The Vernacular behind Dynamic Design

The vernacular behind dynamic design.

Angus Durkin

When Heidegger wrote “place is the locale of the truth of being”, he was highlighting the importance of the environment as an armature for ‘human authenticity’; and was also expressing his concern for the feeling of ‘rootlessness’ as a result of the constructive materialistic ideas that stemmed from modernity.

In contemporary urban society the essential closeness between humans and nature is further being dissolved with the continual development of the virtual world, here; space and place are no longer important aspects of social interaction. The digital dimension is composed of a restless flow of binary identities in a constant flux or ‘rootlessness’, where the truth of the ‘self’ is indistinguishable from the data of the ‘other’.

Thus, never has there been a more important time for the ‘real world’ to be built on authenticity and the truth of place. Unfortunately the un-controllable sprawling suburban organism is built in a highly manufactured and modulated language; one that speaks only of regularity and bears no homage to a landscapes history.

This research aims to understand how the vernacular language of both the natural and the built can be understood as a necessary ‘fabric’, and through a phenomenological design approach, the language can be gathered, translated, invented and projected onto the landscape with tangible spatial outcomes.

A critical review of the innovative design methods employed by Desvigne and Dalnoky during production of authentic European landscape designs, will inform a new or perhaps appropriated approach for unearthing the unique cultural and ecological meanings of the Australian landscape.
This analytical design approach will assist in producing landscape designs that combine a strong sense of identity with dynamic places that have the potential to transform and accommodate for future programmes.

Keywords: Fabric, Vernacular, Place, Meaning.