousness) is to generalise the human being and to ‘posit universal structures beneath the differentiation of culture’.⁴³ This, she believes, is particularly difficult to accept if being used as a foundation for a phenomenological architecture that ostensibly champions particularity. As Hagan contends, ‘it is only in the domain of culture (socio-economic structures) that this particularity shows itself, in the way things are made and the reason for their making’.⁴⁴

Although a much-needed antidote to modernity’s abstractions, Hagan argues that it is contradictions such as these which ‘perhaps explain why Phenomenology came close but not close enough to being a critique with real transformational power, one capable of changing practice’.⁴⁵ Heidegger’s work did reach architectural thinking, but by that point, Hagan argues, it had become merely a wistful agenda, whose language was similar to much environmental writing, ‘yet the leap was never made to viewing the building as a truly interacting, concrete thing, bound up in a world of interacting concrete things’.⁴⁶

Reconceptualising Place

To return to Steven Holl’s initial quote, it is worth dwelling (pun intended) on the ‘situation’ that ‘architecture is bound to’.⁴⁷ Although the initial assumption is that this ‘‘situation’ is the location and surroundings of a place’, it might be prudent to take the alternative definition, that is ‘a set of circumstances in which one finds oneself’.⁴⁸ Redefining this architectural ‘situation’ in these terms might help move our understanding of place beyond the purely embodied phenomenological conception, into one that is able to take into account the socio-economic issues that inescapably influence architecture.

John Agnew has conceptualised ‘place’, as ‘not only what is fleetingly observed on a landscape’. Instead, he highlights the multivalency of ‘place’, and suggest three ‘interwoven’ scales from which to fully understand the phenomenon: ‘location’, ‘sense of place’, and locale’.⁴⁹ It is through these three scales that we might develop a fuller and more relevant understanding of ‘place’ in architecture.

‘Location’ is the scale that predominates in Economic Geographies, at which ‘a place can be understood as a geographic area encompassed by the objective structures of politics and economy at the macro scale’.⁵⁰ The factors influencing at this scale include the division of labour, the distribution of production, and political systems.⁵¹ Moore points out that these ‘unseen’ linkages’ tie places together in counter-intuitive yet insightful ways. For example one might understand places as being linked by the interests of the European Union or the Monroe Doctrine. Following this logic, Moore argues, one might suggest that Houston, Texas, is closer to Aberdeen, Scotland, and Stavanger, Norway, than to Austin because ‘the same corporate structures manage the oil fields of the North Sea and Texas.⁵²

‘Sense of place’ ties most closely to the interests of the Phenomenologists, and sits at the opposite scale to ‘location’. By this term Agnew refers to the ‘structure of feeling⁵³ at a particular location that makes ‘place’ ‘more than an object’,⁵⁴ including the ontological elements of place, encompassing the ‘inter-subjective realities that give a place what conventional language would describe as ‘character’ or quality of life’.⁵⁵

‘Locale’ sits between the objective ‘location’ and the subjective ‘sense of place’. It is ‘this quality of place [which] is the setting in which social relations are constituted’, and the scale at which architecture traditionally operates.⁵⁶ At this ‘meso scale’, we arguably avoid two problems: ‘the overdeterminism of the seemingly objective conditions of political economy’, and the ‘underdeterminism resulting from the Phenomenologists’ subjective conditions of atomised reality’.⁵⁷

By thinking of ‘place’ simultaneously at these three scales, Agnew argues that we can avoid the agnosia (a disorder of perception) caused by representing space as having ‘set boundaries’. Rather, he continues, this should provide ‘an understanding of space and society as inextricably intertwined’.⁵⁸ As Moore suggests:⁵⁹

A Manifesto for (Re)making Place

The following manifesto serves as a set of guiding principles for approaching architecture with an interest in the ‘interwoven’ and multi-scalar nature of place. Its aim is to engage with the relational and interconnected world, as experienced at a particular locale.

