Remote Wayfaring and Virtual Fieldwork

Regular users of the methods and techniques of digital landscape architecture (DLA), were presumably little disrupted by the paralysing impact of the current Covid-19 pandemic. But these digital operators have a front row seat in seeing how the global virus vaulted the field in a forward direction, rapidly increasing its prevalence. It was not only those in the business community that stopped travelling, became home-bound, and were tied to their desktop and computer screen. The scientific and academic communities were in the exact same position. Digitizing a workspace does not affect everyone equally, but it is particularly restrictive for landscape architects where “groundtruthing” is fundamental. It is not possible to completely replace real-world action and mobility with digital technology. However, with few options left, alternatives are necessary for those who usually develop their project and research work based on fieldwork, associated with travelling. A notable developmental leap in digital technologies in landscape architecture thus came in the most trivial and mundane form thinkable. In this paper, we describe how we conducted fieldwork in places that could not be reached without travelling, using commonly accessed digital tools as our forms of wayfaring.