Papers by Shaun Rosier
Landscape Research Record , 2024
Urban aggregate quarries can be found in urban settlements worldwide, providing the material that... more Urban aggregate quarries can be found in urban settlements worldwide, providing the material that has fueled the explosive growth of urban living that characterizes the 20 th and 21 st centuries. The products of aggregate quarries are also significant contributors to climate change. Yet, the public tends to have a weak conception of the link between this and the materials of the built environment. Once positioned on the periphery, these sites of extraction tend to find themselves surrounded by the very development they contributed material, leading to tension and conflict between communities and quarry operators on the eventual reclamation of this post-mining landscape. As such, there are concerns by both industry and the public over what the future for the aggregate industry holds. New means and methods of designing for and with these current and post-mining landscapes are needed. This article introduces and conceptualizes a novel approach to aggregate quarry reclamation termed 'design-led progressive reclamation' (DLPR). In contrast to the two prevailing approaches to dealing with quarry landscapes, DLPR would embed landscape architectural design throughout the entire planning and extraction process. Designing for the reclaimed landscape would materialize through the activities and economics of extraction instead of occurring after the site's activities have ceased and the quarry operators have moved on. This approach would allow for greater community engagement and involvement, an expansion of design techniques and products for envisioning what post-mining landscapes can offer the city, and further opens a realm of discussion on how to design with landscapes that escape the dichotomy of nature and culture. Brought together, the benefits of this approach offer the means to change socio-cultural relationships to geologic material and how it is used through everyday landscape encounters.
Landscape designers have been fixated on the aesthetic category of the sublime ever since its eme... more Landscape designers have been fixated on the aesthetic category of the sublime ever since its emergence in the early 18th century, yet the concept has tended to escape the grasp of many of those who have grappled with its complexities. The capacity of the sublime to overwhelm a body is attractive to designers but tends to be seen as difficult to represent, and therefore design with. This thesis examines the sublime as an aesthetic experience that is fundamental to how landscape designers engage with their medium. It traces the relationship between the sublime and the discipline from the 18th-century to the dominant form of contemporary systems-based designing. The challenge of engaging with the pre-existing is central to landscape design practices yet has received little attention throughout the past two decades. Responding to this deferral from aesthetics by contemporary landscape architectural discourse and practice, the thesis unpacks the works of several designer-thinkers who establish a community of practice for exploring the aesthetic relationship to the pre-existing landscape. In order to operationalise the sublime, the thesis proposes a design model based on Gilles Deleuze’s notions of intensity, problematics, affects, and assemblage – one that is closer to the 18th century theorists – as a productive means through which designers both represent and adjust its operations. This model is explored through a practice-led design research project. The Horokiwi Quarry in Wellington, New Zealand acts as a testbed for developing and documenting design techniques suited to the sublime. This study seeks to give expression – re-present and experience – the affectual dimensions of sublime encounters discovered within the Horokiwi Quarry. In this, drawings and other forms of representation are required to explicate and later modify the spatio-temporal relations that give rise to the sublime.
Journal of Landscape Architecture, May 4, 2022
Quarries are inherently complex situations that offer a unique and timely challenge to contempora... more Quarries are inherently complex situations that offer a unique and timely challenge to contemporary landscape architects. Their inherently technical and operational nature tends to lead to an equally technical response by designers at the expense of engaging with the ethico-aesthetic potential of these confronting landscapes. Several designers and thinkers are responding to this problem through theorizing a revival of aesthetics that focuses on determining why certain landscape encounters occur, in order to use this as the basis to design from. While attention has been given to theorizing the role of aesthetics in a contemporary design setting, less so has been directed to the practices and techniques suited to designing with these forces or doings. This paper uses the Horokiwi Quarry in New Zealand as an example to explore how the aesthetic forces can be understood as emerging from concrete spatiotemporal relations between the body and landscape. In doing so, it argues that greater attention needs to be paid to the specific, not generic, causes of aesthetic encounters so that stronger, more sustainable relations with non-human entities can be developed.
