Cycling through Dark Space: Apprehending the Landscape Otherwise

By investigating the experience of night-cycling, this paper redresses the overwhelming focus in mobility studies on the apprehension of landscape by daylight. Drawing on Matt’s cycling diary of his regular night rides through rural Bedfordshire, we explore the distinctive ways in which dark landscape is experienced. We discuss various effects: the shaping of perception by the beam of the head torch; an ongoing attunement to differing levels of light and dark; the affordances of the cycle and other equipment; enhanced awareness of the vital rhythms of landscape; and imaginaries stimulated by passage through darkness. We, thereby, aim to contribute to revaluing darkness

Spaces of Vernacular Creativity Reconsidered

Case No. 900303-CA Category No. 2 PETITION FOR REHEARING

Watery traces and absences: sensations and speculative histories of an ancient well and a carse landscape

This paper explores how mighty earth processes, aquatic agencies and human practical, political, religious, technological, commercial and environmental interventions have shaped and reshaped a now obscure Scottish holy well and the carse landscape to which it belongs. More specifically, I detail the historic pagan rituals, vigilant religious policing, romantic redesign and extensive terraforming that have informed the changing uses and symbolic associations of these watery realms, demonstrating how they testify to ceaselessly changing human-water relations. I explore how an awareness of particular historical events garnered from diverse texts can be supplemented with affective and sensory engagements with the non-human agencies, vestiges and absences of place. Together, they foster intimations and speculative imaginaries that conjure up speculative watery histories and conjectural futures

The affective and sensory potencies of urban stone: textures and colours, commemoration and geologic convivialities

In drawing out how human lives are always already inextricably entangled with the non-human elements of the world, this paper explores how stone, as a constituent of urban materiality, provokes a wealth of emotional, sensory and affective impacts in the experience of place. The paper discusses how the sonic, tactile and visual qualities of stone contribute to the sensory and affective experience of places, shape the symbolic meanings and affective impacts of diverse memorials, and trigger a powerful sense of geological conviviality

What color is this place?

This paper considers how a color-conscious approach to place might be explored. After focusing on the symbolic and affective qualities, of color, attention shifts to the persistent chromophobia that continues to influence western approaches to designing places and the distribution of the sensible. I investigate how contemporary design is shaped by heritage concerns, increased colored illumination and commodified color. The paper concludes with four innovative color designs that challenge our perceptual, affective and cultural engagements with place. I look at a vernacular creative practice, an architectural example, a playful interior environment and an artistic installation

Heritage assemblages, maintenance and futures: Stories of entanglement on Hampstead Heath, London

This paper investigates a heritage assemblage in which the most prominent elements are an old brick arch and a massive beech tree, entwined together on Hampstead Heath. In drawing upon the figure of the assemblage, I explore how the practices of maintenance and management must take account of numerous human and nonhuman agencies that shape the ongoing emergence of the arch-tree assemblage. These multiple interactions continue to emerge and vanish according to divergent temporalities. I argue that in resisting reified, reductive accounts, more complex, layered narratives about heritage objects might be compiled to detail their historical entanglements with multiple forces and agencies. An awareness of these complexities also informs contemporary maintenance practices and provoke diverse conjectures about their futures

Learning from Hampstead’s Pergola: walking and image-making at a spectacular Edwardian structure

This paper focuses on the extraordinary 245-metre-long Pergola on Hampstead Heath, designed by renowned landscape architect Thomas Mawson between 1905 and 1925, and funded by William Lever, Lord Leverhulme, owner of the property. The paper focuses on the Pergola’s potential as an exemplar for considering more creative, sensory and sociable provision for urban pedestrians After detailing its origins and key features, the discussion explores the shifting uses of the Pergola over the past hundred years as it has changed from private realm to public space, yet these changes have accentuated its enduring landscape architectural qualities as a structure for pleasurable walking. The paper particularly focuses how the structure has been adopted as a contemporary site for walking and as a venue for numerous photographic and filmic practices. I conclude by suggesting that these virtues might inform more assiduous pedestrians provision following the rise in walking during the COVID-19 pandemic