The field notes contained here are written as design research.

They emerge from time spent in the field—walking landscapes, sharing meals, participating in rituals, listening closely to people and places. They are grounded in first-hand experience, not abstraction or theory.

But field also carries another meaning.

Beyond the visible terrain of buildings, policies, and behaviors, every place seems to carry an invisible atmosphere—a felt coherence that shapes how people relate, decide, and imagine futures together. Much like gravitational or magnetic fields, these forces cannot be seen directly, yet their effects are unmistakable.

This way of thinking echoes ideas explored by biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who proposed that living systems are shaped by organizing fields that carry memory and make certain patterns more likely to repeat. Whether taken literally or metaphorically, the insight is useful: places are not neutral. They remember. They condition what becomes possible.

Our field notes sit at this intersection.

They are not travel writing, nor are they position papers. They are attempts to sense the underlying conditions that give rise to a particular range of possibilities in a specific place. Because before we design experiences, environments, or futures, we are always working within a field.

These notes are an invitation to notice it.