Look before you leap
Remember the observation exercise at the end of the first module, when you studied a tree near your home and looked for functions and relationships? Ready to apply that type of thinking to every inch and every layer of your design site?
So far in the design studio you’ve collected feedback from yourself and from your stakeholders. Now it’s time to collect information from the site, and from the land.
Why is observation so important?
by Meiling Colorado
Before we can build ecological gardens and communities, we must first take the time to look deeply into our surroundings and try to see how best to integrate ourselves with the natural ecology. Humans are notorious for their inability and/or unwillingness to look at the natural signs around them, and this tendency is probably how we got in such deep water with the natural environment. As ecological designers, we eschew blind and compulsive action, and opt for a careful, deliberate process, and the path to that transformation is paved with a mosaic of multi-sensory observations.
In addition, because few among us retain clear connections to our indigenous roots, tapping in to what the landscape tells us regarding its use by people long gone will save us a lot of pain both in the present and in the future. Oral traditions have been lost, with centuries of accumulated wisdom, and our short lifespans make us impatient and reactive, which can lead to dire consequences.
Add to that the fact that many people are designing in sites far from their places of origin, where the culture and natural cycles may be diametrically opposed to those they grew up with, and that climate chaos is wreaking havoc worldwide, and it makes detecting the current patterns in your surroundings absolutely essential.
Reading the Land
by Marit Parker
Creating a sustainable, regenerative whole-system design requires that we learn to read the land. Reading the land takes time. And that’s good, because if you’re planning a major change, you don’t want to rush into it and then realise you’ve changed your mind or made a mistake. Gardeners often say that you need to watch a garden for a whole year before you change anything, and that’s even more true with earthworks.
Different seasons bring opportunities for different observations, so in summer you may notice some places where plant growth is lush, and others where it’s drier and plants take measures to conserve water. In winter, frost and frozen water can reveal different patterns and hints about what lies underneath. Sun and shade are of course important factors, and taking time means you can observe the plot when the sun is at its highest and lowest points in the sky, at opposite ends of the yearly cycle, and all the points in between.
What is growing in different areas also gives clues to attributes such as where water is flowing through the land, and where the soil is fertile. Get to know the weeds in your plot and find out what they can tell you about the soil, the availability of water, and the micro-climate.
Seeing all the creatures that live in your plot can be harder, as many stay hidden. However, you may spot tracks, poo, webs or shells, for example. What different habitats are there and where? What does this tell you about the site?
Don’t forget to look at your plot in its context with neighbouring areas. If you have a slope, what happens above and below it? Where does water come from and go to?
Look at its historical context. What has happened here before? What changes have been made in the past? This could include changes due to human activity, such as buildings erected or pulled down, paths or roads made, trees planted or felled. Or it could be changes due to physical factors such as fire, erosion, flooding or drought.
Seeing places in their historical context can bring a different perspective to our observations, the long view. We may start to appreciate different aspects in terms of their relative permanence. This may help us consider our own efforts differently, in terms of their own relative permanence.
It may become apparent that, for example, a damp depression probably used to be a pond that has filled in over time. How does this change how you see the land?
As your understanding of your plot deepens, start considering what effect changes might have. What might happen if you change where water goes? How will it affect your neighbours? How will it affect plants and animals living near the water now?
As you become more aware of all the different forms of life passing through or living in or near your plot, all of whom will be affected in different ways by your plans, it can become difficult to know what to do for the best.
Major changes to plans once they have been started are more difficult, so it is worth taking time not only to read the land but also to mull over the work you want to do, the effort it will take, the effects it may have.
Over the next several days/weeks/months/forever, set aside a few minutes each day to read the land, and to cultivate your skills in observation.
You’ll use these skills every time you make a decision, and if you do a good job documenting the data, you will save countless hours in future mistakes, design flaws, and confusion.
Many Ways to See
Multisensory and multispecies observation
- Don’t just observe with your eyes! Use all of your senses, including your intuition.
- Use your knowledge of the place, of the patterns, of the people.
- Use your empathy, and imagine what everything you’re observing looks/feels/smells/tastes/sounds like, for creatures other than yourself. Put yourself in their place, and imagine how your design plans will impact them.
- Use your emotions, but not too much! Notice your preferences and aversions, your triggers and delights, but don’t allow them to influence your observations to the point of corrupting them. This is no small challenge, but…try.
- Look deep. And deeper and deeper and deeper!
Always be looking for:
- Patterns. Flows, zones, and sectors are patterns.
- Problems. Problems are flaws in the design.
- Relationships. Edges, flows, and boundaries are all indicators of relationship.
- Waste and Stagnation. Waste becomes pollution and stagnation causes waste.
- Facts and Data. Climate, property lines, elevations, soil types…and so on. Discover as many facts about your site as possible.
- Opportunities. The more you see all of the above, the more ideas you’ll have. Write them down.
Passive versus Active Observation
Alternate between them, and make note of what shifts.
Examples of passive observation could include dreaming, phenomenology, sit spots, walking meditation, or just being on the site in your day to day life.
Active Observation methods are what we use throughout this course: zone mapping, sector mapping, and client interviews are all powerful lenses that will yield heaps of information for you.
