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BMus MEnv, GCertLandscapeDes, NDArchTech Bachelor of Music, Griffith Master of Environment, Griffith Graduate Certificate of Landscape Design, Deakin National Diploma in Architectural Technology, Christchurch Polytechnic
Originally from New Zealand, Stephen is pleased to call Brisbane home. Having moved here very unwell with Crohn’s Disease at the age of 22, Stephen cherished the opportunities to study in various areas. He loves to learn, be involved, and engage with people of all walks. Stephen feels he is fortunate to be able to do so through the QUT community as well as through his activities as a musician in and around Brisbane. Stephen’s interests are cross-disciplinary in nature with holistic goals, and his research centres around enriching the landscape experience through soundscape thinking.
Thesis Title: Mastering Rhythmic Syncopations for Well-Being: Extemporising the Beat of the Landscape to Flow Like Water
Healing gardens are becoming an increasingly integral offering as part of the holistic and nurturing services on offer to hospital patients, visitors, and staff to support well-being. My experiences of sounds in the hospital environment as an inpatient (and temporarily incapacitated musician) have inspired this research and contributed to the background and design of the project. This project aims to identify, analyse and qualify participants’ experiences of aurally stimulating landscape environments as a means of data collection to determine which sound stimuli encourage immersion in the garden experience. The resultant data will be workshopped in collaboration with a community of practice of landscape designers to explore methods of integrating identified sound stimuli as a form of materiality into the design process. Current design process presents materiality as images of various materials within a proposed scheme to convey an overall predicted atmosphere or visual feeling of a design. Thus, this research aims to address the gap in design methodology for developing experiences other than visual by proposing a malleable “sound layer” that can be utilised within a traditional design process. The resultant model is intended for musically and non-musically inclined designers alike, bringing extended meaning to “composition” of the landscape.
Principal Supervisor: Dr Mirko Guaralda
Associate Supervisor: Dr Paul Donehue; Dr Brett Painter (Environment Canterbury, NZ)
Estimated Completion Date: February, 2022