Seminar presentation

Last week, I had to present my work again, but this time in front of the PhD students of the ECA, regardless of their discipline.  There were about 7 or 8 people from very different backgrounds (Moving images, Documentary, Landscape architecture, etc), who got into a very lively discussion after my presentation. The concept of space versus static images, the significance of symbols and colours, the value of aesthetic education to the aesthetic experience, etc. All these topics seem to provoke quite a lot of thinking, and I am really glad to see that for the most part, people tend to respond positively to my project.
Tomorrow starts the last week before the Christmas break. I still have lots of things to do, including presenting the schema that will explain my intentions.
What I presented last week included a first idea of the thesis I will try to defend, the core idea of my project: There is a universal aesthetic response to natural environment that is intimately linked with a positive physiological response to distinct organic elements.
Of course this is not exactly what I mean, and I still need to work on it.
My research questions also seem to be evolving. the last time I had a meeting with my supervisor, Peter Aspinall, we started talking about working with people with minor visual impairment. It would be indeed a good way to assess the importance of the visual aspect in the experience of outdoor space.
There are just so many different possibilities, steming from a single (but very large) idea. It is definitely not easy to chose which path to take. Also because fundings and opportunities for publication will depend on it.

Conference poster

I have been pretty busy this past week with organising the conference and preparing my own presentation.
Principally I did this:  The programme booklet of the conference, all made from scratch by the Programme team.

And this is what I presented:

Now, the whole conference is part of our assesment for the Research Methods Course I am taking along with all the first year research students at the ECA and the University of Edinburgh. Actually the poster I presented (and the paper I will have to write before january) doesn't have much to do with what I want to study for my PhD  anymore (but what do I want to study). It is more an excercise on writing and presenting, than a real scientific work. And that's good because after only two months, I don't think I could have produced anything better than that!

Unfortunately, the stress is not over. I only have two more weeks to go but they include a ton of emails to write, a presentation to make next wednesday and to finish all the things I said "will be done by december" ! Yes, that includes deciding on a topic.

Quote of the day

 Today, a guest:

"I found myself lying on the bank of a cart-road in the sand, with no prospect whatever but a small aspen tree against a blue sky. Languidly, but not idly, I began to draw it and as I drew; the languor passed away: the beautiful lines insisted on being traced, without weariness. More and more the beautiful they became, as each rose out of the rest, and took its place in the air. With wonder increasing every instant, I saw that they 'composed' themselves, by finer laws than any known to man. At last the tree was there and everything that I had thought before about trees, nowhere."

John Ruskin, Praeterita

Conference and abstract

        A few weeks ago, we had to write an abstract for a paper that we'll have to submit in January. This abstract has been reviewed by two of my fellow students, and my supervisor.  I am now happy to submit it to you online!
       I will present this paper (or, more exactly, the global content of the paper) at a conference next Tuesday. It is part of our assessment, for the Reserch Methods Course of the University, that we have to organise a conference all together to present our work.
       This year's title of the conf is:  

Kaleidoscopes and Cacophonies - Contemporary Research to be Seen, Felt and Heard

It will be in St Cecilia's Hall, from 9 to 16:30, on the 1st of December. All the details are here :  http://pgrm09.eca.ac.uk/




And here is my abstract:

         In the past fifty years, numerous researches have shown evidence that natural  elements and settings have a positive influence on human health and well-being (Ulrich, 1983; Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989). Such findings opened the way towards a new vision of landscape as a healing environment, and various possibilities both for landscape architects and medical practitioners, from the design and construction of healing gardens to the development of activities such as garden therapy. However, not every garden is a healing garden and even less a therapeutic one.

        Furthermore, different populations have different needs and call for different answers. What are then the possibilities opened by these recent researches? How can these theories be applied in the practice of landscape architecture?

        This literature-based essay attempts to provide a few general guidelines for landscape architects confronted with the problematic issue to “not only create a place but also facilitate a process” (Cooper Marcus and Barnes, 1999). It consists of two parts.

        The first part offers a brief overview of the main theories and researches concerning the positive effects of natural environments. These findings will then be analysed to discuss their applications in landscape design, stressing the different interpretations that exist depending on the theoretical approach adopted. This first part will conclude with an outline of the main design principles developed throughout the years relating to the construction of healing or therapeutic gardens.

