Design guidelines 5.1 PROJECTIVE DESIGN ALTERNATIVES The previous chapter is characterized by abstraction; it inducts ideas and synthesizes facts into an understandable scheme (an aesthetic framework for melancholic contemplation). This chapter is characterized by its opposite: specification, because it analyses and breaks down general ideas into actual stuff (Hesse, 1968). It then pulls the stuff together and organizes it meaningfully for a spatial intervention in honour of the retreating glacier. The research question it intends to answer alludes to this specification: How do site characteristics aid in the translation of the aesthetic framework into site-specific design guidelines for Haupapa/Tasman Glacier site in Aoraki/ Mt. Cook National Park?
I introduced “projective design alternatives” in the methods section of Chapter 1 and Section 4.6.2. It is a form of “research through design” in which potential design solutions are sketched and presented to interviewees to provide feedback, generate ideas from, and provide site knowledge (Deming & Swaffield, 2011; Lenzholzer et al., 2013). This chapter explains how I developed and applied the design alternatives. They were based on the hypothesis that people do experience environmental melancholia and the argument that aesthetics are performative. However, I had not seen the site, spoken to users, nor had I consolidated the ideas for the aesthetics of melancholy and contemplation. The alternatives were therefore developed instinctually, and based on slightly different parametres to what I found later to be important. But, they still produced valuable results, perhaps gave me more freedom while sketching, and the outcomes aligned surprisingly well to the desire to create a space for melancholic contemplation. If the sketches had been more informed, however, I might have received more nuanced feedback.
In this chapter, I explain the results from the second half of the interviews from Chapter 3. I describe the process of employing design alternatives to produce design recommendations and inform the subsequent site analysis. I then analyse the site and assess the site’s opportunities and challenges for reaching the three mental states. Based on design recommendations, the site analysis, and the assessment, I develop guideline(s) for each of the aesthetic properties of the framework. I will integrate these into an overarching design approach and a site-specific design response in Chapter 6.
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