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Abstract

University students in landscape architecture need to mobilize a range of resources in their design trajectories in order to resolve their designs. Often design education settings are influenced by design traditions of the global north, and thus may favour particular ways of knowing. This article aims to contribute to a multimodal pedagogy for diversity exploring the ways in which diverse students mobilize resources to move between spatial, verbal and visual modes in a landscape architectural design trajectory. It specifically traces the resources that one student brings to her learning environment in a university in South Africa, and identifies the experiential, social, semiotic, interactive and pedagogical resources she deploys. The authors demonstrate how these resources shape and prompt the student’s meaning-making processes, and how she mobilizes these resources to move her design trajectory forward. They do this by building on Kress and Van Leeuwen’s Reading Images (2006) model of visual grammar, adapted for three-dimensional space, and Kress’s notions of design in Multimodality (2010). The concept of resemiotization is key here to recognizing and understanding the meaning-making potential of modes. The authors argue that the affordances of different modes prompt resemiotization of resources at different times in the design trajectory, moving between material expression and nonmaterial (re)conceptualization. The processes of resemiotization can thus generate emergent meanings and transform them within the student’s landscape design trajectories. This approach to pedagogy can valorize the agency, identity, ways of knowing and resourcefulness of diverse meaning-makers.

Keywords

design education diversity landscape architecture multimodal pedagogies resemiotization student resources

Introduction

There is substantial research into the way texts and meanings change through various phases of meaning-making processes (Bezemer and Kress, 2016; Iedema, 2003; Kell, 2015; Kress, 2014; Newfield, 2014). Our article draws on this body of research to understand processes of resemiotization, particularly how students mobilize resources to move forward in design trajectories within landscape architectural education. In particular, we investigate how one student mobilizes resources to move between spatial, visual and verbal modes in a landscape architectural design trajectory. The concept of ‘resemiotization’ provides a useful lens for analysing how students deploy different resources in different modes and for tracing changes in meaning across the students’ meaning-making trajectories. Iedema (2003: 33) defines ‘resemiotization’ as ‘how meaning making shifts from context to context, from practice to practice, or from one stage of a practice to the next’. Our analysis explores the types of resources and moments that initiate resemiotization processes within design trajectories and investigates the relationship between material and non-material prompts. In addition, we employ Kress’s (2014) notion of re-(inner) conceptualization in identifying how students take up prompts to move forward in their design trajectories.

Both multimodality and social semiotics connect in meaningful ways to landscape architectural theory, practice and education. ‘Landscape’ is described by Bruns et al. (2017: 15) as a triad of: the human and non-human material phenomena that make up the structure or fabric of the landscape; the actions or processes that take place in the landscape; and our perceptions of landscape. Landscape architecture is the practice of meaning-making within the landscape for experiential, environmental and socio-cultural purposes. The physical manipulation of the landscape is usually realized by construction specialists. The contemporary profession of landscape architecture tends to make meaning by translating the landscape into the visual mode through the use of drawings and models (Corner, 1992). This engagement in the visual model is more than representative or illustrative; the act of drawing is an important component in the generation and formation of design ideas (Corner, 1992: 244; Moore, 2010; Schön, 1987; Van Dooren et al., 2013). This notion is captured in the Italian term ‘disegno’ for ‘drawing’ or ‘design’, meaning both the making of a drawing and the making of an idea (Hill, 2016). Because landscape architectural meaning-making processes involve the consideration of the complex web of the physical, environmental and socio-cultural landscape, particularly in the context of landscape architectural education, the process of developing a response to a prompt takes some time and may often require several cycles of refinement. As a result, visual texts produced in the design process seldom exist in isolation and are usually linked to iterations of texts in an ongoing design trajectory (Corner, 1999). With each iteration, the meaning-maker needs to mobilize a range of resources to move the design trajectory forward.

In South Africa, landscape architecture education has inherited a design studio model, largely influenced by the global north. This influence is somewhat problematic because it could privilege particular ways of meaning-making and could (even unintentionally) silence diverse perspectives as dominant design practices may be implicitly perpetuated. Some design educators in South Africa are thus working towards developing pedagogies that embrace diversity. We have drawn on a multimodal social semiotic approach to design a pedagogy of ‘recognition’ that focuses on valorizing the agency, identity, ways of knowing and resourcefulness of diverse meaning-makers (cf Price and Archer 2021).