        The second part is a presentation of how some of these fundamental theories can come to life in the case of therapeutic gardens, through an exploration of the work of Anne Ribes. French garden therapist in the hospital la Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris and creator of the “Belles Plantes” association, Mrs Ribes was the very first person in France to try and establish garden activities in hospitals. Through two examples of her experience with Alzheimer patients and autistic children, it will be demonstrated that here too, different interpretations and design principles exist depending on the needs of the population the garden is built for.

      As a whole, there are still many aspects of the relationship between people and their environment that are left unknown. Some potential research topics will be suggested that would be relevant to develop the understanding of the effects of natural environment on human health. However, this essay stresses the fact that the starting point for creating a garden should always be an informed and clear intention and mostimportantly a thorough analysis of the needs of the population it is built for.

COOPER MARCUS C. & BARNES M., 1999 – Healing gardens : Therapeutic benefits and design recommendations. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
KAPLAN R. & KAPLAN S., 1989 - The experience of nature: A psychological perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.
RIBES A., 2006 – Toucher la Terre: Jardiner avec ceux qui souffrent. Paris: Medicis.
STIGSDOTTER U.A. & GRAHN P., 2002 - What makes a garden a healing garden?. Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture (13) pp 60-69.
ULRICH R., 1983 - Aesthetic and affective response to natural environment. In I. Altman & J. Wohlwill (Eds.), Human behavior and environment: Vol. 6 (pp. 85–125). New York: Plenum Press.

Presentation and diagram

          Yesterday, I had my first presentation at the University. Every monday we have a seminar for all the PhD students in Landscape Architecture. I had to present my project, in whatever form it was and explain what I wanted to do with it. It went fairly well and I had a good feedback. I am aware that I am still swimming in ideas rather than developing a proper structure for the work I will eventually had to do.

All in all, I am glad that I had to face this challenge, to actually put my ideas down and explain them to people who will have an opinion on it.

          I am still working on a A4 diagram that could explain my study. So far I came up with these two (the pictures are snapshot of my presentation).

         The first diagram is a very short summary of what happens between a passive individual and the organic environment he is in, in terms of physiological reaction.

        The second one is what we see if we take a closer look at what happens inside, where the environmental perception provokes the physiological response. On one hand we have the evolutionnary theories of instinct, while on the other we have the cultural filters of religion and education. And somewhere in the middle lies the visual experience of nature, maybe both instinctive and acquired.

         I give myself until the end of december to come up with an actual diagram that could summarize this while explaining at the same time what I intend to do with it.

Word Cloud

www.wordle.net

Quote of the day and a short exploration of Jung's ideas on mental structure

About studying and describing the human mind:

"[We] have ... to describe and to explain a building the upper story of which was erected in the nineteenth century; the ground floor dates from the sixteenth century, and a careful examination of the masonry discloses the fact that it was reconstructed from a dwelling-tower of the eleventh century. In the cellar, we discover Roman foundation walls, and under the cellar a filled-in cave, in the floor of which stone tools are found, and remnants of glacial fauna in the layers below. That would be a sort of picture of our mental structure. We live in the upper story, and are only dimly aware that our lower story is somewhat old-fashioned. As to what lies beneath the superficial crust of the earth we remain quite unconscious." (Jung, 1928)

Following this metaphor, Jung goes on to explain that human mind is divided in three levels: consciousness, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is characterized as "more or less superficial"(1959) and

" made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness having been forgotten or repressed."

The collective unconscious is the most interesting, for Jung as well as for me. Indeed it contains informations and ideas that "have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity" (1959). These ideas and informations are then known as "archetypes", are shared by all individuals and are then similar to instincts.

Jung suggests (1959): " there is good reason for supposing that the archetypes are the unconscious images of the instincts themselves, in other words, that they are patterns of instinctual behaviour."

 According to Bourassa (1988), the collective unconscious thus described by Jung would be the locus of archetypes "which are images of the instincts coming into play in man's experience of landscape."

This vision is particularly interesting as it encompasses the evolutionnary assumptions (according to which we prefer organic environments for their potential resources and shelter that would satisfy our instinctive needs and therefore promote our survival), as well as the recognition that a part of our mental structure is strictly human, with our own activities and tastes and our ability to enjoy art.

 BOURASSA S.C, 1988 - Toward a Theory of Landscape Aesthetics. Landscape and Urban Planning: Vol.15 (pp 241-252).

JUNG C.G., 1928 - Contributions to Analytical Psychology. New York: Harcourt Brace.

JUNG C.G., 1959 - The Archetypes and the Collecitive Unconscious. New York: Pantheon..