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Sense of Place was a research-led textile project that explored how sensory experience could inform design. Through a series of walks around South Beach, the Heads Road industrial area, and Castlecliff Beach in Whanganui, sensory impressions, visual, tactile, and aural, were gathered and translated into digitally printed textiles, stitched surfaces, and mixed media works. The resulting pieces reflected the atmospheres, rhythms, and textures of place through layered and process-based material exploration.
This project developed an approach to textile design based on sensory registration, collecting impressions from specific landscapes and translating them into material form. By combining digital and manual processes, the work explored how a designer could listen to and respond to place through making. The project contributed to ideas around sensory mapping, memory, and the role of textiles in responding to landscape and context.
Each work functioned as a sensory registration or testimony of place, using digitally and manually generated surface detail to embody the textures and atmospheres of a site.
As part of Sense of Place, I created a series of benches that responded to the landscape not only through surface but through form and function. Each bench was shaped from timber, then carved, burned, or CNC-routed using imagery and textures drawn from my site research. One bench featured ripple patterns taken from a low-tide photograph of sand, translated into relief using CNC machining. The seats were paired with digitally printed fabric cushions, echoing the material narratives of the surrounding environment. These works invited the viewer to sit, rest, and engage physically with the textures of place.
Sand Photograph
Sand Photograph
CNC carved wood using a vector image of the original photograph
CNC carved wood using a vector image of the original photograph
The carved contours invite touch, hands naturally follow the lines and after four years of daily use, the bench has developed a rich patina. It carries character and wear, echoing the rugged, weathered landscape of the west coast where I live. Now paired with a sheepskin, it offers a gothic nod to the countless poor animals that wash up on the sand. The bench continues to function not only as a seat, but as a quiet, lived-in record of time and place.
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