A bench dusty with pollen, and not from under-use. That's where I am -- the start of my pre-thesis for my masters of landscape architecture degree at RISD.
The path before me can be certainly viewed as overgrown -- but from my perspective, that's an exciting proposition. It means that there are so many potential ideas growing through, separately and on top of each other. It'll be up to me, and my yet-to-be-decided thesis panel to let that grow, trim it, or maintain it.
I expect I'll be using this blog as a tool to collect and organize multiple medias and inputs in a cohesive format. Somehow.
Our over-the-summer assignment includes looking at two past studio projects and trying to find a.. framework, perhaps, or a concept that I may be consciously (or not) be attempting to investigate through my work. There's more to it than that -- we have a generous helping of questions that the department provided to help us on this task. I'll list those questions soon.
In the meantime, I've been itching to get to some reading. To that end, I've begun reading The Consolations of Philosophy, by Alain de Botton. For some time now I've been trying to use metacognition in my design process (not necessarily consciously) with rather poor results so I'm thinking that reading about the questioning of one's logic could help to further define the thinking behind my work. A passing glance at my work results in the work being based on a logic (/system) and either involving the use of repetition or multiciplity. Perhaps the following paragraph from Botton is a better illustration of where I am in my thinking:
...To point out the peculiarity of their passivity, Socrates compared living without thinking systemtically to practising an activity like pottery or shoemaking without following or even knowing of technical procedures. One would never imagine that a good pot or shoe could result from intuition alone; why then assume that the more complex task of directing one's life could be undertaken without any sustained reflection on premises or goals? (page 21)