Crescent City Sense of Place and A New Design Ecology

Crescent City Sense of Place and A New Design Ecology
An autoethnographic examination of identity, place and graphic design.

Using an autoethnographic research method, this thesis embarks on a quest to examine the phenomenology of sense of place. The physical landscapes of New Orleans and southeast Louisiana are explored as a portal for rethinking identity, design and the essence of sense of place at the triadic intersection of humans, culture, and nature.

Visual, material, environmental, and experiential elements of place yield a vocabulary of signs, objects, visuality, and materiality which culminates into a semiotics of place representing relationships between identity, culture and physical surroundings. Navigation for this journey is informed by theories of philosophy, phenomenology, ontology, psychology, environmental science, anthropology, architecture, physics, metaphysics, and theories relating to the collective unconscious and the conscious mind. These pathways yield new ways of thinking about the roles of perceptions, experiences, seen and unseen nature, and visual culture in creating place meaning.

In initially searching for understanding ways in which graphic design can be a catalyst for facilitating a sense of place, an additional discovery is found. Connecting with one’s own sense of place in turn facilitates rethinking graphic design. Design is reimagined through ontological, phenomenological, and semiotic approaches. Built from foundations, principles and elements gathered from the exploration, a sense of place design ecology emerges with a theory, methodology, and framework not only for rethinking design as a catalyst for sense of place, but as a larger paradigm shift for philosophically rethinking design on a fundamental level.