The case study around which this research revolves is a 3D spatial model project in a first-year design studio subject in a Diploma in Landscape Architecture in South Africa. The project brief comprises two parts. The first part prompts students to choose a narrative and to illustrate it graphically using any medium or technique; the second part requires students to represent their narrative abstractly in a three-dimensional model. This is the first time in their studies that students are engaging in a three-dimensional design project. This project is intentionally abstract and focuses on the manipulation of resources into 3D spatial experiences. In reviewing the data collected, one spatial model trajectory, belonging to a student (called Nadine here), stood out in terms of comprehensive research documentation of her design trajectory. Her work offered an opportunity to analyse in depth how resources are deployed in order to move between modes and iterations of the design.

Resemiotization of resources: a multimodal social semiotic approach to landscape architecture

Using a multimodal social semiotic approach, we outline the student’s design trajectory in terms of the relationship between visual ‘texts’ and ‘strips’ (Kell, 2015). We build on Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) model of visual grammar by adapting this for three-dimensional space. Kress and Van Leeuwen’s descriptive framework provides a means to analyse visual texts through Halliday’s (1978) categories of meaning or ‘metafunctions’: ideational, interpersonal and textual. Our analytical framework draws on Halliday’s (1978) three metafunctions; the subsequent developments by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) on the ‘grammar of visual design’; the work of Ravelli and McMurtrie (2016) and Stenglin (2004, 2008) on the ‘grammar’ of three-dimensional space; and relevant visual design and space-making theories of practitioners such as Ching (2015) and Dee (2013). The framework poses a set of questions for analysing the ways landscape architectural texts could mean. It allows for the analysis of the meaning potentials of students’ graphic narratives, their physical three-dimensional models and the model-as-projection: the imagined space that would be installed if the project were to reach construction phase.

Social semiotics explores meaning making as socially situated. We see semiotic resources as socially-situated signifiers, objects or actions used to make meaning (Jewitt, 2014; Van Leeuwen, 2005: 5), including material, social and cultural resources (Kress, 2010). In the process of meaning-making, the designer draws on a range of available resources. Some resources may be directly realized in the design, for example use of particular material resources, or non-material resources that affect the composition of elements in the design. Part of this research has been to identify the different kinds of resources that shape the process of meaning-making. In addition to material, cultural and social resources, Kress (2010, 2014) also mentions theoretical resources (such as grammar in writing, 2010: 7), abstract resources, graphic resources (in writing, such as font or colour, 2010: 78) and conceptual resources (such as ‘mental’ or ‘cognitive’, 2010: 77) as well as semiotic resources (2010: 174) in meaning-making. The students described in this landscape architectural course have at times also drawn on experiential, pedagogic or interactive resources. Foregrounding the use of resources shifts the focus to the role of the meaning-maker, their interest and choices in the meaning-making process (Jewitt, 2014: 24). Bezemer and Kress (2016: 41) suggest that ‘each and every sign and sign complex tells us something about how a sign-maker knows and sees the world at the time of the production of the sign.’ The analysis of the different meanings that have been realized in the text points to some of the resources that shaped the meaning-maker’s design processes.

The term ‘resemiotization’ can be understood in relation to overlapping concepts such as transformation and transduction (Kress, 1997, 2010) and the ‘transmodal moment’ (Newfield, 2014). Kress defines ‘transformation’ as changes in meaning within the same mode, and ‘transduction’ as changes in meaning from one mode to another (Kress, 2010: 43). Newfield (2013: 147) describes the ‘transmodal moment’ in educational contexts as liberating moments where new meanings are reconstructed into multiple modes. The changes of meanings in the landscape architectural meaning-making trajectory of this study occur within multimodal ensembles, between different modes (transduction or transmodal) or within the same mode (transformation). We choose to use the term ‘resemiotization’ because of its focus on changes in meanings in new settings, regardless of mode. This focus enables tracking both material and conceptual changes to texts as they ‘punctuate’ (Kress, 2010) students’ design trajectories.

Resemiotization is a useful concept in analysing design trajectories for a number of reasons. Firstly, it allows for understanding how design is a process of experimentation, or trial-and-error (Van Dooren et al., 2013: 61) or where the designer engages in a sequence of hypothetical moves exploring the potential effects of particular actions. The design process is iterative: suitable designs are often not generated after the first attempt as alternative ideas need to be generated and tested (Van Dooren et al., 2013: 61). Design therefore, involves changes in ideas as well as changes in representations of these ideas, which are evaluated and then further developed. Secondly, the notion of resemiotization helps in comprehending intertextuality in the design process: which meanings are selected, for what reasons and how are they recontextualized (Iedema, 2003: 40). Thirdly, the dynamic quality of the landscape architectural design process involves numerous shifts in mode throughout the trajectory as the imagined three-dimensional design is re-presented as various drawings, models and verbal and gestural explanations. Fourthly, the concept of resemiotization could provide insights into how social dynamics may shape meaning-making, or how different resources are used in different social settings.

