Walking as designing: The use of walking as a tool for discovering landscape

Abstract

The path affords alternative ways of knowing (and coming to know) landscape. Walking is the primary mode of data acquisition in this research, with design operations the key tools for the interpretation and exploration. Iterative walking and diagramming are combined with temporal and experiential mapping to provide new translations of known spaces. While objective methods of looking at landscape make what is made known to us, design exercises enable new and enriched ways of understanding spaces and of finding the diverse materials, processes and meanings that compose them. In this light, they also allow us to imagine new forms of paths and new ways to score landscapes based on their walkability.