Foraging Space: Embodied Assemblages Resituating Land-Body Relations

Abstract

Foraging Space is creative practice-led research that utilises spatial dialogues of materiality, slow experiences, and embodied foraging to demonstrate how we might reconnect with nature humbly. It works to redefine relationships between non-human and human agencies as one of collaborative resilience in the face of the Anthropocene.

The inquiry draws attention to spatial design as embodying foraging practices to question how situating within natural spaces can build a bridge between mind, body and land. An embodied foraging methodology re-examines widely shared perceptions of the invasive, debris and waste through rebirth in spatial objects and temporal injections of built foraging spaces. The project manifests as the spatial design of a Forager’s Hut, an encampment for a nomadic urban forager who teaches others how to gather both physically and socially, cultivating an embodied understanding of foraging while learning to use materials and wild harvest from their surrounding environment.

The scope of the research includes the design of temporary, flexible architecture for the encampment, the development of prototypical ceramic artefacts that could be used by the forager and a temporal mapping of how the forager inhabits the city, beginning with Barry Curtis Park in Manukau as the initial site for the encampment.