1st Edition

Fieldwork in Landscape Architecture Methods, Actions, Tools

By Thomas Oles, Paula Horrigan Copyright 2025
312 Pages 129 Color Illustrations
by Routledge

312 Pages 129 Color Illustrations
by Routledge

312 Pages 129 Color Illustrations
by Routledge

Fieldwork in Landscape Architecture: Methods, Actions, Tools addresses the initial encounters between landscape designer and landscape site, an encounter that determines the entire course of the design process. The book offers a four-part framework (‘what you seek,’ ‘what you carry,’ ‘how you act,’ and ‘what you leave behind’) for learning and practicing fieldwork as a landscape design skill,... Read more

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: What You Seek

Landscapes of Sound

Brenda Brown

Cultural Excavation

Noémie Despland-Lichtert and Brendan Shea

The Traveling Transect

Lisa Diedrich and Gini Lee

Bridges and Animal Affection

Yibo Fan

Reconnaissance in the Wild

Katy Foley

Fieldwalking the City

Aroussiak Gabrielian and Alison B. Hirsch

Phenological Investigations

David Hill

Living Islands in an Expired Landscape

Simon Kilbane

Experiencing Landscape, Making Sense

Joern Langhorst

Gestalt of the West

Caroline Lavoie

Chiaroscuro in the Public Realm

Suzanne Mathew

Design Fieldwork Experiments

Brett Milligan

Forsaken Ground

Elisabeth ‘Lisa’ Orr

Source and Surface

Joseph Ragsdale

Sense of Place

Deni Ruggeri

Digging In

Amy Whitesides

Barrenland Botany

Mary Anne Young

 

Chapter 2: What You Carry

Second Site

Alex J. Albans

Investigative Seeking

Kate Bolton Ricketson

Reading Landscapes in Time

Brenda Brown

Rise Over Run

Christine Byl

The Carrito

David de la Peña

Site Literacy

Elen Deming

Reading the Parc des Buttes Chaumont

Ann E. Komara

Constructing a Design Imagination

Phoebe Lickwar

Landscape as Storyboard

Evan Mather

La Botte

Mary Pat McGuire

Movement and Drone Surveying

Brett Milligan

Field Impressions

Maura Rockcastle

Mission Landscape Visually Explored

Michael Sánchez

Dronescapes

Elinor Scarth and Tiago Torres Campos

Fields of Invisibility

Jillian Walliss and Wendy Walls

         

Chapter 3: How You Act

Ethnography and Design in the Garden

David de la Peña

Ecological Landscape Analogues

Nick Assad, Todd Fell, Steve Hill, Mary Anne Young

Site Analysis

Arica Duhrkoop-Galas

Dynamic Viewing

Valerie Friedmann and Molly Hendry

Things Unfold

Kona Gray

Camping and Hypnagogia

Catherine Page Harris

Creative Visualization

Jon Hunt

Sensing Place

Sara Jacobs

Obsession

Peter Jodaitis

Discovering the Field

Paul Kelsch

Walking and Drawing

Cat Soergel Marshall

Learning to See

Patrick A. Miller

Acting Out of Turn

Elinor Scarth and Etienne Haller

Breaking Path

Henrik Schultz

The Grassroots View

Zeinab Tag-Eldeen

Embodied Mapping

Rennie Tang

Move Like an Animal

Judith Wasserman

Finding the Flows

Barbara Wilks

 

Chapter 4: What You Leave Behind

On Walking

Roberley Bell

Opportunism at Buffalo’s ‘Silo City’

Sean Burkholder and Jason Kentner

From Fieldwork to Theory Work

Daniel Coombes

Instant Gardens

Miguel Costa

Landscape Visions in the Field

Enrica Dall’Ara

Unearthing Hardberger Park

David Hill

Site Omaha

Cindi Hron

Drawing a Length of Ground

Katherine Jenkins

Weed Aesthetics

Katie Kingery-Page

The World Is Not Flat

Mark Klopfer

In the Frame

Caroline Lavoie

On-site Drawing

Cat Soergel Marshall

From Full-Scale to Site Drawing

Joseph Ragsdale

Fictional Landscapes

Blythe Yost

 

About the Contributors

Figure Credits

Biography

Thomas Oles is a landscape architect, educator, and author. He has taught at The Amsterdam University of the Arts, Cornell University, the University of Edinburgh, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

Paula Horrigan is Professor Emerita of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University. She is a licensed landscape architect in New York State and now resides in the high desert of northern Arizona.

"Fieldwork in Landscape Architecture is well-researched, deep in both theory and practical approaches, and yet highly enjoyable to read given its strong foundations and exemplary case-studies. Largely free of jargon and emphasizing the voices of designers and design educators, the book is a rare achievement of simultaneous clarity and expanded vocabulary in the discourse. Any designer interested in expanding their understanding of their own work in the field will find this book rewarding and handy."

Simon Bussiere, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Ecological Design, University of Hawai'i, USA

"Fieldwork in Landscape Architecture demystifies the most important and most personal practices of landscape architecture. The book is a compendium of approaches that inspire a practitioner, hard at work at her desk, to return to the site. It reminds us of the ever-present potential of fieldwork to generate singular and site-specific ideas with ease and directness. While the volume shares tools particular to the trade of landscape architecture, there is a universality about its fundamental guidance: to be in the world with curiosity, questions, and possibly a clinometer to discover the distinct voice of our own intuition."

Amy Seek, Landscape Architect, New York, USA

Why hasn’t this been done before! The diverse voices contained in this work explore how fieldwork is design work at a critical moment in the process—the first encounter with sites and situations. The methods gathered here, from sketching to drone mapping, tactile inventories, sensory transects, deep listening, and more, engage the phenomenal depth and complexity of landscape. Fieldwork in Landscape Architecture is a guide and open invitation for discovery and innovation as each of us goes out into the field. I want my students in studio to have it right now.

Matthew Potteiger, Professor of Landscape Architecture, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, USA