Troff Olivier

Shared landscape cultures and the design of interaction

Under the supervision of James Auger, designer-researcher, and Claire Brunet, philosophy of design. Since septembre 2020.

Shared landscape cultures and the design of interaction

Abstract

In the context of environmental emergency, the landscape is facing complexity. The exponential and even erratic body of information available about it, as well as the increasingly advanced degradation of many living environments, lead to a problem for conducting a structured analysis that could gather, all at once, order and disorder, the past, the present and the near future, uncertainty and contradiction. Knowledge about landscape is then torn into a multitude of dimensions of reality, each one providing knowledge and experiences that support its understanding in a deeper, but rarely in a more discerning way. It would seem urgent to consider other methods leading to a more focused understanding of our living environments. Such a perspective would contribute to the reactivation of a common sense at the local level and to a better dialogue between the different sources of knowledge. Accustomed to work at the intersection of various disciplinary fields, managing connections between heterogeneous knowledges, design seems to be the ideal discipline to deal with landscape mediation. The topic of popular environmental cultures would deal with interaction to open up the look, as well as to focus it to another scale of the landscape: the ground. It also means to think of it differently, in relation so that knowledge must be re-arranged to understand this new situation. The soil seems to be an appropriate object of study insofar it may open up to an amplified understanding of the discrete but nonetheless prevalent dimensions of time and space existing in landscape. The approach takes the form of a collective and in situ observation laboratory called observing · drawing · discussing around our common soils. It is meant to be conducted in the context of man-altered soils landscapes having a strong cultural background. The project is developed around the cam·obs; a photographic chamber used for surveying soils - thereby exhuming an optical principle of vision of the landscape of the Renaissance: the camera obscura. Methods for its activation and events that mean to gather and make the participants discuss the newly-arranged knowledge are central in that process. The object is designed to adapt the value systems of the stakeholders and the purposes are relational.


Supervisor
AUGER James - CRD/Centre de recherche en design - École doctorale 578/Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société - Université Paris-Saclay - supervision at 50%.
Co-supervisor
LEVEBRE Anne - CRD/Centre de recherche en design - École doctorale 578/Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société - Université Paris-Saclay - supervision at 50%.

Method and financing: Thesis in research-project, in 3 years, financed by the École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay via a specific normalien doctoral contract (CDSN).
registration : septembre 2020
thesis defense : automne 2023

Olivier Troff : Academic CV