I almost forgot about research methods research pseudo-paper which actually came due before the structures class. The topic I chose/ended up with suited me well. At first it started out as a discovery mission to find out how landscape architecture is addressing more than just the visual. In the end, I used a series of articles published in Landscape Journal about gardens and meaning to look at 4 different types of work, how these all potentially create meaning through a variety of purpose and medium.
The research itself was good for me as it reminded me to look at works as more than just pretty pictures, that there are levels of success and that there are many different approaches to landscape architecture. I think I actually came to some sort of epiphany when I forced myself to define “landscape,” realizing that landscape architecture is more about people than nature; it is about the relationship between people and space and to each other. One of my favorite quotes from the research was this from Lucy Lippard:
“each time we enter a new place, we become one of the ingredients of an existing hybridity… By entering that hybrid, we change it; and in each situation we may play a different role.”
One of my main purposes in this was to really think about how landscape design can be more than just icing, how we can create spaces that become a sort of poetry. From the intro pages…
“In the Anthropology of Senses and Sensations, Jack Goody says that the five basic senses are our window on the world. Through senses we acquire information and our experience of the world is mediated by the senses. As we know from physics, the world from which we obtain sensory information is very different from the world as we experience it. The “picture” our brain creates is limited by the range of stimuli to which our senses are attuned. Unlike language, landscapes can be designed to appeal to all five senses. A user must interpret these sensations and depending on the stimuli we are attuned, the meaning or significance varies.”
The four works I looked at were Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, Nadim Karam’s Urban Toys, Latz and Partner’s Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, and Kathryn Gustafson and Leni Schwendinger’s Dreaming in Color at McCaw Hall.
“The four works have little in common, but they all utilize sensory input to convey meaning between users and designers. Each can be read at multiple levels, ranging from very simple to the more complex which is fed by interrelated action of the senses and previous experience. These works offer opportunities to negotiate and renegotiate human relationships and communicate these relationships.”
