Mindshapes and Handscapes, #3.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. Gestures Towards the Subject of Design

3. Gestures as Agents of Change: Four Remarks

4. From Landscape to Handscape

5. Discussion: Mimetic Awareness and Meaning

6. Conclusion

The essay that follows will be published in four installments; this installment, the third, contains section 4.

But you can also download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text of the essay, including the REFERENCES, by scrolling down to the bottom of this post and clicking on the Download tab.

4. From Landscape to Handscape

In this section, I illustrate some of the notions discussed previously by way of a case study. It concerns a “cloud of sketches” made during a single project that lasted around 18 months. The project goal was to provide a new landscape vision for the municipality of Beekdaelen in Dutch southern Limburg. The vision was considered as an “architectural agenda” that would address threats and developmental possibilities within the landscape. Topics included were agriculture, water management, tourism, residential quality, and natural development.

The problem we ran into was that the main themes relentlessly fused with one another. In this case, the geographical features of the landscape tied into our conceptual difficulties. The region of southern Limburg has unique geographical features, including hills and a natural network of small streams. During its agricultural development, a network of villages and traditional farms emerged in reciprocal relationships with these features.

Figure 1: Isometric depiction of the main landscape systems and processes (left) and how it appears in GIS-data (right). (Author, 2022)

It took literally meters of sketch paper to present our strategic ideas to ourselves in ways that did justice to the fine-grained, interlinked and legally protected physical landscape features (fig. 1). The resulting sketches were often halfway products depicting (i) unfinished, quick design ideas, (ii) landscape structures with which they interacted and (iii) connections of an idea to adjacent themes.

An example of such a sketch concerned the relationship between the altitude, the resulting network of fine-grained streams and the traditional settlement pattern. Southern Limburg has long been an agricultural region, so small clusters of farms grew into villages. Since this process already started before medieval times, the villages were located within walking distance of one another. Larger farms, religious structures and family estates complete the settlement pattern. When tracing out these old, yet tangible structures, the first thing we noticed is that precision is absolutely necessary. One must acquire a bodily sensibility to the subtle twists and turns of the water network, just as one must acquire a feeling for how the old roads connect the villages and isolated structures. Nothing is coincidental—everything has a reason (fig. 2).

Figure 2: Tracing of multiple systems led to intricate drawings dealing with scale, subtle features and interconnections rather than analysis. (Author, 2022)

Through gesture, a newly developed sensibility or cognitive attention emerges from reproducing and superimposing existing patterns. The exact geographical data is also available in a GIS-format, but merely seeing it does not result in comprehension, let alone in intimate, felt knowledge. The key is that in the process of familiarizing with the contents and developing a sensibility, the body is gesturally, and not just cognitively, involved.

Likewise, the mind is also shaped by this practice. What appear as a series of coincidental features to the new onlooker, acquires meaning when seen through expert eyes. Deliberately shaping mind and body (or, we should say: bodymind), makes one look differently at the landscape. Through practice, a Gestalt shift takes place, and an initially unconnected series of features acquires shape, meaning and reason.

While the representational contents of the data and the tracing are largely identical, the process of interiorizing them in the body, and therefore establishing a sensible, felt and haptic relation with it unlocks a level of intimate knowing that exerts a very tangible effect on how the next design steps unfold (fig. 3).

Figure 3: Multiple tracings are required for deep familiarization with the content. The dotted rectangle on the GIS drawing (left) corresponds to the area of the hand drawing (right). (Author, 2021)

Rather than absorbing contents informationally, it is drawn into being. It is “in-forming” rather than being informed. The full involvement of the body through gesture organizes knowledge. In doing so, it affectively frames meanings that emerge during the drawing process. The process-based character of gesturing and sketching re-creates, and mimics processes rather than looking at them. When investigating the natural flow of precipitation downhill, sketching and tracing the main streams recreates a real-life movement, and causes one to think through the landscape structures (fig. 4).

Figure 4: The subtlety and fragility of the vein-like water system (right) shows the underlying geomorphology (left). Mimetic awareness creates a deep understanding of the relation between geological features and water management. The dotted rectangle (left) corresponds to the area of the drawing. (Author, 2021)

One “fuses” with the behavior of the water through tracing its pathways and evoking a process that shapes the world emerging under the pen. In making such drawings and highlighting a single aspect, the processes occurring in the landscape acquire a rhyme and reason, as the relation between their unfolding and the physical features of the environment are drawn into the center of the affective frame.

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