[Greg Bish]

one element of the argument is time…I believe I can get can get reasonable representation of my ideas faster and cheaper (a more easily distributed and edited!) with some help from technology.

but take a step back. why am i drawing?

1) Am I sorting out design ideas for myself? (sketching/thinking out loud)

2) Am I creating a visual that I hope will be a starting point for discussion? (opening the door)

3) Am I creating a visual that will put an end to “stakeholders'” doubts? (closing the deal)

Ideally, I wouldn’t approach all three of these problems in the same way.
To each his own. I’ve seen plenty of napkin sketches that achieve one or more of the above aims, and I’ve seen plenty of elaborate hand renderings and computer visualization wanking that achieves none of them.

the first question is how to reconcile the above aims with an ‘economy of graphics’. This leads you to the choice of tools which is a secondary consideration.

[Greg Bish]

People always say that: “there’s something about the smell of fresh mown grass”

Once, at a picnic, when a friend of my dad’s found out i was a Landscape Architect, he asked me a question.

he asked: “why does my neighor’s fresh cut lawn smell better than my fresh cut lawn”..

I was stumped..I think i responded “Probably because you didn’t have to cut it”..but it got me to thinking…with all the thousands of lawn seed mixes and selected species variations for component seeds, why have I never seen marketing focused on the SMELL of a particular mix? Seems like a niche opportunity.

[Greg Bish]

noise…yes, I’m with you there.

I grew up in West Virginia where lawns were large, and mowed lawn was the default condition regardless of terrain (it wasn’t unusual to see gas mowers with coils of rope attached to the handle :)…fortunately obsessive chemical lawn absolutism was the exception not the rule.

Now i live on a relatively flat 1/5 acre lot which I mow with a plug in electric mower which is relatively quiet. I also have a plug-in “leaf blower/vacuum” which informally i self-impose time restrictions on my own use. I use the blower-vac to get junk out of the beds and on to the lawn or drive where i can gather it up “the caveman way” (rakes and brooms). I sometimes want to dope slap neighbors who are out there for 2 hours on an otherwise pleasant Saturday afternoon, improperly operating an obnoxiously loud gas-powered blower doing a job that could be done better in 15 minutes with a rake(at least better in terms of MY quality of life)

My thought about lawn in design are:

Why do you need one? There are infinite valid reason…but someone has to think of one for the case at hand.
How deeply is the client initiated into the Chemical Green Lawn cult?

then maybe i set these sorts of self imposed challenges:

1) What would be the limits of the lawn if we assumed theoretically that it would be maintained with a “well-maintained” manual-reel mower (if such a thing existed)?

2) What would be the limits of the lawn if we assumed theoretically that it would be maintained with a plug-in electric mower a 50′ or 60′ cord or whatever..

These sort of parameters get me thinking about the size of the lawn, the form, but also edge conditions and slopes.

I don’t dislike lawn as a ground cover. It can be unifying and even low-maintenace (or at least low-skill maintenance) if one is less obssesive about golf course-like results) , etc. I just don’t like when the chemical madness sets in, especially when there is no idea behind the choice of lawn.

[Greg Bish]

This is a discussion that comes around from time to time.

There have been articles and letters on this subject published in LAM many times.

I wonder how many.

I’ve made my peace with ‘Landscape Architect’.

Maybe we should just render ‘Landscape Architect’ into Esperanto. to jazz it up.

[Greg Bish]

May I suggest that you step back and accept the LARE design criteria for what they are: the LARE design criteria. Someday soon it will be behind you.

parking criteria vary alot and from client’s odd-ball proprietary standards to the almost infinite variations of review agencies, municipalities. You usually end up having to accept these standards until said project is behind you. (In this respect your LARE experience does correspond to real world experience :).

I’ve worked in municipalities with parking standards pretty close to those you’ve described.
(Straban Township, Pennsylvania comes to mind)

Good Luck with you studies and the exam.

On a related topic, here’s an image of what i think is one of the most ridiculous drive through conifugartion ever allowed to be built. I’m not sure this image does justice to the on-the-ground experience. See if you can figure out the path of ingress and egress for the unfortunate soul approaching from the west and wanting to access the drive-thru

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=camp+h…

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