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SONIC KINESTHETIC FOREST

in collaboration with Eleni-Ira Panourgia
Our project explores sensory-driven research methodologies that fuel a creative process for the design of a forest landscape. We ask the question, how can landscape design research be advanced and enriched through the integration of sonic and kinesthetic methodologies? As a collaboration between a landscape designer, movement analyst and sound artist, we are working with a group of graduate students in landscape architecture on a parallel study of trees and bodies. The students will analyze different species of trees, focusing on their sonic identity and well as their kinesthetic qualities, using tools provided by the sound and movement specialists respectively. Using the same methods the students will analyze a selected person, who is positioned as the perceiver of a particular species of tree. Based on these analyses each student will design a tree-body intervention, which will provide the seeds for a more expansive urban forestry project on the Cal Poly Pomona University campus.

 
Graphic explorations by students in LA5121L landscape studio           Charcoal Drawing by Rennie Tang


POROSITY AND MOVEMENT

Through the modulation of various material conditions and immaterial sensory modes, porosity is a design strategy that operates at multiple scales to inform the transformative potential of the urban realm. Lisa Sandlos was invited to lead a movement workshop for a 3rd year undergraduate landscape design studio that explores how the moving body can offer new ways of engaging with porosity in the landscape. By introducing students to the principles of Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), Sandlos invited the students to explore the bodily and verbal movement vocabularies as new tools for landscape design.


  
                                                                                                                        Drawing by Ramon Napoles


SOMA-CITY RESEARCH RESIDENCY

Paris, France 8-15 December 2019
This one-week research residency hosted by Theatrum Mundi marks the launch of Soma-City. During the residency we explored Laban Movement Analysis (LMA as the groundwork for cultivating our nuanced understanding of the dynamic movement of the body in space. It serves as a lens through which rhythms, textures and auditory cues collected from the city are interpreted and mobilized, with the goal of generating somatically derived notational structures and mapping techniques.