The sublime has always been a part of Western landscape architectural discourse and design techni... more The sublime has always been a part of Western landscape architectural discourse and design technique. Both emerged in tandem as entwined forms of experimentation with the world in 18th and 19th-century Europe. Encounters with the sublime were subjects of intense interrogation through oration, prose, poetry, philosophical inquiry, and design itself. Even though landscape architecture is deeply enmeshed with the sublime and other aesthetic encounters, the overall understanding and engagement with these notions have become hindered by cliché, generalities, and a sociocultural trend toward the technoscientific. The reliance on Immanuel Kant’s theories of the ‘mathematical’ and ‘dynamic’ sublime has reduced the sublime to little more than Reason rescuing the subject from a failure in aesthetic synthesis or an expression of natural power. Here, aesthetic encounters are relegated to an interior subjectivity reinforced by Descartes’ dualism. This is problematic in the sense that it relegate...
Overall this article, serving as supplementary piece to a previously published work, operates rem... more Overall this article, serving as supplementary piece to a previously published work, operates remarkably efficient in communicating an inherently complex subject matter. Reading it alongside the original piece adds a valuable dimension, yet it also offers a valuable concise summation by itself if one was to read this piece in isolation as I did originally. The author does well to bring out the entwined relations of being, becoming, doing, and belonging that are so critical to Australian First Nations people. Many of these points resonate strongly with my own experiences from a landscape
Journal of Landscape Architecture, 2022
Quarries are inherently complex situations that offer a unique and timely challenge to contempora... more Quarries are inherently complex situations that offer a unique and timely challenge to contemporary landscape architects. Their technical and operational nature tends to lead to an equally technical response by designers at the expense of engaging with the ethico-aesthetic potential of these confronting landscapes. Several designers and thinkers are responding to this problem through theorizing a revival of aesthetics that focuses on determining why certain landscape encounters occur, in order to use this as the basis from which to design. While attention has been given to theorizing the role of aesthetics in a contemporary design setting, less so has been directed to the practices and techniques suited to designing with these forces or doings. This paper uses the Horokiwi Quarry in New Zealand as an example to explore how the aesthetic forces can be understood as emerging from concrete spatiotemporal relations between the body and landscape. In doing so, it argues that greater attention needs to be paid to the specific, not generic, causes of aesthetic encounters so that stronger, more sustainable relations with nonhuman entities can be developed.
Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture, 2020
The question of aesthetics has become significant to the task of engaging more-than-humanness and... more The question of aesthetics has become significant to the task of engaging more-than-humanness and of decentring humans. We put forward the contention thatfor many in landscape architecture, responding to this task probably involves an appeal to some sort of object-oriented ontology or other brand of speculative realism. In this piece we argue that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s notion of assemblage, and Deleuze’s aesthetic technique of expression are of significant value for this task and also deserve attention.
Landscape designers have been fixated on the aesthetic category of the sublime ever since its e... more Landscape designers have been fixated on the aesthetic category of the sublime ever since its emergence in the early 18th century, yet the con- cept has tended to escape the grasp of many of those who have grap- pled with its complexities. The capacity of the sublime to overwhelm a body is attractive to designers but tends to be seen as difficult to represent, and therefore design with. This thesis examines the sublime as an aesthetic experience that is fundamental to how landscape de- signers engage with their medium. It traces the relationship between the sublime and the discipline from the 18th-century to the dominant form of contemporary systems-based designing. The challenge of en- gaging with the pre-existing is central to landscape design practices yet has received little attention throughout the past two decades. Re- sponding to this deferral from aesthetics by contemporary landscape architectural discourse and practice, the thesis unpacks the works of several designer-thinkers who establish a community of practice for exploring the aesthetic relationship to the pre-existing landscape. In order to operationalise the sublime, the thesis proposes a design mod- el based on Gilles Deleuze’s notions of intensity, problematics, affects, and assemblage – one that is closer to the 18th century theorists – as a productive means through which designers both represent and adjust its operations. This model is explored through a practice-led design re- search project. The Horokiwi Quarry in Wellington, New Zealand acts as a testbed for developing and documenting design techniques suited to the sublime. This study seeks to give expression – re-present and ex- perience – the affectual dimensions of sublime encounters discovered within the Horokiwi Quarry. In this, drawings and other forms of repre- sentation are required to explicate and later modify the spatio-tempo- ral relations that give rise to the sublime.
