initial fieldwork

Initial fieldwork can be the most exhilarating and entertaining stretch of an investigation. Dodging pedestrians, ducking through doorways, and struggling to keep all the dimensions straight in a gusty wind is the only way to haptically absorb the built environment. But more than fieldwork’s physical and mental acrobatics, it is the excuse to interact with inhabitants that I find the most profoundly rewarding. A friendly smile and a shoddily translated “architecture student” rarely fails to garner bemusement and after a few self-effacing hand signals one can find oneself on a tour of the roof or settling down at the dinner table. Curiosity is a reciprocal sentiment and a dynamite conversation starter.

However, the revelry of experience must be balanced in a deliberate dialectic of intense interaction and reflective disengagement. An atmospheric perspective sketch is useless without a careful cross-section, and a day’s hike doesn’t reach its potential until it is traced on a map. GoogleEarth and a visit to the nearest library or archive can mean as much to fieldwork as days’ worth of pacing and tape-measuring. It is essential that a variety of strategies utilizing available techniques (and improvising when they’re not available) be applied to the subject of study as systemically and systematically as possible.