Following the path of textual trajectories provides a useful material and concrete way into analysing social practices extending in time and space which can otherwise appear abstract, making visible processes which can otherwise easily become invisible. (Tusting, 2017)

Particularly in diverse education settings, resemiotization is key to recognizing and understanding the meaning-making potential of particular modes and their affordances: how the students’ movement between modes unfolds; what particular semiotic resources are used (or not used) at certain times; and what resources are carried forward in their design trajectory. As Kell (2015) demonstrates, the concept of resemiotization holds potential for analysing semiotic resources beyond a ‘snapshot’ in time and to trace the way meaning-makers mobilize their design trajectories through space and time.

The landscape architectural design trajectory

The key phases and components within the meaning-making trajectory of the landscape architectural design process are labelled 1–5 in Figure 1. Design is always in response to a prompt (Figure 1: 1). Kress (2014) describes an ‘inner conception’ that a meaning-maker develops in response to a prompt. This inner conception may remain internal and may not be realized. If the designer chooses to engage in a meaning-making process, this will involve the transformation of resources (Figure 1: 2), consciously and unconsciously selected from a range of resources available at the moment of meaning-making. The result of this design process is a text (Figure 1: 3). The design trajectory (Figure 1: 4) includes moments of fixing texts, which Kress (2010: 121) describes as ‘punctuations’ in the ‘flow of semiosis’. These texts are moments of ‘relative stasis and stability in ongoing transmodal processes of meaning-making’ (Newfield, 2014: 103).

Figure 1.

Diagram showing texts as punctuations within a landscape architectural design trajectory.

Particularly in the context of landscape architectural education, these texts are presented in ‘crits’. The ‘crit’ is an informal review with peers or lecturers and is a social practice found in many settings in design education. Teachers in a studio crit may engage in several ways with the student’s presentation and text, such as adding their own analysis of the text, asking questions for clarification and making suggestions for changes (Goldschmidt et al., 2010: 287). Through the dialogue between the designer and reviewer there is an unfolding co-construction of meaning. In this study, crits can be thought of as interactive and tacit pedagogical resources (Belluigi, 2016: 26) that students can draw from in subsequent iterations of texts produced in their design trajectories. The semiotic processes between one text and the next is what Kell (2015: 438) terms a ‘strip’ (see Figure 1: 5): ‘a series of events within the same participant framework’. Kell’s model provides a way of examining what is projected from one strip to another and is useful for investigating how meaning-makers mobilize resources to move their trajectories forward along a particular design direction.

Figure 2 describes the trajectory of Nadine’s spatial model project from initial brief and includes the texts she produces: her graphic narrative, sketches and three models. These texts, presented in crit sessions as multimodal ensembles, are ‘punctuations of semiosis’ (Kress, 2010: 120) that provide insight into the types of resources she brings to her learning environment. Drawing from Kell’s (2015) methodology, we trace the movement of these resources as they are mobilized and projected into subsequent strips of the meaning-making trajectory. Highlighting the moments of resemiotization in Nadine’s project shows the potential for a multimodal learning environment to enable multiple views, transformations of meaning and the ways in which resources are realized. A multimodal approach to pedagogy can promote not only material and epistemological access to education, but also the understanding of the importance of access to diverse semiotic resources and practices within the classroom (Archer and Newfield, 2014: 4).

Figure 2.

Nadine’s design trajectory.

Strip 1: Project brief to graphic narrative

The intention of the spatial model project is for students to explore the ways that space can be manipulated to convey meaning (to a user). The students’ work is assessed according to how the projected spatial experience of their model is related to their initial narrative. In this section, we identify some of the resources that Nadine has drawn on in the making of her graphic narrative. She begins her verbal narrative with the phrase ‘So in the beginning there was earth’ (perhaps signalling a biblical discourse). She continues to explain that her narrative is about how people ‘were placed on the earth to actually look after it and to live in one with the earth and nature’ but we ‘got destructive and greedy . . . and we started fighting the earth.’ In her narrative, Nadine calls for people to ‘find the grey area, which is compromise, and live with nature . . . instead of fighting nature we need to compromise and find an in between.’ Nadine’s choice of narrative is prompted largely by her ‘interest’ (Kress, 2010), which is shaped by experiential and social resources. Her family home is located near a local nature reserve and wetland. In addition to exposure to an abundance of natural diversity, Nadine has also witnessed the removal of a forest near her home and the subsequent degradation of the environment. She mentions that significant people in her life such as her parents, uncle, lecturers and church leaders have contributed to shaping her values and attitudes towards nature: ‘From young we were told that wildlife is very important and you just have to embrace it because we are staying on the earth, the earth is not staying with us.’ She has drawn on these values and attitudes in selecting and designing her graphic narrative.

