The Dancer Has His Ear in His Toes: A Phenomenological Interrogation of Place

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Much of the debate that surrounds sustainable development focuses upon the physical manifestations of architecture, leaving the cultural and semiotic dimensions largely undisturbed. Furthermore, such narrow debate largely mitigates the opportunity to explore how developing an understanding of ancient ways of making place might inform our design responses today.

In our contemporary globalised, homogenised world, the specificity of ‘place’ is almost entirely understood through the visual realm. Such mono-perception encourages a superficial understanding of the particularity of place. The hypothesis that underpins paper suggests that through the adoption of a culturally neutral phenomenological methodology, a profound, perhaps sublime understanding of the particularity of particular place can emerge, engaging with culture, climate and indeed meaning.

The objective of this analysis is to inform, through multi-perceptual and deep understanding, contemporary approaches to making place in the built environment. Such approaches, will by default be sustainable, as they implicitly acknowledge the deep layers of sediment of culture, climate and meaning; providing a language for appropriate contemporary development.

The paper will focus upon a phenomenological interrogation of the Sheik Isa House in Muhharaq, Bahrain, an example of particularity in a complex and ancient cultural paradigm with extreme climatic conditions.

This analysis will provide an exemplar of the value of such methodology and extend the debate that surrounds sustainable development, engaging with dimensions as yet, largely unrecognised but paradoxically central to the argument of how we built appropriate tomorrows.

Stream: Cultural Sustainability

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Roger Tyrrell an Architect and is a Principal Lecturer and the University of Portsmouth School of Architecture and is currently responsible for the management and development of the postgraduate Diploma in Architecture programme and, in addition, for the development of a new suite of postgraduate Masters courses in Sustainable Design, Urban Design and Interior Design. He also leads a Diploma studio and undergraduate studio in the School. After eight years leading an award winning private practice in the UK he entered academia and has taught at Bath and Plymouth Universities in the UK, has acted as a visiting critic at the University of Bahrain given a range of lectures at Universities across South East Asia including the Islamic University of Malaysia. His research interests lie within the realm of the interrogation of the relationship between culture, climate and place examined from a phenomenological perspective and is currently conducting two research projects.