Human | Nature
The Introspective Landscape
This project aims to define a new branch of Therapeutic Landscape that heals through a solitary experience of landscape, allowing individuals to access their internal emotions.
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The project is located in Two Tree Island, a piece of reclaimed land, formal landfill, and a natural reserve on the Thames Esturary. The site is isolated, distanced from the main coast path, and only accessible on a thin bridge. There is already existing paths for walking, and hides for bird watching, which are suitable for individual activities.
2022 | MLA Landscape Architecture
The project will take the framework of Therapeutic Landscape, including the prospect-refuge theory and visual information processing, however, providing an alternative from the standardised positivity which can lead to emotional suppression and repression for some. By offsetting a little bit away from that, this project provides spaces for people who enjoy more challenging sensations, discomfort, and uncertainties. This is done through the set up of a solitary odyssey through 4 different intervention strategies: Hidden Platform, Enclosed Tunnel, Raised Viewing Hide, and Floating Islands. Each of the interventions have spatial conditions based on a species existing in the local ecology, while referring to an activity or infrastructure on site, and built with natural materials.
To define this Introspective Landscape, a more irregular and disordered design method is needed. Part 1 of the project, Experiential Research Methodologies, explores different ways of site research including collage, sensory translations, bodily investigation of space, and material testing. These alternative forms of site research provide other forms of incomplete knowledge that feeds into the design decisions in part 2, The Solitary Odyssey. Research of concepts, a smaller site, as well as mapping and modelling the intervention methods are still done for the intervention. The actual construction of the model with natural materials also gives ever-changing, sketchy, and temporal qualities to the designs.
With the unconventional design method, construction, and results, one regains curiosity and appreciation of the unknown, unclean, and the imperfect, while gaining understanding and acceptance of one’s own senses and emotions.
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