Seamon Wins EDRA Service Award
Reprinted Courtesy of Environmental Design Research Association
In recognition of his distinguished contributions to the environmental design field and to the Environmental Design Research Association as an organization, EDRA is pleased to dedicate the 2006 EDRA Service Award to Dr. David Seamon, professor of architecture at Kansas State University. Seamon received his award May 13, in Atlanta, Georgia, at the annual EDRA meeting.
A prolific author and reflective scholar, Dr. Seamon has written many books and more than 50 articles. Since 1992, he has served as the editor of the State University of New York Press Series in Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, now totaling six volumes, and he has published the “Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter” for over 16 years. Professor Ingrid Stefanovic notes that Dr. Seamon has “inspired students, academics and practitioners around the world to think differently about the parameters of environmental design and the contributions that phenomenology can make to this important field.”
Dr. Seamon’s research and writings focus on the ways that natural and built environments contribute to human well being. Key themes prominent in his research include human aspects of design; place and place making; the nature of environmental and architectural experience; environmental and architectural aesthetics; phenomenology as a method of inquiry in the human sciences and environment-behavior research, particularly tackling such complex concepts as architect Christopher Alexander’s pattern language; architectural theorist Bill Hillier’s space syntax; and Goethe’s phenomenology of nature.
Landscape architect Douglas Patterson, nominator, noted that Dr. Seamon has “set new standards for what it means to be truly awake to the world and to be open to and informed about the world as seen by all, in the arts and sciences, indeed in all disciplines.”
Another nominator, environment-behavior researcher Herb Childress, noted that Dr. Seamon “has been a generous and valuable colleague for younger generations of EB scholars, encouraging both exploration and rigor among not only his formal students, but to those like myself from other schools who were attempting to come to our own understandings of people in place.”
Dr. Seamon began teaching at Kansas State in 1983 and was promoted to professor in 1993.
For more information, contact:
David Seamon, 785.532.1121
Diane Potts, 785.532.1090