ABSTRACT
For the disciplines and professions concerned with design of the physical environment, site matters. Not only are physical design projects always located in a specific place, the work of physical design also necessarily depends on notional understandings about the relationships between a project and a locale. Given that design reconfigures the environment using physical and conceptual means, articulate comprehension of site in physical and conceptual terms should be fundamental. Surprisingly, however, the design field overall has a history of scanty literature directly addressing the subject. Why Site Matters argues for an understanding of the design site as a complex construct that incorporates three distinct geographic areas, two divergent spatial ideas, and past, present, and future timeframes. It posits site thinking as the means whereby sites are construed and comprehended. As a form of knowing, site thinking is concretely situated, more interactive than abstract, and less concerned with the semantic content of knowledge than with a concern for relationships among knowers and the known. Site thinking understands knowledge as embedded within specific ways of engaging the world.