1) Recognise that place, and humanity itself , are ‘woven deeply into nature’s web, rather than ‘residing at the pinnacle of nature’s pyramid’.⁶⁰

This perspective shift may allow us to move beyond anthropocentric values, and begin to recognise the living world’s intrinsic worth. As Otto Scharmer argues, ‘what’s really needed…is a deeper shift in consciousness, so that we begin to care and act, not just for ourselves and other stakeholders but in the interests of the entire ecosystem’.⁶¹ This necessitates thinking about a building as a ‘dynamic system among other dynamic systems’, and working with those systems rather than against them.⁶² To integrate sustainable building techniques, and to pursue a circular model of consumption is imperative.⁶³ ⁶⁴

2) Understand that buildings are not merely objects, but inextricably bound to wider socio-economic structures.

To recognise these structures as integral to place is to embed one’s thinking into the reality of the world. Architecture is but one small part, and to simply respond to any give ‘problem’ with a piece of architecture may well be unnecessary and wasteful. To paraphrase Cedric Price, the best way to cross a river may not always be to build a bridge.⁶⁵

3) Move away from large scale interventions and actors to encourage an increased diversity of small and medium players.

In response to the pitfalls of Jane Jacob’s ‘catalystic’ money,⁶⁶ with developers injecting large sums of money into whole neighbourhoods, an architecture that truly embraced place (and not generic ‘place-making’) would encourage a multitude of actors to influence the built environment. Alastair Parvin argues that – in housing specifically – our fall towards being mere ‘consumers’ of the built environment needs to shift to include many smaller players, who are able to provide higher quality dwellings with less energy usage, whilst producing a more resilient supply. This could increase the diversity of the built environment, and therefore help establish increasingly particular places, in a way that Norberg-Schulz would undoubtedly appreciate.⁶⁷

4) Construct streets, neighbourhoods and cities that allow a variety of lived experiences to take place within them.

Tuan’s ‘Space and Place’ is focussed on attempting ‘to understand how people feel about space and place, to take into account the different modes of experience’.⁶⁸ To allow a variety of lived experience of place is to allow all the ‘right to the city’, to borrow Lefebvre’s phraseology: the right for individuals to participate in society through everyday activities, and the right to make and remake cities by participating fully with the urban environment.⁶⁹

5) Participate in the ‘local constellation of ideas’ to engage with those already living in the surroundings and to embrace the forthcoming  multiplicity of ideas.

As Edward Relph makes clear, the meanings of places ‘may be rooted in the physical setting [but] they are not a property of them’, and  are instead a property of ‘human intentions and experiences’.⁷⁰ Therefore it is important to embrace and mediate between this variety of different understandings of any given place. Architecture 00 argue for a ‘deep community engagement’ to enable genuine co-production in the design and the operation, as well as the governance of places.⁷¹ This co-production may bring to the fore ideas, opinions, and experiences of place that are normally invisible to the isolated professional.

6) Engage with the existing formal and ecological conditions, avoiding tabula rasa demolition and instead working with the wind, sun, and existing urban form.

We might borrow here from Dean Hawke’s idea about a ‘selective’ approach to architecture, where the design is a reactive one, taking advantage of available renewable energies like sun and wind, relating fenestration to orientation, and form to climate.⁷² As Pelsmakers points out, it is important to consider these ideas regarding site in the genesis of an environmental architecture, reducing need for remediation later down the line, inevitable though energy-intensive active means.⁷³

7) Consider embodied inhabitation and experience. As the site of connection between body and environment, a building and site should allow for an intimate experience of materials, spaces, and memories.

As Pallasmaa argues, human existence is ‘fundamentally an embodied condition’, and the human consciousness is structured around a ‘sensory and corporeal centre’, which directs our relationship to the world.⁷⁴ These sensory systems we have ‘think’ in the ‘sense of structuring out relation with the world’, and reconnect us to our surrounding and therefore our place in the world, as one who has experienced the architecture of Peter Zumthor might attest.⁷⁵

8) Extend the embodied experience to embrace the natural world. Learn to reconnect with the cycles of seasons and the variety of weather patterns.

