Architectural Humanities in Progress

Book excerpt: This monograph brings three branches of philosophy together: epistemology, ethics and aesthetics. It assesses the built environment as a case study from a phenomenological perspective. Under the notion of phenomenology, this study understands the built environment as the hermeneutical phenomenon of being in the life-world that is experienced by people within the socio-cultural and historical context of habitation. Hermeneutically, the built environment as a phenomenon is contextually interwoven with other phenomena within the socio-cultural, historical, and environmental network. Phenomenologically speaking, the task of the study is to excavate, listen to, unfold, divulge, and reconstruct the socio-culturally, environmentally, and historically constructed relationship between people and their built environment that build, develop, and elaborate the system of knowledge, ethics, and aesthetics. By and large, its nature and findings are theoretical and interdisciplinary, so it will be of interest not only for philosophers, but also to scholars studying urban development and anthropology.