Nadine’s graphic narrative (see Figure 3) is A3 in size, in landscape format and is covered by a collage of rectangular images from magazines and newspapers. Drawn on top of the collage, using a thick black marker, are two large, equally-sized circles produced by tracing around a dinner plate. The two circles resemble a Venn diagram. The left-hand circle includes images of animals, birds, trees and natural settings, such as the ocean and a waterfall. The images in the right-hand circle depict constructed urban areas, buildings and pollution. Nadine’s verbal description of her narrative draws on chronological sequencing and use of phrases that mark time such as ‘in the beginning’. In the visual mode, the sequence is realized through left-to-right positioning, what Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006: 179) term ‘Given–New’. The ‘Given’, on the left, could represent something that is assumed the viewer is aware of. The New, on the right, could be that which is problematic or the issue at hand (pp. 180–181). This Given–New layout helps convey the ideational meaning of the narrative: that nature existed in a pristine form before people chose to destroy it. The ‘resolution’ of Nadine’s narrative – that people need to compromise and find balance with nature – is represented by the middle, overlapping portion of the Venn diagram, the ‘sweet spot’ between the two larger circles.

Figure 3.

Nadine’s graphic narrative.

The graphic narrative makes use of contrast to foreground the ideational meaning of conflict between nature and urbanization. In images, argument can be established through the use of ‘difference’ (Huang and Archer, 2017: 64) or contrast (Archer, 2016: 101). Contrast here is realized through juxtaposition and texture. Although the two circles in the graphic narrative are the same size and arranged symmetrically, the content of the images in each circle is contrasted: the ‘nature’ images depict diverse, natural environments, while the ‘destruction’ images show constructed environments. The graphic narrative also achieves contrast through the use of texture. Djonov and Van Leeuwen (2011: 546) suggest that texture has two types of meaning potentials: provenance and experiential qualities, which are both ‘based on the link between production and meaning’. Provenance is ‘where the signifier comes from’ (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001). Nadine explains the provenance of her choice of material: ‘I took nature pictures from magazines where the paper is more glossy and colourful and I took pictures of the earth being hurt from newspapers because the newspaper isn’t as happy.’ She later elaborates:

It was very funny actually because I was looking through the magazines for these [taps destruction images] pictures and then I told my mom that we don’t have bad magazines and it’s a problem. I need doom and gloom. And then she said, ‘the newspapers are doom and gloom.’

The ‘experiential meaning potential’ (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001) of texture is related to sensory and tactile surface texture (Djonov and Van Leeuwen, 2011: 548). The differences in tactile surface texture between the rough newspaper images and the smooth, glossy magazine images reinforces the contrast between them.

We have shown that Nadine’s graphic narrative is realized through the range of resources and contexts that she drew on in the process of meaning-making. The narrative itself may be shaped by the environment in which she grew up, personal experiences of environmental degradation and environmental values imparted by her family and community. Apart from access to social resources such as being able to discuss design ideas with her mother and living at home, Nadine also has access to material resources such as newspapers, magazines and dinner plates. Providing moments for students to bring their own interests into the landscape classroom is an important aspect of developing multimodal pedagogies for diversity (Price and Archer, 2021). The value of this personal connection to Nadine’s narrative may contribute to the way in which she takes up resources to move forward in her design trajectory.

Following each student’s presentation, the group assists in selecting five themes from their narrative. While Nadine herself identifies the themes ‘peaceful’ and ‘destructive’, three other themes emerge from other participants in the group discussion: ‘diversity’, ‘contrast’ and ‘balance’. Nadine writes down these five themes, thus ‘fixing’ these linguistic resources. The group discussion is a useful resource in providing Nadine with an opportunity to reconceptualize her graphic narrative as she moves forward in her meaning-making trajectory. Later, she reflects: ‘these themes actually really helped me to decide what I’m actually going to do with my model.’

Strip 2: Mobilizing resources through the affordances of sketches

We now move on to examine how Nadine mobilizes resources to move from the graphic narrative to a three-dimensional model. Kress (2014: 137) suggests that ‘the act of giving the design material form, or producing it, makes the re-design available for potential use in others’ re-design.’ This notion is also echoed by landscape architectural theorist Corner (1992: 244), who argues that drawing goes beyond simple representation but generates and transforms ideas. What is useful here is how the sketches in strip 2, realized in material form, may prompt a change to the inner conception and re-design. Newfield (2014: 103) has shown how a ‘transmodal moment’ modifies meaning from one text to the next in a meaning-making trajectory:

The transmodal moment is the moment of modal shift between texts realised in different modes in a chain of semiosis. It refers to the external manifestation of semiotic consciousness, the realisation of an idea in a new or different mode from that in which an idea was originally encountered.

