Yogic!
Research as a Way of Designing
Reading Landscape Through People, Place, and Time.
People
Residents, Communities, Ways of Living, Cultural Memory
Place
Landscape, Habitats, Paths, Settlements, Infrastructure
Time
History, Seasons, Transformation, Memory, the Future
01. INTRO
For me, research is not separate from design. It is the way I begin to understand a place before deciding how it should change. In other words, research is a process I genuinely enjoy — the process of observing, analysing, and understanding a place before translating that understanding into design.
I observe how people live, move, remember, and adapt within a landscape; I examine the environmental, cultural, and spatial relationships that shape everyday life; and I translate these observations into maps, sections, drawings, and spatial narratives.
Over time, this way of working has evolved across different landscapes and scales:
- from habitat and trail studies in Taiwan,
- to GIS-based spatial analysis in Kinmen and Krk,
- and later to lived landscapes in the Arctic.
I see this evolving approach as part of my Design DNA
- understanding what already exists before proposing what should come next.
02. Research Question
" How can we understand a place before we decide how to change it? "
What already exists?
- What ecological, cultural, spatial, and historical relationships already shape a place?
How do people live within it?
- How do people move, inhabit, remember, adapt to, and give meaning to their everyday environments?
What can we learn from these relationships?
- How can observation, fieldwork, mapping, and spatial representation reveal relationships that may otherwise remain invisible?
How can understanding become design?
- How can these observations and relationships inform spatial decisions that are responsive to both place and people?
03. My Approach
" Reading Landscape Through People, Place, and Time "
I begin by reading a place through three interconnected dimensions: People, Place, and Time.
People allows me to understand how residents and communities live, move, remember, and adapt within their environments.
Place allows me to examine the physical, ecological, cultural, and infrastructural conditions that shape these everyday relationships.
Time allows me to trace how landscapes change through history, seasons, memory, and ongoing transformation.
Rather than looking at these dimensions separately, I see them as interconnected layers of a living landscape. Their relationships reveal how a place works, how it is experienced, and how it continues to change.
FROM OBSERVATION TO DESIGN
From Reading to Spatial Understanding
I do not begin with a design solution. I begin with observation.
Through fieldwork, conversations, mapping, spatial analysis, and drawing, I collect and organise different forms of knowledge about a place.
These methods allow me to move between different scales — from territorial patterns to everyday experiences, from environmental systems to individual movements, and from historical traces to future possibilities.
I then translate these observations into spatial representations, such as maps, sections, diagrams, drawings, and narratives.
For me, representation is not only a way of communicating a design. It is also a way of thinking and understanding
SITE DNA
People · Place · Time
These three dimensions form the foundation of my Design DNA.
I believe that a landscape cannot be fully understood through physical space alone. It is shaped by the people who inhabit it, the places and systems that support everyday life, and the layers of time embedded within it.
By reading these relationships together, I try to understand not only what a place is, but also how it is lived, how it has evolved, and what it could become. Together, People, Place, and Time create a relational understanding of landscape, which becomes the starting point for design.
AN EVOLVING PRACTICE
From Early Ecological Studies to Arctic Mobility
My research approach has not emerged from a single project. It has evolved through years of working across different landscapes, scales, and contexts.
From ecological and habitat studies, to trails and cultural landscapes, to GIS-based spatial analysis and lived landscapes in the Arctic, each project has added another layer to the way I understand and work with place.
Rather than following a fixed methodology, I see this as an evolving way of working — continuously shaped by the places, people, and questions I encounter.
