Fieldworking. Fieldwork in Landscape Architecture as a Diffractive Methodology Understood Through the Lens of Agential Realism

Abstract

Our understanding of landscapes and how humans work through and engage with them as physical and cultural entities has changed in recent years. Landscapes such as coastal areas have come to heightened attention due to increased pressures from the climate crisis and ecological emergency. Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand is under coastal influence and will inevitably experience a significant change in the future—through natural events and human development. Concepts such as the Anthropocene and the recent quantum revolution fundamentally changed and disrupted this conceptualisation. However, methods and methodologies in the various domains of landscape architecture (such as research, education, practice, and planning) and related spatial studies have not undergone the same pace of change. This is predominantly noticeable in the methodological approaches, applied methods, techniques, and tools, where the disciplines lack a unique approach.

In this thesis, I investigate fieldwork methods (best practice approaches) known in landscape architecture by applying them to a coastal area in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. As a result of my probing, as well as through a diffractive reading of the literature and the application of Karen Barad’s concept of agential realism, I propose a re-definition of fieldwork as a material-discursive process of iterative intra-action. Fieldwork as a diffractive methodology has the potential to facilitate the observed paradigm shifts in the conception of landscapes and promote a more humble and holistic human engagement with landscapes. This hypothesis critiques the prevalent positivist, solutionist, and predominantly Western framing of spatial studies tasked with decision-making practices (i.e., spatial planning and land use considerations) that determine landscapes’ physical and cognitive future, past, and present—to meet landscapes with more humility and care.