It is possible that these ‘transmodal moments’ prompt inner reconceptualization of the meaning-making within a trajectory, which then prompts transformation of resources in future moments or ‘strips’ (Kell, 2015) within the design trajectory. In moving from her graphic narrative to model, Nadine makes two significant moves: firstly, she explicitly ‘takes up’ interactive resources from the crit discussion; and secondly, she makes use of the affordances of section sketches as a stepping stone to building the model. A section is a type of drawing used in disciplines such as landscape architecture to show a two-dimensional view of an object as though it has been sliced along an imaginary, and usually vertical, plane.

The first sketch is labelled on the top right of the page ‘Design idea 1’ (see Figure 4). Although it is two-dimensional, it represents an idea that could exist in three dimensions. The sketch shows a base platform with two separate, raised platforms that appear to each be supported by a single, central column. The higher platform supports three trees on a mound and the lower one supports a representation of a city or urban space. Below this platform is a half sphere of the Earth. A double-headed arrow with the word ‘balance’ connects both columns of the two platforms. The five themes that were identified have been written at the bottom left-hand corner of the page: diversity, contrast, balance, peaceful and destructive. This shows that Nadine is choosing to draw on the resources generated through the discussion. Nadine’s explanation of Sketch 1 provides an insight into how she reconceptualizes resources. In her graphic narrative she speaks about ‘compromise’ or ‘balance’ which she represents visually as the overlapping portion of a Venn diagram. In Sketch 1, this notion of ‘balance’ is reconceptualized and realized in terms of ‘scales of justice’:

So, the first idea that I had was kind of like the scales of justice type of thing for balance . . . if something is lowered, it means it has more worth. So, in the human mind-set, buildings and destruction have more worth and what it’s actually doing is diminishing the earth.

Figure 4.

Nadine’s Sketch 1.

This discussion demonstrates how material resources can be resemiotized to non-material resources and vice versa: the Venn diagram, as a material representation, is resemiotized into the non-material, abstract concept of ‘balance’ which is then resemiotized into a different material representation as ‘scales of justice’.

The second sketch (see Figure 5) is also drawn in section and depicts a dome that has a central opening. Inside the left side of the dome, rectangles (representing buildings) have been drawn; and representations of clouds ‘hang’ from the ‘sky’ or dome. On the right-hand side, Nadine has drawn trees with representations of birds ‘hanging’ from the dome. In the middle of the floor of the dome is a sunken area with a question mark. Nadine explains her sketch:

So, I’m thinking, maybe like have a dome shape . . . with a cut through the middle. So the one side will be the destruction and the other part would be like the nature and in the middle will be nothing, because we haven’t found the middle ground just yet.

Figure 5.

Nadine’s Sketch 2.

Moving from Sketch 1 to Sketch 2, the representation of ‘balance’ changes from the scales of justice to the ‘missing middle ground’. Both these ideas are later realized in Nadine’s models.

Sketches may prompt a reconceptualization of a design because they are able to function as an extended memory, externalizing the designer’s choices so that they can reflect on their implications (Suwa and Tversky, 1997: 385; Van Dooren et al., 2013: 67). Sketches can show spatial relations but can also represent non-visual information such as functional relations (Suwa and Tversky, 1997: 388). The affordances of sketching provide several opportunities that enable Nadine to move forward in her trajectory. Firstly, the sketches represent a ‘transmodal moment’ (Newfield, 2014) where meanings from the graphic narrative and discussion are re-conceptualized and re-presented as sketches in the visual mode. Secondly, sketches are quick to produce (compared to models) and allow for experimentation. Thirdly, Nadine has drawn her sketches in two dimensions, as sections, providing a stepping-stone between the abstraction of the graphic narrative and the three-dimensional spatial model. Because Nadine has drawn her sketches in section, she is able to show differences in vertical elevation, representing different spatial and conceptual meanings that could be developed into a three-dimensional model. There is a clear shift from the abstract themes generated from the graphic narrative to the two-dimensional sketches. Nadine’s sketches demonstrate resemiotization in her design trajectory and represent the materialization of re-design as a result of a reworking of an ‘inner conception’ of the narrative. In addition to her own ‘inner conception’ or ‘conversations with the drawing’ (Lawson, 2004: 90; Schön, 1987), Nadine brings her sketches to an informal crit discussion, generating additional moments for reconceptualization. Her sketches are fixes in the flow of semiosis (Kress, 2010) and represent a process of experimentation. Instead of analysing the sketches as end-products, they can be understood as stepping stones, ‘testing out’ projections of imagined models.

