FINAL WORD
WORDS Meg Back
IMAGES Blair Clinch
Xsection 2013 turned out to be a journey, where we made a number of discoveries; not just about placemaking, or sense of place, but about the industry, about people in general, and most of all, about what makes a landscape. To follow the xsection mission of promoting rigorous discussion across the boundaries of the industry, we attempted to leave no stone unturned, infiltrating meetings, going to functions, visiting offices, talking to not just landscape architects but architects, photographers, artists, planners, ecologists and anyone else we thought might have an opinion. We collated images, articles, interviews and thoughtful, learned journal articles which we passed onto far more qualified people for double blind peer reviews. In a striking moment of synergy two top personalities wtihin the field, Ethan Kent of Project for Public Spaces, and David Engwicht of Creative Communities both visited Auckland early on in our journey and xsection members were lucky enough to attend their talks. We didn’t just get enough material, we actually collated too much, leading to the online edition stepping up this year to become an exciting new product in its own right.
First and foremost we discovered landscape architects care. They care very deeply and on our visits around the offices we would often be exposed to the most esoteric of conversations, with contemplation of time, memory, culture and how that was bound up into the landscape. In general people were extremely generous with their time and especially their intellectual property. Our thanks to them all. They felt deeply about “place” and were willing to share. There were lively philosophical discussions where commercial reality was left behind and ideology was debated.
It had not escaped our notice that placemaking and sense of place were indeed different things, and this sparked up many a debate. When discussing “placemaking” there were often two camps, those who felt that a place could not be designed without local consultation, and those who felt the trained designer should be the one who knows best how to ensure a place could function. So who is right? Both sides have created extremely successful spaces.
First and foremost we discovered landscape architects care. They care very deeply and on our visits around the offices we would often be exposed to the most esoteric of conversations, with contemplation of time, memory, culture and how that was bound up into the landscape. In general people were extremely generous with their time and especially their intellectual property. Our thanks to them all. They felt deeply about “place” and were willing to share. There were lively philosophical discussions where commercial reality was left behind and ideology was debated.
It had not escaped our notice that placemaking and sense of place were indeed different things, and this sparked up many a debate. When discussing “placemaking” there were often two camps, those who felt that a place could not be designed without local consultation, and those who felt the trained designer should be the one who knows best how to ensure a place could function. So who is right? Both sides have created extremely successful spaces.
And placemaking it seems can be an ongoing activity. Is the Wynyard Quarter a success because it is activated, or is it activated because it’s a success?
Some said it was only after the question was posed that they started thinking deeply about what placemaking might really be. The idea appears to be developing just as the industry is. Certainly culture is coming the fore as landscape architecture moves from being purely a western construct to where it is accepted that a landscape can be valued in many different forms. In New Zealand the incorporation of the Te Aranga Maori design principles, themselves startingly in sync with placemaking theorem, into the design manual of our largest city signals a move to forming a sense of place through a greater recognition of the narrative of a site, the culture, the names, the ecology, the people.
As Wayne Rimmer of Opus said: “successful placemaking is based around a more complex process involving listening, understanding, interpretation and integration of existing community values. It is a process that allows a community’s collective thoughts to become an agreed vision. It is this shared vision as a part of the placemaking process that will help to expose, define and enrich a communty’s layers that either previously may have existed and been lost, or perhaps have never had the opportunity to be realised.“
If culture, memory and narrative are what builds sense of place, perhaps placemaking is the mechanism by which we can build them in...
Some said it was only after the question was posed that they started thinking deeply about what placemaking might really be. The idea appears to be developing just as the industry is. Certainly culture is coming the fore as landscape architecture moves from being purely a western construct to where it is accepted that a landscape can be valued in many different forms. In New Zealand the incorporation of the Te Aranga Maori design principles, themselves startingly in sync with placemaking theorem, into the design manual of our largest city signals a move to forming a sense of place through a greater recognition of the narrative of a site, the culture, the names, the ecology, the people.
As Wayne Rimmer of Opus said: “successful placemaking is based around a more complex process involving listening, understanding, interpretation and integration of existing community values. It is a process that allows a community’s collective thoughts to become an agreed vision. It is this shared vision as a part of the placemaking process that will help to expose, define and enrich a communty’s layers that either previously may have existed and been lost, or perhaps have never had the opportunity to be realised.“
If culture, memory and narrative are what builds sense of place, perhaps placemaking is the mechanism by which we can build them in...
