Softening the City Sensescape

'Softening the City Sensescape’ identifies and counters ways current Landscape Architecture design rhetoric and design responses fail to recognize the needs of neurodiverse individuals in urban centre landscapes. Neurodiversity is recognised as a growing issue as population rises and city stimulus grows along with it — how might landscape architecture respond? Through critical review of relevant literature and case-studies alongside fieldwork studies the research develops design strategies that allow the inclusion of these demographics into societal shared spatialities. Hand drawing, photography, installation and fieldwork methods are used as means of investigation in conjunction with an event-based survey of neurodiverse opinions and experiences to test and refine these design strategies.

The research finds that by using a toolkit designed with neurodiverse experiences landscape architects can effectively create refuge from the stimuli that urban infrastructure produces. This contributes to advancing spatial justice in the design of streetscapes.