pEople,
pLace, sPace |
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elp:rdu Experiential Landscape Place Research and Development Unit |
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| Dr.
Kevin Thwaites BA, Dip LA (Dist), PhD University of Sheffield , UK kevin.thwaites@elprdu.com |
Ian
Simkins BSc, Dip LA, PCHE, FHEA, MI Hort,
MLI Chartered Landscape Architect ian.simkins@elprdu.com |
Experiential
Landscape: An approach to people, space and place
available from: www.tandf.co.uk click this link to order and view a synopsis or here for a pdf synopsis. current research - HOMEPAGE
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Current
research project: |
| “Excuse
Me I Want To Get On!” |
| Presentation day
at The Peoples’ Parliament Sheffield Town Hall 17th July 2008 11.30am – 2.30pm Please click here for more information |
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At the heart of ELP research is a commitment to the idea that human experience has a spatial dimension. Understanding the nature of this may help environmental design professionals make outdoor places more responsive to people’s ordinary routine daily lives and thereby contribute to their general well-being. |
| ELP research corresponds broadly with explorations into phenomenological approaches to environmental design, particularly how we understand the concept of place in the urban outdoors. But it is more than a field of academic inquiry. We are also interested in investigating how to apply the philosophical and theoretical principles that underpin ELP in practice. This means that a lot of research activity is focused on finding ways to understand the experiential character of outdoor settings through interpretation of their spatial organization. It also means trying to work out what the components and procedures of design processes should be that can help to make experientially beneficial places. |  |
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In pursuit of these goals we can claim some progress. A conceptual framework has been developed to explain how certain categories of human experience can be interpreted spatially. This has helped develop our own ideas about how outdoor places can be understood holistically as three spatial types called centre, direction and transition. These combine in an infinity of ways within a broader background called area to make places of different experiential character. This model forms a basis for analysis and design of the urban outdoors. There are also tools and methods of application that enable ELP researchers and practitioners to undertake work in the field. The most innovative of these concern techniques of public participation and computer aided mapping and analysis that are capable of revealing hidden patterns of routine daily experience for individuals and groups. |
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Against this general background four specific areas of research
are being pursued in detail. • Urban
residential settings |
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SITE
DESIGN: Kevin Thwaites & Ian Simkins |