E.V. Walter: placeways
The things of the world cannot be known, except through a knowledge of the places in which they are contained. ROGER BACON
Placeways is a philosophical and historical interpretation of the experience and meaning of place. The book develops a theory of topistics, a holistic way of grasping a place as the location of shapes, powers, feelings, and meanings. The author examines the changing realities of expressive space, and reveals the nonrational, symbolic, and intuitive features in our experience of places. The current crisis of environmental degradation, according to Walter, is also a crisis of places. True renewal will require a change in the way we structure experience and return to an ancient paradigm for understanding the natural and constructed world. Topistics is the study of Placeways. The book explores energies of places and the modes of
experiencing them.
In popular writing about architecture and geography, “sense of place” has degenerated into a cliche, often suggesting little more than superficial impressions. Nevertheless, a place with integrity does make sense—it conveys meaning. The real “sense” of place, therefore is twofold. On one hand, people feel it. On the other hand, they grasp its meaning. Today, the experience of place is often out of balance. Preoccupations with the logic of space tend to suppress the feeling of place. There is a tendency in modern thinking to separate the feelings, symbolic meaning, moral sentiments, and intuitions of a place from the intellectual, rational features. Places, therefore, tend to lose an old kind of meaning: expressive intelligibility.
The integrity of a place suffers when we learn by ear gets disconnected from what we perceive with the eye. The imagination makes sense. We get to know a place when we participate in the local imagination. The whole synthesis of located experience— including what we imagine, as well as the sights, stories, feelings, and concepts—gives us a sense of place. For the first time in human history, people are systematically building meaningless places. As we contemplate the ruins and dislocations of our cities, another way of understanding the built environment and the natural landscape is struggling to emerge.
We recognize different kinds of place change. The same place does not remain the same. No city is what it used to be. Yet, despite great changes, some places continue to make sense.
Ancient thinking about place, theoria, grasped the whole experience of a place. It meant seeing the sights, seeing for yourself and getting a world view. It involved senses and feelings. As a theorist Herodotus gathered different kinds of information about places. Putting together what he saw with his own eyes, what he heard, what was “known” as well as recording the memory and the “words” of the place. Local guides helped the visitors “see” Almost every town had periegetes, expert local guides who showed people around, pointed out notable sights, described the local rituals, explained the customs, and told traditional stories of historical and mythical events. They were living archives of placeways. A periegete was a tour guide who led people around, giving commentaries on whatever was worth seeing. The best guides represented the whole integrity of places. They would describe a place not “objectively” but holistically, in a pattern that included the elements that Plato identified as shapes, powers, and feelings.
A place has no feelings apart from human experience there. But, a place is a location of an experience. It evokes and organizes memories, images, feelings, sentiments, meanings, and the work of the imagination. The feelings of a place are indeed mental projections of the individuals. But, they belong to the place.
The full range of meaning located as “place”—sensory perceptions, moral judgments, passions, feelings, ideas, and orientations-belong to an order of intelligibility that I call “topistic reality.” A place is a matrix of energies, generating representations and causing changes in awareness. To recover archaic theoria means to experience a place through a whole—combining feeling, imagination, and memory, together with the intellect and the senses.
William Latheby called architecture building touched with emotion. Pathetecture means constructing emotion by building. It is the process of making expressive space by material means—locating experience by distributing objects and representations. The process works through organizing or disorganizing materials through construction, dilapidation, and excavation.
Placeways is a philosophical and historical interpretation of the experience and meaning of place. The book develops a theory of topistics, a holistic way of grasping a place as the location of shapes, powers, feelings, and meanings. The author examines the changing realities of expressive space, and reveals the nonrational, symbolic, and intuitive features in our experience of places. The current crisis of environmental degradation, according to Walter, is also a crisis of places. True renewal will require a change in the way we structure experience and return to an ancient paradigm for understanding the natural and constructed world. Topistics is the study of Placeways. The book explores energies of places and the modes of
experiencing them.
In popular writing about architecture and geography, “sense of place” has degenerated into a cliche, often suggesting little more than superficial impressions. Nevertheless, a place with integrity does make sense—it conveys meaning. The real “sense” of place, therefore is twofold. On one hand, people feel it. On the other hand, they grasp its meaning. Today, the experience of place is often out of balance. Preoccupations with the logic of space tend to suppress the feeling of place. There is a tendency in modern thinking to separate the feelings, symbolic meaning, moral sentiments, and intuitions of a place from the intellectual, rational features. Places, therefore, tend to lose an old kind of meaning: expressive intelligibility.
The integrity of a place suffers when we learn by ear gets disconnected from what we perceive with the eye. The imagination makes sense. We get to know a place when we participate in the local imagination. The whole synthesis of located experience— including what we imagine, as well as the sights, stories, feelings, and concepts—gives us a sense of place. For the first time in human history, people are systematically building meaningless places. As we contemplate the ruins and dislocations of our cities, another way of understanding the built environment and the natural landscape is struggling to emerge.
We recognize different kinds of place change. The same place does not remain the same. No city is what it used to be. Yet, despite great changes, some places continue to make sense.
Ancient thinking about place, theoria, grasped the whole experience of a place. It meant seeing the sights, seeing for yourself and getting a world view. It involved senses and feelings. As a theorist Herodotus gathered different kinds of information about places. Putting together what he saw with his own eyes, what he heard, what was “known” as well as recording the memory and the “words” of the place. Local guides helped the visitors “see” Almost every town had periegetes, expert local guides who showed people around, pointed out notable sights, described the local rituals, explained the customs, and told traditional stories of historical and mythical events. They were living archives of placeways. A periegete was a tour guide who led people around, giving commentaries on whatever was worth seeing. The best guides represented the whole integrity of places. They would describe a place not “objectively” but holistically, in a pattern that included the elements that Plato identified as shapes, powers, and feelings.
A place has no feelings apart from human experience there. But, a place is a location of an experience. It evokes and organizes memories, images, feelings, sentiments, meanings, and the work of the imagination. The feelings of a place are indeed mental projections of the individuals. But, they belong to the place.
The full range of meaning located as “place”—sensory perceptions, moral judgments, passions, feelings, ideas, and orientations-belong to an order of intelligibility that I call “topistic reality.” A place is a matrix of energies, generating representations and causing changes in awareness. To recover archaic theoria means to experience a place through a whole—combining feeling, imagination, and memory, together with the intellect and the senses.
William Latheby called architecture building touched with emotion. Pathetecture means constructing emotion by building. It is the process of making expressive space by material means—locating experience by distributing objects and representations. The process works through organizing or disorganizing materials through construction, dilapidation, and excavation.
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