Strips 3 and 4: Resemiotization of the narrative as spatial experience in the models

We continue to follow Nadine’s unfolding design trajectory as her narrative is realized as a spatial experience through a series of models. Nadine’s Model 1 (see Figure 6), produced three days after the sketches, comprises two sections, ‘nature’ and ‘urbanization’, separated by a path. The ‘urbanization’ section is represented by a rectangular cardboard box, spray-painted black. The top of the box is covered by newspaper that is lightly spray-painted black. Hollow, grey cardboard boxes of varying sizes, representing buildings, are glued to the top of the black box. Light drifts of cotton wool are attached, which are ‘supposed to seem like fog or like smog’. The ‘nature’ section is represented by eight trees of slightly different sizes. The tree canopies are made from cotton wool coated with desiccated coconut that has been dyed using green food colouring. The stems of the trees are each made of four skewer sticks glued together and attached to a square corrugated cardboard base. The ground plane below the trees is also coated in green coconut. The central pathway between the ‘urban’ and ‘natural’ areas is made from ice-cream sticks cut to the same width and glued next to each other.

Figure 6.

Nadine’s Model 1 (left) and Model 2 (right).

When Nadine presented her first model, the crit discussion revealed a concern that her model had not considered the human scale and spatial experience as the ‘urbanization’ space of the model was on a raised platform too high to be accessed by a person. The central pathway and the separation of the model into two spaces is carried through to Model 2 (Figure 6). The path refers to the idea of compromise in the narrative. The urban area is raised on a solid black box, but it is lower than that of Model 1, and includes a ladder for access. The buildings have been made larger and taller, and are aligned and rectangular. Compared to the hard lines and angles of the urban space, the tree canopies are softer and more rounded. This lack of order, compared to the urban space, highlights the organic aspects of nature. Nadine has made use of the same materials as Model 1. Apart from the change in scale of the urban space, another difference between Model 1 and Model 2 is the addition of a papier-mâché dome placed over part of the urban space. There is a link between this three-dimensional dome and the dome Nadine drew in her second sketch.

In moving from Model 1 to Model 2, the students were required to draw plan views of their models in a parking area at 1:1 (full scale), using large pieces of chalk and tape measures (see Figure 7). The rationale for including the 1:1 drawing activity was to provide students with an opportunity to interact with a full-scale representation of their projected installation, albeit only as a two-dimensional plan. Griesel (2018) argues for the exploration of design concepts through sensory and kinaesthetic experiences by drawing at large scales. Two major insights can be gained from this activity. Firstly, as Suwa and Tversky (1997: 388) show, drawings may have emergent properties that allow the designer to see their design from new perspectives. Secondly, the activity generated new ‘inner’ conceptualizations of Nadine’s model and prompted the resemiotization of her final model.

Figure 7.

A portion of Nadine’s chalk drawing of Model 2.

Nadine’s 1:1 chalk drawing (a plan view of her Model 2) is an example of how emergent meanings can be taken up into the design trajectory. Nadine’s Models 1 and 2 include squares of brown cardboard at the base of each tree, possibly to stabilize and support the trees in the model. These squares, whose meanings may only have been associated with model building, have been resemiotized in the 1:1 chalk drawings (see Figure 7). When discussing her work later, Nadine explains that the squares were 1x1 metre tree surrounds designed to protect the tree stem and roots. Through the process of drawing her model projection at full scale, Nadine ‘reads off’ or reinterprets new meanings. This shows the potential for resemiotization to move non-material meanings across different modes and materials, but also how, through moving between different modes and materials, new conceptual meanings may emerge.

Students were required to film themselves walking through their chalk drawing and to write a blog post reflecting on the activity. The brief for the blog activity encourages students to answer questions such as ‘to what extent did drawing the 1:1 plan affect your thinking about your model?’, ‘how did you and others experience (walking through) your 1:1 model?’, and ‘what changes do you think you may make to your next model?’ Nadine’s blog post reflects on how walking through her chalk drawing caused her to reconsider the raised platforms in her model:

While walking through my design I wondered what effect the design would have if I elevated the nature and left the humanity side on the ground. In our design theory class we were taught about plateaus and mounds. “Mounds attract people to climb, view, roll, chase and sit or fly kites. It makes you feel secure and gives you feeling of pleasure. Mounds are used to create distinct and focal places” Whereas “a high plateau enables a journey of anticipation and mystery towards the unseen top,” according to Catherine Dee. I decided to put the nature on top of the plateau to emphasise and protect the trees.

