The atmosphere of a street: Experimental fieldwork on urban ambiances

Abstract

The paper discusses phenomenological fieldwork carried out by third- and fourth-year students enrolled in the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture programme at the School of Landscape Architecture at Lincoln University. It focuses on students’ sensory experiences while surveying a lively inner-urban street in Wellington, New Zealand, and discusses related (objective) circumstances, sensations and interpretations. Students were asked to describe their experiences while moving through the street and to record them in a field book in the form of notes and sketches. The goal of the paper is to capture, analyse and discuss students’ individual experiences of different atmospheric facets of an urban streetscape. Preliminary findings are presented and discussed.