[ blind peer-reviewed paper presented at the conference, “Flesh and Space: Intertwining Merleau-Ponty and Architecture,” College of Architecture, Art and Design, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS, September 9] Entwining People and Place: Environmental Embodiment, Place Ballet, and Space Syntax David Seamon Department of Architecture Kansas State University 211 Seaton Hall Manhattan, KS 66506-2901 triad@ksu.edu www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/ Abstract A central theme in phenomenological research is the pre-reflective but learned intentionality of the body, which after French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, has come to be called “body-subject”—i.e., pre-reflective corporeal awareness manifested through action and typically in sync with and enmeshed in the physical world in which the action unfolds. A major concern for architectural research is the taken-for-granted sensibility of body-subject to manifest in extended ways over time and space. One can ask how routine actions and behaviors of individuals coming together regularly in an environment can transform that environment into a place with a unique dynamic and character—a lived situation I have termed “place ballet.” In this presentation, I interpret architectural theorist Bill Hillier’s space syntax theory phenomenologically to suggest how qualities of the designed environment—specifically, pathway structure—might contribute to sustaining or stymieing place ballet. Introduction: Habitual Bodies and Place Ballet I am not in space and time, nor do I conceive space and time; I belong to them, my body combines with them and includes them. —Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 140 In this paper, I consider how my interest in what might be called “environmental embodiment” has led to a parallel interest in architectural theorist Bill Hillier’s space syntax, specifically the question of how the spatial configuration of a place, particularly its pathway arrangement, contributes to modes of environmental embodiment that can range from continuous bodily co-presence and interpersonal encounter, on one hand; to intercorporeal separation and minimal interpersonal encounter, on the other hand. I became involved with the nature of place and environmental embodiment when I was working on my doctorate in behavioral geography at Clark University in the 1970s. My dissertation, revised and published in 1979 as A Geography of the Lifeworld (Seamon