Edge Reprised

This essay reviews relationships towards the land sea interface in the currency of professional landscape practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. With changing climates and failing infrastructure there is urgent demand to repair, yet further, to reframe and reposition how landscape practice engages in such modification. At stake is the necessity for repair to be in service of relationships across the many life worlds past and present that move with and through the coastal edge. Drawing on a project in Petone, Wellington that ‘reclaims’ a strip of land from the sea, the essay takes a personal journey through this ambition touching aspects of the project and context including cultural, legislative, and synthetic materiality. Reflective commentary offers an intimate window on current tensions and opportunities in landscape practice at the mercurial edges of the land where stakes are high.