Landscape Architects Must Lead Geodesign: Here’s How

Landscape architects must seize leadership roles in Geodesign — the fusing of design processes with geospatial technologies — or risk ceding it to other professions. That was the sentiment expressed by ESRI President Jack Dangermond’s opening keynote speech at the Boston ASLA annual meeting. Dangermond envisions a 50-100 year plan for the planet, which will succeed only if we merge the “best design talent and science and technology.”  He feels the way forward is the “landscape architect’s methodology.” As landscape architects, we are poised to lead and implement innovative solutions to pressing design and planning challenges worldwide.  Using Geodesign to integrate geographic information into many forms of spatial design and decision-making will help our profession grow and gai...Read More

The idea of watching people lay brick might sound as exciting as watching paint dry, but the amazing Tiger-Stone brick laying machine has actually made the laborious task a pretty cool sight. A product of Dutch innovation, the efficient Tiger-Stone machine rolls out brick roads like carpet and, according to the company, can lay up to 400 meters (1,312 feet) of road a day.    If you’ve ever visited the Netherlands, you’ve likely noticed the ubiquity of the brick road. The abundance of clay in the country has made brick a popular paving material, particularly in low-traffic areas. The introduction of the electric-powered Tiger-Stone machine, however, has made the typically back-breaking work a breeze. A team of one to three workers stands on the Tiger-Stone platform and feeds loo...Read More

In this second tutorial about enhancing basic SketchUp views I want to show how, with minimal effort, you can take a flat, uninspiring, initial 2d export from SketchUp and create a drawing with depth that does more than just sell an idea but also tells a story. I, again, used a 21″ Cintiq for painting in Photoshop, Photoshop, and SketchUp.  An Intuos tablet will also work for painting. Starting Point. This simple export from SketchUp was my starting point.  The terrain is stepped and I have applied just basic color and texture to aid in my painting.  If I am working directly from SketchUp I always make sure to turn off the edges before I export the view. I brought this view into Photoshop by placing it onto an 11 x 17 at 300 dpi and began painting. Saturation. Initially, I duplicated...Read More

An idea almost as old as cities… Green walls: Function or fad? As cities and buildings all around the world are being covered in green, we take a look at the phenomenon of green walls. The first example of green walls may be found in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, even if they may have been more roof gardens than green walls. Later, from Scandinavia to Japan, numerous civilizations used climbing plants to cover buildings, making what is now called ‘green façades’. Green façades were very important in the Art and Crafts and Modern style movements in Europe. For instance, in the beginning of the 20th century, the ‘Jugendstil’ movement used climbing plants (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) on the buildings to make a seamless changeover between the house and  garden....Read More

This Saturday we’ve reached our tenth edition of our beloved Sketchy Saturday! I hope you’ve had as much fun as we had admiring and learning from all the artistic, technical and detailed sketches from our readers. As this is a special edition, a mini anniversary so to say, we tried to pick the best of the best, looking out for essentials like style, mediums and perspectives. Enjoy this week’s Top 10! No. 10 by Wiktor Kłyk, landscape architect ‘This is a sketch for an outdoor garden. The concept was based on symmetry and geometrical shapes, in respects to the outdoor furniture as well as the trees and plants that accompany them. The perspective of the sketch is semi-aerial, so that we can see how the atmosphere in the garden will be. It features a small pond, benches and rows of trees and f...Read More

Are we limited by our landscape? Do the constraints of our habitat force us to conform to nature’s restrictions? Fifty years ago, the answer was a resounding yes. Our ancestral farmers knew the basics to plant fertility: light, water, and nutrients. Without these three elements, there was no hope of developing a landscape. But as the concept of landscape design evolves, there emerges a new frontier for the adventurous innovator: designing the uncharted landscape of mountain, volcano, and desert. Rak Jebel Al Jais Mountain Resort by OMA For instance, look at Rak Jebel Al Jais Mountain, Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates. Not surprisingly, the UAE is continuing its awe-inspiring growth spurt by challenging the most uncompromising mountainous terrain. The construction of a mega resort perch...Read More