Peter Buchanan argues that ‘too many’ contemporary buildings are bad for the people who use them. This is, he believes, because these occupants are ‘deprived of the joys of fresh air and natural light’, and ‘do nothing to ground of expand people in a sense of contact with the surroundings and nature’.⁷⁶ Opening windows, natural ventilation, and control of one’s environment allow for the intimate sensation of breeze against one’s skin. This reconnection should help to re-establish humanity’s connection with the planet.

9) Design Heideggerian ‘things’ rather than mere objects

Heidegger’s example of the bridge makes clear how the things we construct have a significance beyond its physical presence, and asserts influence on the everyday life of those around it. This is perhaps the key point. When designing anything, its relationship to the world is through lived, and embodied, experiences, and where one potentially encounters moments of real joy. We must make room for these.

 

^[1] S. Holl, Anchoring: selected projects 1975-1991, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1991, p. 9.
^[2] P. Buchanan, The Big Rethink Part 7: Place and aliveness, The Architectural Review, <https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/campaigns/the-big-rethink/the-big-rethink-part-7-place-and-aliveness-pattern-play-and-the-planet/8633314.article>, 2012, (accessed 6 March 2018).
^[3] J. Pallasmaa, The thinking hand: Existential and embodied wisdom in architecture, Wiley, Chichester, 2009, p. 126-7.
^[4] P. Buchanan, The Big Rethink Part 7: Place and aliveness, The Architectural Review, <https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/campaigns/the-big-rethink/the-big-rethink-part-7-place-and-aliveness-pattern-play-and-the-planet/8633314.article>, 2012, (accessed 6 March 2018).
^[5] Å. Lindman, Woodland Chapel, <http://www.scandinavianman.com/magazine/style/a-journey-through-scandinavian-architecture/>, n.d., (accessed 10 May 2018.
^[6] G. O’Brien, ‘Cities – good for the environment?’, International Journal of Environmental Studies, DOI:10.1080/00207233.2017.1392767, 2017, p. 17.
^[7] S. Hagan, Taking shape: a new contract between architecture and nature, Architectural Press, Oxford, 2001, p. 48.
^[8] ibid.
^[9] S. A. Moore, ‘Technology, place, and nonmodern regionalism’ in A. K. Sykes ed., Constructing a new agenda: architectural theory 2003-2009, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2010, p. 366.
^[10] ibid.
^[11] ibid.
^[12] S. A. Moore, op. cit., p. 367.
^[13] E. Soja, Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social history, 1989, cited in S. A. Moore,  ‘Technology, place, and nonmodern regionalism’ in A. K. Sykes ed., Constructing a new agenda: architectural theory 2003-2009, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2010, p. 367.
^[14] S. A. Moore, op. cit., p. 367.
^[15] P. Jones and J. Evans, ‘Rescue Geography: place making, affect, and regeneration’, Urban Studies, DOI: 0.1177/0042098011428177, 2012, p. 2318.
^[16] ibid.
^[17] HM Government, Royal Commission on Local Government in England, 1966–9: Volume 1, Report. Cmnd. 4040. HMSO: London.
^[18] Urban Task Force, Towards a strong urban renaissance, <http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Society/documents/2005/11/22/UTF_final_report.pdf>, 2005, (accessed 8 March 2018)
^[19] ODPM, Sustainable communities: building for the future, <http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/communities/pdf/146289.pdf>, 2003, p. 5, (accessed 8 March 2018).
^[20] CABE, By design: urban design in the planning system: towards better practice, <http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110118121743/http://www.cabe.org.uk/files/by-design-urban-design-in-the-planning-system.pdf>, 2000, p. 26 (accessed 8 March 2018).
^[21] ibid.
^[22] P. Jones and J. Evans, loc. cit.
