Activity

Vertical gardens – the little green pill.

All discussion of vertical gardens should have the following disclaimer:

Check with your structural engineer to make sure your building is health enough for a garden. If your vertical garden stays is sustainable for more than four hours, call your botanist. Some buildings get window leaks or other side…[Read more]

I have a secret I want to share with you… (Hush, Hush) “There is life after sustainability” !!! Does your title say Sustainable Architect or Landscape Architect? Would you rather people look out their windows and just look and those beautiful bare concrete walls? At least the plants you incorporate in those walls absorb some of the heat that the…[Read more]

There is SO much so see and experience! You may want to start by getting the back issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine when the Annual Meeting was held there a in 2006

http://www.asla.org/nonmembers/lam/lam_index06/lam_m.htm

DOn’t miss Michael Van Valkenburg Minneapolis sculpture garden.

Another firm’s work to explore is Coen +…[Read more]

Well the answer to your question is as varied as the potential firms that you might go to work for. There is a lot of confusion in the market technology wise. Because of competition of the AutoCad clones of Intellicad Autodesk would like everyone to migrate away from Autocad. They are really pushing Civil 3D and Revit. Though Revit was really…[Read more]

Tom Oslund has an exceptional design studio in Minneapolis. He lectured at Colorado State in 2008 and I had the good fortune of enjoying dinner with him and the other leaders of the SCASLA. Very nice guy. He does work all over the country but one project in MN that sticks out in my memory is the I35 Bridge reconstruction and memorial. If I were to…[Read more]

The Master Gardener Program is a good program. My dad is a Master Gardener. I am sure you would learn a lot about local plant material from their program. I you are going to go to school for a Landscape Design or LA program you might as well invest your time taking classes at the University that will count towards your degreee.

s.

I think you need to define your terms more precisely.
“Same experience as that of exteriorscapes” seems awfully broad and vague to me. So how can it be compared and tested?

What kind of program do you want to enroll in? I have studied Landscape Architecture in Copenhagen University, Life Sciences. If it is exchange you in theory could go in february (though it is quite late already to meet deadlines).
If it is full degree, you can only start in AUGUST, and there is possiblity to take the full degree (2 yrs) in…[Read more]

Looking at Thea’s website it says that it can use proxies which is fairly common with render engines now, but you wouldn’t place the low res tree you just place the high then turn it into a proxy so that it will display in the modelling program as a lower poly tree or even a box showing its extent.

Hi Frank,

I am curious. Can you create two tree models (one low res, one Hi res) The Xfrog files can be huge. If I could use Xrog’s companion program…Xfrogtune, I could generate a low res tree model of the same tree. Place the Low res image in SUpro.

Come time to render the SU model can your rendering engine swap out the low res tree models…[Read more]

Hi Frank.

If you want to get serious about your trees check out xFrog: http://www.xfrog.com/products/productStart.htm. It is the only company that I am aware of that allows you to export your texture maps and you tree models in one file. You export them in .obj file format and bring them into SU pro. See my discusion on the Sketchup Group: http://…[Read more]

I don’t wish you any bad luck but anytime we can reduce Planning and Zoining’s work force that is a great thing!
These organizations have gotten way to big fer their britches. Maybe if they lose and additional 30% of their staff they will get down to a size where the people who are left will only have time to concentrate on what is truly important…[Read more]

Just to follow-up on Rob’s comments, there are many examples where interior spaces (e.g. zoos, biodomes, botanical gardens) have been designed to replicate certain natural environments (e.g tropical rainforest, the ocean) . You should check out the California Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco, which has a four-story rainforest. There…[Read more]

I am comparing them, I would like to see if interiorscapes can simulate the same experience as that of exteriorscapes to those living in arid climates who tend to do almost everything indoors due to harsh or extreme weather conditions outside.

That rather depends on which interior and which exterior you are comparing, doesn’t it? And just what experiences you are interested in measuring. And what you mean by “nature.”

Some amazing “interiorscapes’ exist at zoos and botanic gardens (Bergers Bush, ZooZurich’s Masoala, Bronx Zoo’s JungleWorld, Garfield Park Conservatory’s Fern Room, the…[Read more]

Two perfect and perhaps correct responses. Thinking about “native plants of Morocco” for a project in some unspecified locale is like asking about “native plants of Texas” for a job in Houston.

Hi Aaron,

You mention warranty work… How about taking time to understand the site you are designing for? It won’t help your warranty claim issues if you are not designing for what a site will allow you to plant. Doesn’t do you any good to plan those lovely Blue Spruces when they are to be located in poorly drained site. It is not just about…[Read more]

I believe they can be very beautiful and in an urban environment perhaps reduce heatload a bit. But they should be advocated for what they are, not for what we wish they were.