Tosh K

@UVA the school transitioned from Form Z to Maya to Rhino while I was there. SketchUp was introduced along with AutoCAD and Rhino early in the program to give students a variety of tools to work from (Microstation was also req’d earlier). SketchUp is free and Rhino’s educational copy was $99 for us, so relatively affordable (considering prices of…[Read more]

There’s much to be said for how a team markets their project here as well. I must say that Turenscape’s projects carry a lot of impact – “Art of Survival” by Dr. Yu in its full glory is something to behold. I think it is very important to note that in most cases Turenscape has had to convince the local governments in China to do these projects…[Read more]

Met a guy from their program at LaBASH one year, great guy and the program sounded very interesting. There was an article on their program in Landscape Architecture magazine about a year back – probably worth tracking down (maybe through ASLA’s website)

“Sustaining Beauty” by Elizabeth Meyer would be a good read – it’s a critical response to landscape urbanism, accounting for the functional and aesthetic in the discourse on sustainability.

Spent a week at Turenscape about two years back. It was a lot fun being able to work on some cutting edge projects. The pay rate had been less than US, but considering the living expenses wasn’t so bad. The staff was great and the design talent was amazing. They were one of few local firms that incorporated traditional materials and concepts into…[Read more]

If you follow this, check out some of the criticism of Holly Whyte’s work (the methodology as well as the implicit conclusion based on a very particular sample pool).

An interesting topic might be current trends in park location: as cited in recent literature, public parks are more and more found on “undesirable” land. Since your study is with the AS dept, it might make sense to pursue research related to social history / past land use / future impact (more democratic landscape such as Central Park,…[Read more]

I would think the demand, esp those willing to pay for those services at an appropriate cost are low. There are limited budgets on many projects and that combined with standards (city, state, federal) -meant to create accessible and safe environments- would reduce opportunities for craftsmen to enter the picture.