Plants, Plant Blindness, and Wasted Time
Following my 'Areas of Inquiry' presentation on Thursday, I was really excited about brainstorming more ideas regarding the topic "Plants as Placemaking". When putting together my presentation, I was considering how certain cities have distinctive plants or a landscape that create a strong sense of place in that city--like the cherry trees in Washington D.C. Or even making vegetation a destination and "attraction", like the Redwood National Forest. Additional questions like "How can vegetation affect wayfinding?" and "How can urban planners and architects better incorporate the native landscape/landforms in to the urban fabric?" kept emerging while considering this initial topic area. These interests stem from a want to develop a stronger connection between the urban fabric and the landscape itself. How can we mitigate displacing the natural world as a backdrop to human intervention, and implement it in active role in our everyday lives? But how can I turn this in to a real research question?
After reading Chapter 3 of "Undergraduate Research in Architecture", I felt a little more solid about brainstorming and "researching" a research question. The chapter reinforced the assurance that there is no "wasted" time (a very, very needed reminder). It's okay to scrap an idea after weeks and start over, everything is a stepping stone even if it feels like you are stepping backwards. I liked the idea of "free-writing", just spilling all my thoughts out for at least 10 minutes straight: letting myself be wrong, letting myself not be sure, letting myself just flow. However, when I tried free-writing, I felt worse about forming any ideas for research. While free-writing, I just kept hitting a rut, circling back to the question, "What am I actually asking?" I feel like I have inquiries, but I don't know how they are more than just theories. I want something more tangible and I feel like, "Plants should be more relevant in our everyday lives!" is such a basic belief statement.
When trying to intellectualize this, I circle back to "plant blindness", a topic I just learned about this semester in Scott Biehle's Planting Design class. "Plant blindness" describes the tendency that people (especially those of Western society) overlook, ignore, or underappreciate plants in their everyday life. Over the past two weeks, we've discussed different reasons and examples of "plant blindness"; throughout the rest of the semester, we intend to start discussing and designing solutions for this. I believe this theory might be a piece to my research question, but I can't figure out the other pieces.
Another area of interest in my presentation was "Landscape in Film". More specifically, the representation of nature in Studio Ghibli films. From my personal lens, nature is represented as a character in many of the films, not just the backdrop or setting. While putting keywords in to Google Scholar, I came across a research article that describes the representation of nature in the films as a "neighbor". This theme that human's connection to the landscape is personable and "neighborly" is exactly what I want more of! Perhaps how nature is represented in films, especially for children, can shape how we view nature as we get older, creating a deeper sense of respect and stewardship over our landscape. Maybe this representation of nature as our "neighbor" in media can help lessen "plant blindness" in our everyday life. And that sentiment leads back to wanting to put nature in an active role in our urban environment.
How on earth do I turn these thoughts in to research? Are these even worth pursuing?
I really appreciate how you described the cyclical nature of brainstorming, that developing a project is not a linear process. It's often two steps forwards, one step back, and the multiple iterations of your ideas will lead to the development of a strong, well though-out, and successful project! Maybe combining ideas you have will build a question you can research like how placemaking plants and plant blindness connect -- like what causes humans to decide which plants to be placemaking instead of being "blind" from them. Your idea of incorporating the native landscape to urban environments reminded me of "guerilla gardening" where people plant native species in public spaces themselves. I also thought of how tactical urbanism could be a method to emphasize ecology in urban spaces.
ReplyDeleteI really like your topic about how landscapes are represented in films, and I love the idea of a "neighborly" relationship with the surrounding landscape. I think combining this idea with plant blindness and the urban environment leads a really compelling question about how these topics affect and influence each other. I think this is a really impactful and successful synthesis of ideas!
I totally think that you are on a good track! You're developing very intelligent questions that definitely hold significance and depth! I'm super excited to see how your research progresses!