This presentation will consider the role of observation in an interdisciplinary practice that seeks to comprehend the experiential nature of place and, thereby, unfold a more acute view of the world. My perspective is anthropological with specific interest in material culture, ritual and vernacular grounds. Like the anthropologist, the architect develops an understanding of the nature of lived space, not by imposing a theory, but by letting the revelation derive from the act of recording observations.i An act to which I refer as staging; the assembly of a framework used in reconstructing the nature of place. This process of inquiry is informed by the production of writing, mapping, modeling and drawing culture in effort to define the criteria for making place based propositions. This methodology is the embodiment of an interdisciplinary agenda that has to do with authenticating the architectural essence of lived space and, thereby, produces a more sustainable basis for reconstructing our inherited landscape.