^[23] R. Kreuger and L. Savage, ‘City-Regions and social reproduction: a ‘place’ for sustainable development?’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00716.x, 2007, p. 216.
^[24] Assael, Renaissance, <http://www.assael.co.uk/content/renaissance>, n.d., (accessed 10 May 2018).
^[25] D. W. Smith, ‘Phenomenology’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/phenomenology/>, (accessed 5 April 2018)
^[26] S. Hagan, op.cit., p. 78.
^[27] A. Sharr, Heidegger for Architects, Routledge, Oxford, 2007, p2.
^[28] A. Sharr, op. cit., p. 10.
^[29] M. Heidegger, ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans by A Hofstadter, Harper & Row, London, 1971, p. 154.
^[30] A. Sharr, op. cit., p. 33.
^[31] A. Sharr, op. cit., p. 48.
^[32] ibid.
^[33] ibid.
^[34] S. Hagan, Taking shape: a new contract between architecture and nature, Architectural Press, Oxford, 2001.
^[35] Namely: Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, Christian Norberg-Schulz’s Genius Loci: Towards a phenomenology of architecture, Kenneth Frampton’s Studies in tectonic culture and Karsten Harries’ The ethical function of architecture.
^[36] S. Hagan, op. cit., p. 80.
^[37] ibid.
^[38] ibid.
^[39] S. Hagan, op. cit., p. 82.
^[40] C. Norberg-Schulz, Towards a phenomenology in architecture, New York : Rizzoli, 1980, p. 60.
^[41] S. Hagan, op. cit., p. 82.
^[42] ibid.
^[43] ibid.
^[44] ibid.
^[45] ibid.
^[46] ibid.
^[47] S. Holl, op. cit. p. 9.
^[48] Oxford Dictionaries, Situation, Oxford Dictionaries, <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/situation>, N.d., (accessed 9 May 2018).
^[49] J. Agnew, ‘Representing space: space, scale and culture in social science’, in J.S. Duncan and D. Ley eds., Place/culture/representation, Routledge, London, 2013.
^[50] S. A. Moore, op. cit., p. 367.
^[51] J. Agnew, op. cit., p. 261.
^[52] S. A. Moore, op. cit., p. 378.
^[53] J. Agnew, op. cit., p. 263.
^[54] ibid.
^[55] S. A. Moore, op. cit., p. 368.
^[56] ibid.
^[57] ibid.
^[58] J. Agnew, op. cit., p. 261.
^[59] S. A. Moore, op. cit., p. 369.
^[60] K. Raworth, Doughnut Economics, Random House, London, 2017, p. 115.
^[61] O. Scharmer, ‘From ego-system to eco-system economies’, Open Democracy, <https://www.opendepocracy.net/transformation/otto-scharmer/from-ego-systam-to-eco-system-econo mies>, 2013, (accessed 12 March 2018).
^[62] S. Hagan, op. cit., p. 98.
^[63] ibid..
^[64] M. Braungart and W. McDonough, Cradle to cradle: Remaking the way we make things, Vintage, London, 2009.
^[65] The Telegraph, Cedric Price, The Telegraph Obituaries, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1438827/Cedric-Price.html>, 2003, (accessed 12 March 2018).
^[66] J. Jacobs, The death and life of great american cities, Random House, New York, 1961.
^[67] A.Parvin, A right to build, Issuu, <https://issuu.com/alastairparvin/docs/2011_07_06_arighttobuild>, 2011, (accessed 15 May 2018).
^[68] Y-F. Tuan, Space and place: the perspective of experience, Edward Arnold, London, 1977, p. 7.
^[69] L. Gilbert and M. Dikeç, Right to the city: politics of citizenship. In: Goonewardena et al. (eds) Space, difference, everyday life: reading henri lefebvre. Routledge, New York, (2008).
^[70] E. Relph, Place and Placelessness, Pion, London, 1976, p. 47.
^[71] Architecture 00, Compendium for the Civic Economy, Issuu, <https://issuu.com/architecture00/docs/compendium_for_the_civic_economy_publ>, 2011, (accessed 12 May 2018).
^[72] D. Hawkes, The environmental tradition : studies in the architecture of environment, Spon, London, 1996.
^[73] S. Pelsmakers, The environmental pocketbook, RIBA Publishing, London, 2012.
^[74] J. Pallasmaa, The thinking hand: Existential and embodied wisdom in architecture, Wiley, Chichester, 2009, p. 13.
^[75] J. Pallasmaa, ‘Embodied and existential wisdom in architecture: the thinking hand’, Body & Society, DOI: 10.1177/1357034X16681443, 2017, p. 104.
^[76] P. Buchanan, Ten shades of green: Architecture and the natural world, The Architectural League of New York, New York, (2005), p. 36.

