ABSTRACT
Today, world-wide architecture is recognised mainly for its visual qualities, yet we experience a landscape or building using all our senses. This ocular-centrism disconnects us from our habitat and makes us blind to the full extent of our landscapes, built or un-built. Our archives and libraries are filled with objects like books and artefacts which we look at, predominantly. Perhaps we should also be archiving in equal measure the smells, tastes, sounds and textures of the past and present.
Here, photography, drawing, writing, sound recordings, film and walking are explored as ways to expand the understanding of landscape qualities. Presented here is a core method utilised in architecture studios at Oxford Brookes University to support site analysis called ‘Transect Walks’. Students are asked to cut a line meandering along the different waterways of Oxford, England. The students record and document the ‘Transect Walk’ in their own way, using a creative method of their own making that also expands beyond simply the visual.
Presented are several examples of student work articulating the expansion of landscape understanding through the process of walking and making. The ‘Transect Walk’ exercise was devised to disrupt the standard approach to architecture and to challenge the traditional architect’s approach to site analysis. The aim was to enable the students to tune into and develop their own way of experiencing, way of seeing and way of representing the landscape around them. In so doing, we were encouraging a diverse collection of ways to read and understand a landscape, enabling inclusivity in the manner of documentation and expression.
Photography as a mode of representation was examined and re-interpreted in the ‘Transect Walk’ exercise by adjusting the filter for seeing to a specific aspect. When the eye is tuned to seek out and see a certain small fragment of a landscape, suddenly the vast, complex and detailed collage of a landscape no longer overwhelms the viewer.
