Dayton Hudson Faculty Fellows: Rebecca Krinke

Rebecca Krinke, Associate Professor, Landscape Architecture, University of Minnesota
Dayton Hudson Faculty Fellow, 2005-2006

The Re-Embodiment of Everyday Life (Walking)

Exercising in contemporary Western life often means driving to a gym and working out a treadmill, or working out inside one's house. American suburbs are often designed without places to walk to or sidewalks to walk on; so people walk less. Both situations remove a person from engagement with walking as an everyday activity and both lessen a person's contact with the outdoors. As we become more estranged from our bodies and from our environment, there are repercussions to our physical and psychological health. The heath risks of a sedentary lifestyle, and the positive benefits of exercise - including walking - have been well documented. Walking has also been shown to alleviate depression in research studies. And the pioneering work of environmental psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, Roger S. Ulrich and others is building a body of research and theory on restorative experiences and environments. A "restorative" environment provides measurable physical and/or psychological benefit to human health. Research has demonstrated that contact with nature, especially vegetation has measurable restorative effects.

This project proposes to examine (evaluate) settings for walking in the Twin Cities Metropolitan area - investigating where we walk and why. The project will also ask/investigate: what are some of the ways that designers are engaging walking in contemporary practice? The study area will be in two parts: exurban/suburban and urban. The investigation will broadly investigate typologies of walking places/situations. For example, the exurban/suburban examination will look at trails (walking as consuming or enjoying nature or culture as packaged by experts), and the phenomena of walking in enclosed suburban shopping malls, especially in winter months. Suburban residents may drive to places to take a walk. What places do they select? Are these walks different than urban walks? The urban investigation will look at walking circuits, such as around the Minneapolis lakes, as well as sidewalks and skyways. This investigation will continue into works of specific architecture, such as the new Walker Art Center by Herzog and de Meuron, that have been deliberately conceived to re-engage the body through walking, in this case through devices such as long corridors with tilted ground planes.

The fellowship will include a seminar with Rebecca Solnit, the author of Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York : Penguin Putnam, 2000) to discuss and brainstorm ways that planners and designers could more consciously re-embody everyday life through walking.

This project is an outgrowth of Professor Krinke's work on contemplative space - which has detailed links between walking and contemplative settings/experiences - and has discussed associations between contemplative and restorative space (Contemporary Landscapes of Contemplation, R. Krinke, editor, Routledge, forthcoming 2005).

Download: Design Brief 14, Embodied Design: Allegheny Riverfront Park and the Walker Art Center (2.08 MB)

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