As a result, Nadine reconceptualizes and resemiotizes the theme of ‘balance’ in her final model (Figure 8). This change is an important step in terms of the resolution of her design trajectory. There is a change from showing value as having more weight and being lower, to showing value through elevation. Nadine indicates that nature is perceived as more valuable than urbanization and so she places it on a raised platform.

Figure 8.

Nadine’s final model.

By analysing Nadine’s texts as ‘punctuations’ in her design trajectory, we are able to recognize what resources she draws on and trace how different resources are deployed in different moments of the trajectory in order to move her design forward. This provides a useful insight into the types of ‘moves’ students make in the process of reaching a design resolution.

Resemiotization of key concepts across texts in the design process

This section traces how Nadine’s concepts within her narrative have been resemiotized, not only into 3D spatial forms, but how they have been conveyed to imagined users through the spatial experience of the model. When discussing the five themes in her narrative, Nadine chooses to use the word ‘peaceful’ to describe nature. An impression or sense of ‘peacefulness’ can be traced from the representation of nature in the graphic narrative to the sketches and the model. Nadine is possibly drawing from her own experience as well as perceptions that people feel calm and content in nature. The images in the graphic narrative such as the ocean, waterfalls and forests can be associated with recreational or leisurely activities. Instead of trying to represent physical aspects of nature, Nadine re-represents the feeling of peacefulness in her sketches and models. This is a notable move in her trajectory as she is translating aspects of her narrative into potential user experience. In Sketch 1, a label with an arrow and the word ‘peaceful’ points to a group of trees and a berm (a shelf, or raised barrier). The use of trees in creating a space that feels ‘peaceful’, may be linked to the noise-dampening effect of forests or the use of trees and berms as noise barriers. There is a clear connection from the graphic narrative to the sketches to the models where trees grouped in a lawned area realize a space in which a user may experience peacefulness.

Colour and texture are used to realize affect: ‘texture summons us to identify with the experiential rather than merely symbolic implications of its manifestations’ (Aiello and Dickinson, 2014: 309). The resemiotization of ‘peaceful’ and ‘destruction’ in terms of colour and texture can be traced from the graphic narrative through the sketches to the models. The ‘peaceful’ or ‘nature’ images of the graphic narrative comprise glossy textures and bright, highly saturated colours such as blues, greens and yellows. The colours of the newspaper images, representing ‘destruction’ in the graphic narrative, have a rough, grainy texture and include grey and dark colours with low saturation. Although her sketches are in pencil, Nadine has labelled the trees ‘colour’ and the buildings ‘black’. In the models, the high saturation of colour from the graphic narrative has been carried through to the dyed desiccated coconut with bright green food colouring.

In terms of representing the concept of ‘destruction’ in Model 1, Nadine uses rough, grey cardboard to construct representations of buildings in a city. The buildings are on a raised box spray-painted black. The top of the box is covered with lightly spray-painted newspaper and drifts of cotton wool that represent smog are attached. When asked why she used newspaper underneath the city, Nadine replies ‘It goes back to my poster’, referring to an earlier conversation where she explains: ‘For the nature pics, I took the pictures out of a magazine because it’s more glossy and colourful and it shouts at you, whereas a newspaper . . . I took a more drab and boring and destroyed kind of thing.’ The rough texture, colour range and lower colour saturation of the graphic narrative is resemiotized in Model 1 through similar use of materials and textures.

The concept of contrast is a strong visual feature that is resemiotized from the graphic narrative to Nadine’s sketches and her models. Nadine makes use of symmetry and juxtaposition to show contrast in the graphic narrative, sketches and model, but these are conveyed differently in each text. Figure 9 shows how the overall structure of the graphic narrative, sketches and model make use of symmetry. Each layout is divided into two halves with an imaginary, central axis (shown as a dashed line). The position of the contrasting elements are arranged symmetrically in relation to this central axis: the graphic narrative comprises two equally-sized, overlapping and symmetrically-arranged circles. Sketch 1 shows two platforms rising from positions equidistant from the central axis. In Sketch 2, a dome is divided into two equal parts, and Model 1, when viewed in plan from above, shows two areas of the same size and symmetrical positions.

Figure 9.

Tracing the use of symmetry and asymmetry through Nadine’s graphic narrative, sketches and model.

Despite the symmetrical arrangement relative to the graphic narrative, sketches and model, there are differences between the two halves. This use of asymmetry contributes to the meaning of contrast. In the graphic narrative, the overall composition is symmetrical but differences in content, modality and texture are asymmetrical. The two sketches and model also include asymmetrical differences in content, colour and materials. Additionally, Sketch 1 and Model 1’s asymmetry is emphasized by differences in elevation. This juxtaposition and separation of ‘nature’ and ‘urbanization’ in the texts emphasizes Nadine’s call for ‘balance’ or the ‘missing middle’.

