Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...

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the term “overall expression” means a first “picture” that
describes the whole in the shape of sketches, plans, models,
succinct sentences. This already makes each site
inventory an interpretation and thus an idea.
Ideas as “aids to disentanglement”
An objective spatial inventory independent of the subject
and the subject‘s experience and knowledge does not
exist. The realisation is taking hold that (complete)
inventories which in particular the regional and spatial
planning disciplines traditionally responsible for largescale
levels long considered a necessary requirement for
the development of future measures and ideas (whether
programs, models, concepts or concrete projects) are not
feasible. It is rather about taking inventory and producing
initial ideas simultaneously. I call these initial ideas
“aids to disentanglement“. This is why it is so important
to begin finding ideas at an extremely early stage, my
assumption being that only by so doing can productive
access to the complexities of urban landscapes be found.
On closer inspection, this “disentanglement procedure“
comprises several different types of ideas. Expressing a
spatial whole in a single picture is thereby the first crucial
step. What we are dealing with here is by no means a
copy: these pictures facilitate an (initial) interpretation,
that is both a creative performance and at the same
time a kind of idea and thus an understanding approach
despite vagueness. These initial pictures provide the
decisive “navigation“ for the next step while searching
for productive starting points that must be uncovered
(designed) within a complex “tangled mass“ e.g. of a
whole region. They can appear as questions or further
ideas and somehow usually do go into more detail. They
are the search for action-oriented impulses that have
reference to the whole (impulse principle).
My experiences in teaching design have shown that
initial design steps that consciously build upon intuitive
capabilities are regularly possible and astoundingly
productive (Werner 2008: 291-327). In actual fact, it is
this subjective (idea) component that – combined with
the object in question (in this case, urban landscapes)
– facilitates a specific perspective and a certain picture.
Creative access – as I call this type of approach to an
area or theme – is, as I have already explained, always
emotionally orientated; it allows an individual to develop
one’s own feelings for an area, “to make one’s own
picture”. In other words, creative access aims at intuitive
“disentanglement”, simultaneously producing ideas.
The outlined design-based, visual-intuitive access to
complex large-scale tasks was theoretically and practically
developed and applied within numerous design
teaching and research projects at the STUDIO URBANE
LANDSCHAFTEN [3]. Here it became evident that a
setting that serves the essential components of design
(the conscious combination of intuition, ratio, body and
emotions) and that allows empathy, an involvement
with and affection for the subject matter will promote a
creative atmosphere and thus the emergence of ideas.
Using an example, I will now show in more detail how
the steps described – grasping a whole in a single image
and finding initial ideas – can be applied in research and
practical application.
“Research by Design. The Case of Urban Landscape”
– questions and ideas for a highly dynamic
North-German region
Applying the integrative approach to design to the
professional public was the intention of the one-day
International Symposium “Research by Design – The
Case of Urban Landscapes”, hosted by the STUDIO in
July 2008, sponsored by the Volkswagen foundation.
Research questions and possibilities for development of
urban landscapes were investigated within the framework
of an openly structured experiment an interplay between
of discussion carousel (a combination of short presentation
and panel discussion developed for the symposium)
and design workshop that were held simultaneously. The
symposium openly assumed the basic thesis that design
is a suitable mode of action of approaching this subject
matter. At the same time, it applied the assumption that,
within a few hours, a highly complex urban landscape
space can be visually represented as a whole, and
consequently interpreted, allowing interdisciplinary and
transdisciplinary initial research questions and development
ideas as defined by the impulse principle to be
generated from the “dialogue“ with the visual work. An
aesthetic mode of communicating the subject matter that
appealed to all the senses and a setting that promotes
creativity were important prerequisites for the required
emotional attention to the subject matter and the “coaxing“
of ideas.
A STUDIO team’s subject of investigation for some time
[4], the larger observed territory at the symposium was
the tidally influenced section of the Elbe river between
Hamburg and its North Sea estuary in Cuxhaven.
The area under closer investigation lay to the west of
Hamburg in the area where the state borders of Hamburg,
Schleswig Holstein and Lower Saxony converge.
Approximately 100 participants with varying disciplinary
backgrounds who, for the most part, were not familiar
with the area, were given the task of visually expressing
in drawings, collages, mappings, models or texts the
landscape performance of the area in the first instance
and from a “dialogue with the images” coming up with
some initial ideas for developing this urban landscape
and infering questions that might be relevant. A 1:5000
scale aerial photograph measuring 60cm x 24cm formed
the basis of the graphic representation of the area under
investigation. Other design materials were also supplied.