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Waterfalls and streams are things that, in my opinion, can greatly effect the quality of your overall render , even if they are only a minor component of the design. Done correctly, they can add life and movement to your rendering, done wrong and they become strangely shaped pools. Today I’m going to go over my rendering techniques for these critical items. As always, feel free to use them, tweak them, or ignore them. Let me know what you think! Streams and Waterfalls Step 1: Bite Off More Than You Can Chew… Or Need When you start the stream, the first thing you want to do is pick an area that is a decent bit larger then the area that makes up the stream, to give yourself some room to work. Step 2: Fill and Distort Take the area you selected, and fill it with the plain water te...Read More

Congratulations Bloggers Land8 Lounge Members featured in June Issue of LAM In this month’s issue of LAM, Daniel Jost features seven note-worthy blogs in his article, “The Dirt on Blogging: How can blogs change the way we communicate about Landscape Architecture?” Out of all the exceptional landscape blogs out there, I was happy to see that 5 out of the 7 bloggers mentioned in this article are members of Land8Lounge. Landscape+Urbanism – is a blog written by Jason King that focuses on the integration of ecological processes into cities. He describes his blog as, “dialogue and siftings from Portland, Oregon focusing on landscape architecture, sustainable urbanism, vegetated architecture, urban agriculture, living walls, green roofs, ecological planning and land...Read More

Note: I realize that this is Wednesday- I worked an 8 hour shift yesterday, and then went to see Transformers 2 at midnight, so I didn’t have quite enough time to finish this off before this morning, sorry for the wait. oh, and I have to admit, I am surprised that Transformers 2 has more finishing moves then Mortal Kombat… One of the things needed for a lot of renderings, whether it is for pools, lakes, streams, wetlands, or swales, is water. You by all means could get a more hand-rendered look by just selecting the area to be water, pick a color like R:52 G:90 B:187, put a wide, soft brush at say 20% opacity, paint over much of the water, then paint over the outer edges, leaving more and more of the middle alone, until you get the look you want. However, I’m going to sho...Read More

“I had recently purchased a standard Dell desktop PC for my family, which the kids used for playing videogames; it came is a terabyte internal hard drive. My children had twice as much storage as my entire staff. How did this happen? The answer is simple: We had gotten stuck thinking that storage was expensive, which in fact is had become dirt cheap. We treated the abundant thing – hard drive capacity – as if it were scarce, and the scarce thing – people’s time – as if it were abundant. The corporate bureaucracy had gotten the equation backward.” – Waste is Good, Chris Anderson, Wired – July 2009 One of the challenges that all firms have today, along with every other business in today’s world, is the decision of how much money to ...Read More

We’ve featured a variety of different shipping container homes, from a quick emergency shelter, to LOT-EK’s container home kit, student housing , and even an entire container city in London. One thing’s for sure, there isn’t a shortage of uses for containers as shelter, especially for those who like that super industrial architecture aesthetic. Leger Wanaselja Architecture finished their Container House at the close of last year, bringing a more traditional look to the container composed residence, located on top of a hill in an East Bay suburb overlooking San Francisco, Calif. The 1350 square foot, three bedroom house incorporates three forty-foot containers, two stacked on one another, and the third cut in half and stacked on itself. For their version of a container house Leger Wanaselja...Read More

image via pmccabin600 As the second Wave Deck on the Toronto Harbourfront, the Simcoe Slip has officially opened for public enjoyment! I’m absolutely in love with West 8‘s super sexy form designed to emulate the natural form of waves that make up this amazing deck. The last time I wote about this, it was still under construction. Of course, the first thing I thought when looking at the construction photos was that there’s no way it would be near as cool once they start sticking all those darn safety features on. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that the rails totally work and in fact, actually add to lovely curving form. However, eventhough there are rails in the area of the steepest portion of the curves, the railing then dives behind the backless seating benches to...Read More

Adam E. Anderson Design Under Sky The budgetary woes of California is old news, and months and months of an unfinished budget debate between lawmakers and Gov. Schwarzenegger are digging a deeper hole for Californians. Just recently however the proposed budget that’s now pushing for approval is one that will effectively terminate funding for California State Parks, closing 220 parks up and down the Golden State (59 will remain open). As anyone who’s visited one these parks, especially in the summertime, one can attest to their popularity as you’re rarely afforded the opportunity to experience one alone. I can only imagine the effect that the closing of so many will have on the impact of so few. More visitors filtered to the remaining inevitably means more degradation, mor...Read More

“Don’t get me wrong, these plans look good, but after a certain point any student can do a technically good Photoshop rendering. The key is to add something else to it. It needs some artistic flair, some of your personality to really stand out, and to really work” That is what I heard from one interviewer while looking at my portfolio shortly after I became a “Free Agent” in August – I am, after all, not technically unemployed, as I am employed by Best Buy, but I am looking for an opportunity to work with an LA firm again… plus it’s less of a blow to my self esteem. I recommend it to any other free agents out there, and I know there are a few- but I digress. It was at that point that I decided that I needed to really look at my rendering style and ...Read More

Maelo Maldonado works for Chicago-based Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects, the recent merger of two nationally recognized design firms. He’s also involved in planning the upcoming ASLA annual meeting, which will visit his city in September. I asked him about both big events. How long have you been with Doug Hoerr? Oh, wow. Actually, this is my second tour of duty with him. I started working with him as a summer intern when I was getting my Masters and then left for about a year and a half and then came back. This time around, it’s been about five years that I’ve been back. So you were there before the merger with Peter Lindsay Schaudt’s office? Yes, I was. What was that transition like: two of the top firms in the Chicago area coming together? Yeah, it actually was pretty inte...Read More

It is now day 6, and we are feeling great! After a hot but pleasant night at the quaint Belcove Hotel, located on Haulover Creek about a block down from the famous Swing Bridge, we spent the morning investigating the inner workings of downtown Belize City. I would not say they were the best inner workings I have ever seen. Except for the cheap waffles and johhny cakes, Belize City did not really have that much to offer at first glance. So, we decided to head on out to the Cayes and see what Caribbean Island life is all about. Here is a view or our hotel from the Swing Bridge, the yellow and red one on the right. And here is a little taste of the urban fabric downtown. What pretty colors! It is too bad nobody wanted to hang out in it in the 90 degree heat with no shade, however, the vendors...Read More

Before I started this post, I figured it would make sense to check on exactly what type of economic commitment firms have to make for the software that most see as a necessary cost of running business today, and what I saw was truly startling to me, a former employee of a small firm. Adobe Creative Suite CS4 Design Premium: $1,799.00 Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D (with BIM): $8,990.00 (with subscription) Autodesk AutoCAD 2010: $4,445.00 (with subscription) Autodesk 3DS Max Design 2010: #3,990.00 (with subscription) ESRI Arc Info GIS: $?????? (ESRI doesn’t give prices online apparently…) So a firm who wants to be able to use BIM for civil projects, along with CAD, 3DS Max renderings, Photoshop/Illustrator for renderings, Dreamweaver/Fireworks for a website and for some small web des...Read More

David Farmer is a licensed Landscape Architect and the founder and CEO of Ecografx, Inc. He graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo with a degree in Landscape Architecture in 1974 and Architecture in 1976. David still resides there where he practices on “the side” and perfects the software he developed – Land F/X. He is passionate about design, efficiency, and construction details. In this interview we talk about Buckminster Fuller, military projects, how he and his son created Land F/X, and his advice to young designers. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? I basically went to Cal Poly, SLO for my education. I was in the Architecture program there. It was a bit of a conservative program at the time and I was getting a bit disillusioned by it. So, when the...Read More