Architecture 00, Compendium for the Civic Economy, Issuu, <https://issuu.com/architecture00/docs/compendium_for_the_civic_economy_publ>, 2011, (accessed 12 May 2018).

Agnew, J., ‘Representing space: space, scale and culture in social science’, in J.S. Duncan and D. Ley eds., Place/culture/representation, Routledge, London, 2013, pp. 251-271.

Assael, Renaissance, <http://www.assael.co.uk/content/renaissance>, n.d., (accessed 10 May 2018).

Braungart, M. and McDonough, W., Cradle to cradle: Remaking the way we make things, Vintage, London, 2009.

Buchanan, P., Ten shades of green: Architecture and the natural world, The Architectural League of New York, New York, (2005).

Buchanan, P., The Big Rethink Part 7: Place and aliveness, The Architectural Review, <https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/campaigns/the-big-rethink/the-big-rethink-part-7-place-and-aliveness-pattern-play-and-the-planet/8633314.article>, 2012, (accessed 6 March 2018).

CABE, By design: urban design in the planning system: towards better practice, <http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110118121743/http://www.cabe.org.uk/files/by-design-urban-design-in-the-planning-system.pdf>, 2000, (accessed 8 March 2018).

Gilbert, L. and Dikeç, M., Right to the city: politics of citizenship. In: Goonewardena et al. (eds) Space, difference, everyday life: reading henri lefebvre. Routledge, New York, (2008).

Hagan, S., Taking shape: a new contract between architecture and nature, Architectural Press, Oxford, 2001.

Hawkes, D., The environmental tradition : studies in the architecture of environment, Spon, London, 1996.

Heidegger, M., ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans by A Hofstadter, Harper & Row, London, 1971, pp. 143-161.

HM Government, Royal Commission on Local Government in England, 1966–9: Volume 1, Report. Cmnd. 4040. HMSO: London.

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Jacobs, J., The death and life of great American cities, Random House, New York, 1961.

Jones, P. and Evans, J., ‘Rescue Geography: place making, affect, and regeneration’, Urban Studies, DOI: 0.1177/0042098011428177, 2012.

Kreuger, R.  and Savage, L., ‘City-Regions and social reproduction: a ‘place’ for sustainable development?’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00716.x, 2007.

Lakey, P., Heidegger: Hut, Todtnauberg, Black Forest, Germany 1, <http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/25/durantaye.php>, 2005, (accessed 10 May 2018)

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ODPM, Sustainable communities: building for the future, <http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/communities/pdf/146289.pdf>, 2003, p. 5, (accessed 8 March 2018).

Oxford Dictionaries, Situation, Oxford Dictionaries, <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/situation>, N.d., (accessed 9 May 2018).

Pallasmaa, J., The thinking hand: Existential and embodied wisdom in architecture, Wiley, Chichester, 2009.

Pallasmaa, J., ‘Embodied and existential wisdom in architecture: the thinking hand’, Body & Society, DOI: 10.1177/1357034X16681443, 2017.

Parvin, A., A right to build, Issuu, <https://issuu.com/alastairparvin/docs/2011_07_06_arighttobuild>, 2011, (accessed 15 May 2018).

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