Walking straight lines in cornfields.
Category: Allgemein (page 7 of 7)
When experimenting with walking as a method of design, I tested different rules. Though they need to be designed for every situation specifically, the following rules will be helpful for those who want to start practising.
:: Walk minimum a day. The journey is supposed to be strenuous.
:: Once you studied the map, try to avoid sticking to it. Use a compass to navigate the landscape. Choose a direction rather than “the right path”.
:: Experiment with following beaten tracks and with crossing the terrain by walking a straight line.
:: Walk alone. Start a conversation with people you encounter on your way.
:: Try to wander around and to become part of the landscape. Observe the place with all its scents, flavours, views, textures. If you find something that triggers your attention, examine it and take it with you for a while, if possible.
:: Take a maximum of ten photographs. Draw and write only the most important things that come to your mind.
:: Breathe calmly through your nose and try to find a rhythm that suits you.
:: There is no pressure at all. Open up for the landscape. Play walking!
Walking can help to intensively perceive and understand the traversed space, to generate knowledge, to stimulate intuition and grasp single spatial elements as ensembles, to recognize and exchange perspectives and ideas and thus be part of the design process. But how can we walk to design? How can we make sure all these prospects of walking can be operative? Are there any rules for “how to walk”? Can we learn to apply walking to the tasks of large scale landscape design? How can the findings be transferred in order to make them applicable for large scale landscape design?