Andersen, N.B. (2024) 'New Phenomenology in architecture: embodied environmental communication for meaningful situations', Architectural Research Quarterly, 27(4), pp. 325-336. doi:10.1017/S1359135524000083.





Andersen's New Phenomenology in architecture reactivates phenomenological thought under the pressure of climate emergency and environmental communication. Its iconic idea is that architecture is a field of embodied environmental meaning: form, colour, scale, proportion, texture, acoustics, heat and daylight are not aesthetic supplements, but communicative agencies encountered through the sensing body. The theoretical contribution is a renewal of phenomenology beyond inward atmosphere, repositioning embodied experience as a way of generating environmental awareness and ethical attention. Methodologically, Andersen builds from architectural phenomenology - Rasmussen, Zumthor and embodied first-person perception - toward a concept of meaningful situations in which environmental qualities are read as relational, affective and pedagogical. Its bridge to contemporary ecological thought is decisive: perception is not private subjectivity but a mode of environmental literacy through which bodies learn the material consequences of place.