Scale of Permanence Observation
When you make changes to the landscape, do you consider how long those changes will last, and/or what the long-term impact of those changes will be? Also, when you plan your timeline for implementing your design ideas, it becomes clear that some tasks (repair damaged soil) will take much longer to accomplish than others (plant strawberries)…and by the same token: some mistakes (strawberries planted in the wrong spot) will only take a few minutes to remedy, while others (adding toxins to soil) will take many years to correct.
As such, when we use something called a “Scale of Permanence” to organize our thoughts and actions, we can avoid big mistakes and create a workable, conscious timeline for our design project. There are a few versions of the Scale of Permanence since P.A. Yeoman, but he was the first to frame it as such.
This is his version:
The idea is that you rank components from easiest to change or influence (and thus easiest to correct if you make a misguided design decision) to hardest to change (once you’ve changed the climate, for example, it will take a huge effort to change it back), and then observe and analyze the site with those rankings in mind. The SOP gives us a way to organize our observations, and to envision the potential impacts of any changes we’d like to make.
Here’s Kt Shepherd’s version:
Consider how studying the scale of permanence could help you create your site-assessment checklist, and later, to organize your ideas according to how intense/impactful your plans are.
Taj Scicluna uses the Scale of Permanence as her primary tool for Site Assessment and Analysis. And though we’d like you to linger in these early phases of the design process before you leap into analysis, (don’t skip boundaries and resources, please!) you’ll find her checklist super useful, starting now. Get PDF
Observation vs. Analysis
The meme to the right is so true: as creative people, designers are constantly trying to envision solutions! And that’s great…sometimes. However, during this observant phase, it’s important you don’t slip into planning, analyzing, and projecting future ideas onto what you see. Do your best to stay present, and focus on learning as much as you can about what is happening on y our site right now, and what has happened there in the past. We’ll get to the future soon enough!
Homework for this phase of your design
A quick note about documentation:
It’s fairly obvious but: you’re gonna want to keep track of all this stuff. Write down your observations, make videos, make voice recordings….you’ll be surprised later on when you see how useful all these early notes become! It can be especially fun to take pictures of areas that are really ugly and disorganized, to use in your future “before and after” stories! But also, the more you document what you see, the more you’ll be able to really dig deep for connections as the design process continues.
Also, meticulous documentation, during the observation process, can really help to slow things down, in a good way, and prevent us from slipping into analysis and problem-solving mode too quickly, before we have truly observed the site.
Perspectives: Zoom in, Zoom out, Birdseye, Wormseye
Go outside and do this exercise:
First, find a flower. Any flower, as long as you can see it clearly and up close. Don’t pick it! Look at it for a moment. What colors did you see? How many petals? Were there seeds? Pollen? Look away, then back at the flower.
Look deeper this time. Zoom in. What do you see that you missed before? More detail? Tiny parts you hadn’t noticed? Look for the microcosm, the tiny community within a community within that flower. Search for details and clues to a pattern.
Zoom in once more, now adding layers of time. What did this flower look like two weeks ago? What will it look like in a month?
Next, zoom out. Where does the flower get support? What type of stem and leaves does it have? Is it in a community with other flowers, other species, insects, plants?
Keep zooming out, to the macrocosm: from seeing your garden in the context of your neighborhood to seeing yourself in the context of the universe, the macrocosm is the big picture. This includes the embedded energy and pollution in every tool and resource that made it possible for this moment to happen.
Looking at the macrocosm means searching for patterns in space and time. Look at all the big things and see how they fit together to make the whole. Look for large-scale patterns and relationships. Try to determine where they go and where they come from by following the connections from one observation to the next. In most cases, these patterns will repeat themselves on each smaller scale, and through them we can find ways to make our small work resonate with the big picture.
Now again, add layers of time to your observation.
Stand up on your tiptoes and look down on the flower. Imagine you’re a bird. What do you see? What are your relationships here? Imagine you’re a cloud. What are your relationships?
Shrink back down and lay on your back looking up at the flower from underneath. How is it different? How is everything different? What new relationships can you discover down here?
Use this perspective-switching technique throughout your design process.
Feedback
Part one: Once you’ve collected all this information, you will probably need to refine your goals and vision statements. Great! Do it!
Part two: Finally, now that you’ve gotten so much feedback from the land, you have permission to let the problem-solver in you run free!
Go back through your notes and brainstorm a list of problems you think your design might be able to solve. Write them down in a long column on the left side of a page.
On the right side, brainstorm a list of potential ideas for solving those problems. Don’t go too deep into this yet, just create a space for adding ideas as they come.
Before moving on to the next step in the design studio, make sure you’ve created these important pieces of your design:
A list of notes about your site assessment, research, and observations.
- Start with this list of sample/starter questions, which loosely follows the pattern of this course. Use it to get started, and add more of your own.
- Your final design should include a succinct list of the questions you answered during your observation phase, but also: it never ends. In a way, everything we do should always anchor back to this step.
- Zones and sectors draft maps, as mentioned in the Home System and Big Land modules. If you’re at all still confused about Zones, check out this class, from the companion course.
- Microclimates draft maps, as mentioned in the Climates module and expanded upon in the Season Extension module.
- A base map (try to at least get a rough draft by now)
Whenever you need examples, explore the Alumni Gallery.