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Ha… I think I know that park you speak of… from a rather awkward personal experience.
 
I find the rather subtle curved surfaces of OLIN’s benches to be unfriendly for long term sleeping (it felt like Columbus Circle is similar if not same as Washington Memorial)
 
It is rather sad that the city didn’t consider this, on a another note there i…[Read more]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hate-crimes-law-senators-add-attacks-homeless/story?id=11754964
 

I wonder why there is the assumption that the homeless are the majority of people using this tail as a toilet? I live in a small college town…I certainly don’t let my children go wading in the fountain where god knows how many inebriated college students are taking a piss.

.Homelessness unfortunately has become an acceptable lifestyle choice to many (likw any bad behavior, it is unknowingly supported by those who tolerate/enable it).
 
What an incredibly sad and ignorant statement. I have not visited all these great parks you are discussing. But I have been homeless as a child. My birth mother and her brother have…[Read more]

Degradation of linework mentioned is what I see when exporting directly from sketchup (just to clarify). 

One thing I do is to export the image w/o the line work and another of the same view of just the lines. Combining them in photoshop with multiply for the lines over the color export. Screening the lines back at a lighter transparency (50%).   Usually I see a lot of the degregation in the linework quality. 

You might also want to be sure that you are exporting good quality image right out of SketchUp. When you export your 2D graphic use the “Options” to adjust your resolution and the size of the image.  Make the dimensions of the image larger than what you intend to print the image at, bump the resolution up to a tleast 300dpi and save the image as…[Read more]

Never seen homeless in Central Park, not even in the Rambles.
 
 There is a bit of difference between sleeping in the park and LIVING in the park. I’ve seen people napping in the park, but not with a stolen shopping cart or creating a shelter with boxes and tarpaulins, breaking a street light bases to steal electricity to have TV and c…[Read more]

A lot of your color issues could be due to the quality of the equipment at the print shop. Many color lasers have a hard time with solid blocks, often having inconsistencies accross the block or even stripes. This is due to how the machine creates the color. Some of it has to do with CMYK convsersion as well. You computer creates color using RGB,…[Read more]

I mean Lafayette Park, not L’enfant Plaza..as an example of a NASTY  place in the eighties..

I just don’t have the same absolute condemnation for sleeping in public parks, having done it all over Europe myself, that you have Jason…..Sometimes ya just got to, and it is not the worst thing in the world..If JKK rowlings didn’t get a couple of years in sleeping in parks, we may not have Harry Potter now..
and I really don’t know where in…[Read more]

Jason, you may be right about Central, but you are wrong about Prospect Park. First, it is a myth  how dangerous the eighties were – I was there, every day, dog cocktail parties every day, and it was about the same danger level as it is now..
Secondly, people use to SLEEP IN these parks, if you know your New York history – you could  see droves o…[Read more]

With that style of house, I’d probably opt for a picket-style fence. It better reflects vernacular victorian than an iron fence would. Plus, it would go better with the white trim and light paint. It would be accurate to place it on top of a brick wall as well. Here is an interesting vinyl manufacturer that offers mix-and-match colors that mi…[Read more]

Make sure you terminate your contours properly (at right angles), its one thing the graders look for.

In all my years of going to NYC, I have NEVER seen homeless in Central Park. I highly doubt it was even a consideration or issue when Olmsted and Vaux designed it, as it was built on land that was essentially encampments. Those people were simply removed. The Central Park of old was a drug/homeless haven during the 70’s and 80’s when it earned the…[Read more]

Your hours sound about right to me – and I’ve been working in CAD for 13 years with several years of hand drawing design from schematic to cds before that. My process is very similar to the one you use – base drawing in CAD, hand sketches, client review, final plans in CAD.
My total design time for a small residential project is usually about 10 h…[Read more]

wow, Thomas, incredibly cynical..Olmsted (sp?) specifically wanted his parks to provide access to nature that only rich people could previously afford – he specifically cited democratic (in the universal sense, not the party sense) values, in his design of the parks..And man, if you have ever lived next to a great park, the values promoted are…[Read more]

I don’t think it’s naivity at all really.

Christopher, you can’t be that naive. Landscape Architects spew touchy feely, social equality jargon to SELL parks. Public parks are built with tax dollars so in order to get the public’s approval, everyone needs to feel welcome. What happens after the park is built is a very different story. Do you think it’s any coincidence that some of the most…[Read more]

I have back packed in national and state parks… never in the local park… (well, except carrying a weighted pack for training) though when I did some solo-bicycle touring in Europe, I definitely stopped in local parks, used the water fountain, enjoyed a bench seat in the shade of a tree… and then I moved on. I guess that’s how you…[Read more]