Engaging Architectural Science: Meeting the Challenges of Higher Density: 52nd International Conference of the Architectural Science Association , 2018
The challenge of meeting the increasing residential demands in New Zealand cities has seen develo... more The challenge of meeting the increasing residential demands in New Zealand cities has seen development of urban centres in landscapes of industry, farmland, or natural spectacle. Quarry landscapes which were previously located close to the city are now found surrounded by intensification or even subject to it. Once quarrying ceases, these dramatic landscapes have the potential to play a major role in the public realm. This paper approaches this question of the public potential of deceased quarries by exploring the aesthetic notion of the sublime, specifically how to operationalise it into a productive and practical concept to designers. Contemporary approaches remain too general and mired in cliché to be connected with what creates these experiences. This research argues that the use of stronger representation and design technique can allow the sublime to be engaged with in a stronger manner. The notions of assemblage and affect enable the use of representation to connect to the experience of the sublime. This paper uses a real landscape example to describe a design led methodology of fieldwork, representation and design techniques oriented towards engaging with the sublime that affirms the primacy of sensation with design and research.
Thesis Chapters by Shaun Rosier
Landscape designers have been fixated on the aesthetic category of the sublime ever since its eme... more Landscape designers have been fixated on the aesthetic category of the sublime ever since its emergence in the early 18th century, yet the concept has tended to escape the grasp of many of those who have grappled with its complexities. The capacity of the sublime to overwhelm a body is attractive to designers but tends to be seen as difficult to represent, and therefore design with. This thesis examines the sublime as an aesthetic experience that is fundamental to how landscape designers engage with their medium. It traces the relationship between the sublime and the discipline from the 18th-century to the dominant form of contemporary systems-based designing. The challenge of engaging with the pre-existing is central to landscape design practices yet has received little attention throughout the past two decades. Responding to this deferral from aesthetics by contemporary landscape architectural discourse and practice, the thesis unpacks the works of several designer-thinkers who establish a community of practice for exploring the aesthetic relationship to the pre-existing landscape. In order to operationalise the sublime, the thesis proposes a design model based on Gilles Deleuze’s notions of intensity, problematics, affects, and assemblage – one that is closer to the 18th century theorists – as a productive means through which designers both represent and adjust its operations. This model is explored through a practice-led design research project. The Horokiwi Quarry in Wellington, New Zealand acts as a testbed for developing and documenting design techniques suited to the sublime. This study seeks to give expression – re-present and experience – the affectual dimensions of sublime encounters discovered within the Horokiwi Quarry. In this, drawings and other forms of representation are required to explicate and later modify the spatio-temporal relations that give rise to the sublime.
