Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Built environment surrounds us for 90% of our lives but only now are we realising its influence on the environment, our health, and how we think, feel and behave both individually and socially.

Spirit & Place shows how to work towards a sustainable environment through socially inclusive processes of placemaking, and how to create places that are nourishing psychologically and physically, to soul and spirit as well as body.


This book's unique arguments identify important, but often unrecognised, principles and illustrate their applicability in a wide range of situations, price-ranges and climates. It shows how to reconcile the apparently incompatible demands of environmental, economic and social sustainability; how to moderate climate to make places of delight, and realign social pressures so places both support society and maximise economic viability. Thought provoking and easy to understand, Christopher Day uses everyday examples to relate his theories to practice and our experience.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Author's note (p. xi)
• Foreword (p. xiii)
• In the beginning (p. 1)
• Us and it (p. 1)
• Part 1 Issues for the Twenty-First Century (p. 3)
• 1 Beneath the surface of today (p. 5)
• Our world, our time, our opportunities (p. 5)
• A new way for our time (p. 5)
• The challenges of today (p. 5)
• Problems and opportunities (p. 7)
• Choice and consciousness (p. 9)
• Beyond individualism: the journey from style to purpose (p. 11)
• Human impact (p. 15)
• Conscious reconnection (p. 17)
• Elemental rebalancing (p. 17)
• Process and life (p. 19)
• From past to future (p. 23)
• Old wisdom; new needs (p. 23)
• Old limits; new consciousness (p. 25)
• 2 The elements of life (p. 29)
• The nourishing elements (p. 29)
• Rooting earth (p. 33)
• Water for life (p. 38)
• Fresh air (p. 42)
• Nurturing warmth (p. 51)
• 3 Design in the context of life (p. 77)
• Hidden costs (p. 77)
• Costs beneath the surface (p. 77)
• Freedom or environment or freedom and environment (p. 85)
• Refinding visibility: re-establishing the circle (p. 86)
• Sustainability versus affordability (p. 88)
• Sustaining sustainability (p. 89)
• Either-or or and-and-and (p. 89)
• Ecological awareness (p. 91)
• Climate-responsive design (p. 93)
• Sustainability versus aesthetics (p. 99)
• Part 2 People, Place and Process (p. 109)
• 4 Place and people (p. 111)
• How environment works on us: unseen influences (p. 111)
• Multi-level influence (p. 111)
• Place and life, mood and individuality (p. 113)
• Integrity: issues of truth (p. 117)
• Objects or places: the form and space of our surroundings (p. 120)
• Line, form, space and us (p. 120)
• Polarities of life and consciousness (p. 121)
• Place and territory: field and boundary (p. 125)
• Form-giving principles (p. 128)
• Outer forms: inner resonance (p. 130)
• Living with traffic (p. 134)
• Traffic and environment (p. 134)
• Reducing traffic (p. 136)
• At home in place: de-alienating environment (p. 141)
• Connection with place-shaping processes (p. 141)
• Scale: socially connecting or alienating (p. 142)
• The substance of our surroundings (p. 145)
• The speed of change (p. 145)
• Anchoring roots in a global world (p. 145)
• Reconnection with earth (p. 146)
• Culturizing identity (p. 147)
• 5 Process-based design (p. 151)
• Social inclusion: participatory design (p. 151)
• Social process as a healing force (p. 151)
• Design with, not for, people (p. 151)
• Players, community and place (p. 153)
• Consensus technique (p. 153)
• What places say: subliminal messages (p. 155)
• The subliminal language of place (p. 155)
• Consensus design process (p. 159)
• Organic development of place (p. 162)
• Development: place-destroying or place-confirming? (p. 162)
• Past and future (p. 164)
• Organic design process (p. 165)
• Growing places (p. 167)
• Growth process (p. 167)
• Growth nodes (p. 167)
• Urban densification (p. 172)
• Fitting in (p. 174)
• Part 3 Building to Heal (p. 179)
• 6 Environment and health (p. 181)
• Life, soul, spirit and place: multi-level health issues (p. 181)
• Levels of being (p. 181)
• The physical body (p. 184)
• Life energy (p. 186)
• Moods and feelings (p. 186)
• Individuality (p. 186)
• Wholeness and health (p. 186)
• Building for health (p. 187)
• Sick building avoidance (p. 187)
• Precautionary practice (p. 189)
• Material factors (p. 190)
• Indoor air (p. 190)
• Lighting (p. 193)
• Electrical pollution (p. 193)
• Ionizing radiation (p. 197)
• Earth radiation (p. 199)
• Healthy building (p. 199)
• Daylight and health (p. 200)
• Life-energizing surroundings (p. 206)
• Soul, place and health (p. 212)
• De-stressing (p. 212)
• The senses: stimulus, stress and delight (p. 214)
• Balance (p. 218)
• Spirit nourishment (p. 220)
• 7 Healing by design (p. 229)
• Healing environment: not just for the ill (p. 229)
• Health, healing and our four levels of being (p. 229)
• Illness and recovery: a journey (p. 230)
• Physical surroundings (p. 231)
• Enlivening surroundings (p. 231)
• Surroundings to feed the soul (p. 232)
• Places to nourish the spirit (p. 234)
• Healing as process (p. 235)
• Sanctifying the everyday (p. 237)
• Refinding everyday sacredness (p. 237)
• Design for the twenty-first century (p. 238)
• Sacred and secular (p. 239)
• A new beginning (p. 243)
• It and us (p. 243)
• Bibliography (p. 245)
• List of photographs (p. 247)
• Index (p. 249)

Author notes provided by Syndetics