Finally, the concept of balance is resemiotized across the texts. Nadine highlights that there is a conflict between nature and urbanization, and that a compromise or ‘balance’ needs to be found. Underlying this is an agenda in landscape architecture to protect the environment because natural systems sustain human life in terms of oxygen, clean air and water, food, transportation, materials for manufacturing and construction, medicine and psychological well-being. Without these natural systems, human life would cease to exist. On the other hand, dignified human life is also a priority. To use the example in Nadine’s narrative, a forest is lost in order to provide housing for people to live dignified lives. Compromise suggests losing something, whereas balance suggests that human behaviour can be moderated to be in tune with natural systems.

As discussed earlier, Nadine’s concept of balance is resemiotized from the graphic narrative as a Venn diagram to ‘scales of justice’ and ‘missing middle’ in the two sketches. Both these interpretations of ‘balance’ have been resemiotized into Model 1. The different levels of the ‘scales of justice’ in Sketch 1 have been reconceptualized in the model through a raised platform: initially, the ‘urbanization’ space is raised but this changes as Nadine’s design trajectory develops. The concept of the ‘missing middle’ is resemiotized in Model 1 as a central pathway. The path has been constructed deliberately so that there is nothing above it: ‘we haven’t found the middle ground just yet. That’s why there’s nothing on top of it [the path] or over it or inside of it.’ In terms of Nadine’s mobilization of resources in order to resolve her design trajectory, her experience of her 1:1 chalk drawing shifts her own understanding of ‘balance’. Instead of expressing balance as the pathway, Nadine ‘re-balances’ her final model in terms of the way she feels that the value of nature should increase. Tracing the movement of ‘balance’ from the Venn diagram in Nadine’s graphic narrative, to the ‘scales of justice’ of her sketches, to the differences in elevation of the spaces in her models, demonstrates resemiotization processes in her design trajectory and shows how she moves between material expression and non-material (re)conceptualization in order to resolve her design.

We have shown how Nadine abstracts several themes from her narrative, including peacefulness, destruction, contrast and balance. Her section sketches, while not an explicit requirement, show their potential as re-(inner)conceptualizations (Kress, 2014) for ‘testing out’ the transformation of a verbal narrative into three-dimensional visual representations. It is clear that the affordances of different modes prompt resemiotization of resources at different times in the design trajectory.

Final comments

Landscape architectural design processes are often not limited to one meaning-making moment, but a series of moments over a larger design trajectory. In design education contexts, the process of directing a design trajectory towards a design resolution may often be implicit or may favour particular perspectives. Understanding the role of resources and how these resources move through processes of reconceptualization and resemiotization has been key to developing multimodal pedagogies for diversity that provide entry-points for students into the dominant discourses, whilst valorizing those diverse experiences and resources. In addition, the recognition that each moment has meaning and a perspective which understands and can describe meaning across various multimodal resources is one that can help both students and educators view each stage constructively, but also in a critical way through the ‘crits’. The analytical focus of this article falls on the resources and resourcefulness of the meaning-maker. By investigating the resemiotization process through analysing Nadine’s texts as ‘punctuations’ (Kress, 2010) in the design trajectory, we have identified the experiential, social, semiotic, interactive and pedagogical resources that shape and prompt her meaning-making processes. Through tracing Nadine’s design trajectory we have shown how multimodal pedagogies may present moments during the design trajectory that prompt not only the resemiotization of texts and meanings but new ‘inner-(re) conceptualisations’ (Kress, 2014), directing the resolution of design trajectories in a particular direction.

Footnotes

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research,authorship and publication of this article,and there is no conflict of interest.

ORCID iD

Christine Price

Biographical notes

CHRISTINE PRICE is a professionally qualified landscape architect and currently holds a full-time lecturing position in the postgraduate Landscape Architecture programme at the University of Cape Town. Christine completed her PhD in 2020 in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. Her thesis,titled “Redesigning landscape architecture in higher education: a multimodal social semiotic approach”,investigates how landscape architectural education may draw on students’ resources to develop a multimodal pedagogy for diversity

Address : University of Cape Town,Rondebosch,7701,South Africa. [ email: christine.price@uct.ac.za ]

ARLENE ARCHER is an Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics and is the director of the Writing Centre,University of Cape Town,South Africa. Her research employs a multimodal social semiotic perspective to interrogate issues around social justice,academic writing,academic literacies,and semiotic constructions of authenticity. She is currently investigating changing forms of writing in a digital age with a British Academy Fellowship. She is a co-editor of the journal Multimodality and Society .

Address : University of Cape Town,Rondebosch,7701,South Africa. [ email: arlene.archer@uct.ac.za ]

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