Guerrilla gardener Steve Wheen is making the streets of East London greener and brighter–one tiny pothole garden at a time. “The Pothole Gardener project,” he writes, “is all about creating unexpected moments of happiness. My little gardens are a respite from the greyness of London.” In this week’s Filmtastic Friday, we take a look at the funny and heart warming public responses to these creative and charming pothole gardens.   From the description:   “Holes Of Happiness is a short documentary looking at the reactions of the public to some pothole gardens that have been popping up around East London.”     Missed last week’s Filmtastic Friday? No worries, you can check out our full archive of featured films here.

The Garden of Hilton Pattaya by T.R.O.P. Terrains + Open Space, in Chonburi, Thailand.  If you crave a cool and inspiring landscape design, you are at the right place. TROP is an architectural design studio based in Bangkok, Thailand. The studio has been working since 2007 and as well as been included in our Top 10 Names In Landscape Architecture Today Trop has already won awards from ASLA. Hilton Pattaya is one of the award winning projects. It was short – listed for Hotel of the Year 2012 by World Architecture News and is a winner of the Thailand Property Awards for Best Landscape Design. On top of a shopping mall, a truly serene environment is created, hidden from the chaotic Red-Light Beach below. Motivation Behind The Project The project is located in Pattaya, a beach resort jus...Read More

I’m sitting at my family home over the holiday break reading a book called If I Die in a Combat Zone, by Tim O’Brien. He is remembering his first day as an LZ minuteman somewhere in Vietnam in 1968. The sergeant addressing his new squad says, amongst other things, “Remember your training and you have a good chance of surviving; however, for some of you be certain, your ass is grass.” It reminded me of design school. It was the feeling of looking around the room and wondering out of so many nice and talented people how many would be practicing in the years to come and in what way. There was no secret that the global financial crisis had created a work drought. I thought about training for a professional sport, and after five years not being able to play the game. It ...Read More

LARE’s Section 3: Design is where, in my opinion, things start coming together. The last two sections are hard for a number of reasons. First, this section requires you to use multiple facets of your knowledge at one time to solve a problem. Second, Section 3 is the most changed in format from previous exams and there is less study material available to you. Lastly, test makers have a difficult job in testing creativity in a computer format. After looking at vignettes from previous years, I felt that Section 3 might actually be easier now as long as you don’t get hung up overthinking some of the questions. However, I cannot be sure because I haven’t taken the older format. Comparatively, this new format seems to push test takers to solve one specific problem at a time instead of a wh...Read More

LARE’s Section 2: Site Inventory and Analysis at first glance is one of the easier sections because it is one of the most covered set of topics in school. However, the section covers topics that include a level of analysis that will require you to brush up on specific regulations and requirements and apply those in a critical manner on a wide range of exercises. Some of the information here is also applicable to others sections of the exam.   OVERVIEW OF SECTION 2 The focus of Section 2 of the LARE is Analysis and Site Inventory with ‘Site Inventory’ covering 22% of the topics and ‘Analysis of Existing Conditions’ covering the remaining 78%. This is essentially a part of Section B of the old version of the test. While the topics are the same, this section, lik...Read More

When doing digital illustrations for a project I am continually asked about how much of the drawing was actually modeled versus the amount that was painted in Photoshop.  So I put together a bit of a tutorial from a recent sketch for a park project I helped design this past year.  Generally, as you will see from the tutorial, I like to model only what is necessary.  Kurt Fromm describes it as creating a “stage set”.  I place enough information in the model to give me visual cues from which to paint from as I am much more comfortable painting and drawing than clicking a mouse for hours at a time.  Most often I will create a simple SketchUp or Rhino model, export into Cinema 4D to render, and then into Photoshop for painting.  In the particular case of this drawing, time was limi...Read More