PhD Thesis by Shaun Rosier
https://openaccess.wgtn.ac.nz/articles/thesis/Operationalising_the_Sublime_Remediation_of_the_Hor... more https://openaccess.wgtn.ac.nz/articles/thesis/Operationalising_the_Sublime_Remediation_of_the_Horokiwi_Quarry/14095561
Landscape designers have been fixated on the aesthetic category of the sublime ever since its emergence in the early 18th century, yet the concept has tended to escape the grasp of many of those who have grappled with its complexities. The capacity of the sublime to overwhelm a body is attractive to designers but tends to be seen as difficult to represent, and therefore design with. This thesis examines the sublime as an aesthetic experience that is fundamental to how landscape designers engage with their medium. It traces the relationship between the sublime and the discipline from the 18th-century to the dominant form of contemporary systems-based designing. The challenge of engaging with the pre-existing is central to landscape design practices yet has received little attention throughout the past two decades. Responding to this deferral from aesthetics by contemporary landscape architectural discourse and practice, the thesis unpacks the works of several designer-thinkers who establish a community of practice for exploring the aesthetic relationship to the pre-existing landscape. In order to operationalise the sublime, the thesis proposes a design model based on Gilles Deleuze’s notions of intensity, problematics, affects, and assemblage – one that is closer to the 18th century theorists – as a productive means through which designers both represent and adjust its operations. This model is explored through a practice-led design research project. The Horokiwi Quarry in Wellington, New Zealand acts as a testbed for developing and documenting design techniques suited to the sublime. This study seeks to give expression – re-present and experience – the affectual dimensions of sublime encounters discovered within the Horokiwi Quarry. In this, drawings and other forms of representation are required to explicate and later modify the spatio-temporal relations that give rise to the sublime.
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Papers by Shaun Rosier
Thesis Chapters by Shaun Rosier
PhD Thesis by Shaun Rosier
Landscape designers have been fixated on the aesthetic category of the sublime ever since its emergence in the early 18th century, yet the concept has tended to escape the grasp of many of those who have grappled with its complexities. The capacity of the sublime to overwhelm a body is attractive to designers but tends to be seen as difficult to represent, and therefore design with. This thesis examines the sublime as an aesthetic experience that is fundamental to how landscape designers engage with their medium. It traces the relationship between the sublime and the discipline from the 18th-century to the dominant form of contemporary systems-based designing. The challenge of engaging with the pre-existing is central to landscape design practices yet has received little attention throughout the past two decades. Responding to this deferral from aesthetics by contemporary landscape architectural discourse and practice, the thesis unpacks the works of several designer-thinkers who establish a community of practice for exploring the aesthetic relationship to the pre-existing landscape. In order to operationalise the sublime, the thesis proposes a design model based on Gilles Deleuze’s notions of intensity, problematics, affects, and assemblage – one that is closer to the 18th century theorists – as a productive means through which designers both represent and adjust its operations. This model is explored through a practice-led design research project. The Horokiwi Quarry in Wellington, New Zealand acts as a testbed for developing and documenting design techniques suited to the sublime. This study seeks to give expression – re-present and experience – the affectual dimensions of sublime encounters discovered within the Horokiwi Quarry. In this, drawings and other forms of representation are required to explicate and later modify the spatio-temporal relations that give rise to the sublime.
Landscape designers have been fixated on the aesthetic category of the sublime ever since its emergence in the early 18th century, yet the concept has tended to escape the grasp of many of those who have grappled with its complexities. The capacity of the sublime to overwhelm a body is attractive to designers but tends to be seen as difficult to represent, and therefore design with. This thesis examines the sublime as an aesthetic experience that is fundamental to how landscape designers engage with their medium. It traces the relationship between the sublime and the discipline from the 18th-century to the dominant form of contemporary systems-based designing. The challenge of engaging with the pre-existing is central to landscape design practices yet has received little attention throughout the past two decades. Responding to this deferral from aesthetics by contemporary landscape architectural discourse and practice, the thesis unpacks the works of several designer-thinkers who establish a community of practice for exploring the aesthetic relationship to the pre-existing landscape. In order to operationalise the sublime, the thesis proposes a design model based on Gilles Deleuze’s notions of intensity, problematics, affects, and assemblage – one that is closer to the 18th century theorists – as a productive means through which designers both represent and adjust its operations. This model is explored through a practice-led design research project. The Horokiwi Quarry in Wellington, New Zealand acts as a testbed for developing and documenting design techniques suited to the sublime. This study seeks to give expression – re-present and experience – the affectual dimensions of sublime encounters discovered within the Horokiwi Quarry. In this, drawings and other forms of representation are required to explicate and later modify the spatio-temporal relations that give rise to the sublime.