Where to begin...

Have you ever been so excited to start something and equally terrified of it?

That's how I feel about the thesis process, but the time is now, so here we go.

I've known for about 4 years that I wanted to go to grad school. And I've known for about 7 years that I wanted to study landscape architecture. The human experience of the natural and built environment has always interested me, and I have always sensed that our surroundings have a profound, but usually subconscious, ability to affect us. But how does our environment affect us? How can we amplify this affect and bring it into consciousness? Do we feel more aware in some places and not in others? Can our surroundings change the way we think or feel about the land? What knowledge can we glean from the physical world?

There are a countless explorations into the psychology our environments, and while this work is very interesting to me, as a design student I am choosing to focus on architectural interventions on the land to create an affective experience. Through what medium the landscape can tell you about itself? Can we reveal something about the land through design? Can we create a visible, physical, and intellectual connection between societies and the ecosystems that support them?

A huge obstacle thus far has been focusing and editing my questions and ideas. In an effort to narrow the topic I have begun researching a design movement coined eco-revelatory design.

More to come on this topic and site selection...