Desire Lines

2025

Desire lines are informal trails that defy the rigid frameworks set by mapmakers, urban planners, and those who wish to control or influence where and how we walk. These user-made routes represent more than mere shortcuts; they symbolise agency, creativity, and an instinct to navigate space intuitively rather than by design.

When pedestrians repeatedly take the shortest or most convenient route through space or navigate it for reasons of safety, spiritual yearning, or rebellion, they create these desire lines, eroding the ground and leaving a visible and non-visible trace of individual or collective need, preference and movement.

The existence of these paths can reveal how entities wish or need to interact with their environment, sometimes contradicting the original intentions of architects or landscape designers, who may have designed routes on paper, screen or in the air without considering the usability or the desired route or needs of the walker or wanderer.

In built-up settlements and open countryside, tracks cut across grass or steep inclines and in northern winters, footprints can be observed in the snow, mapping a direct route from one point to another by both human and non-human entities. Desire paths can thus serve as shaping spaces that create an authentic relationship between walkers and place.

Desire Lines can symbolise a quiet rebellion and a metaphor for intuitive design, movement, individual and collective-driven creativity, and the resilience and celebration of independent choice in the increasingly controllednatural and urban environments, as well as in the broader society of the contemporary era.

In the British countryside, public footpaths are often obstructed by landowners, roads and private entities, who limit access in the name of security, privacy, or exclusive use. These restrictions violate the spirit and tradition of the right to roam, hindering the ability of humans and non-humans to be part of, move through, and inhabit the natural landscape.

This series of works is a physical representation of walking as a research practice which is part of the ongoing doctoral project, Revisiting a Vanishing Land, which acknowledges and embraces the ever-changing spectral landscape of the Suffolk coast, including the footprints and ghosts from the past, present, and future, as well as the memories encapsulated within its landscapes.