Sketching
With an Eye Towards Nature: A Japanese Garden Design Intensive
Designing with nature is a powerful but recent current in the western garden making tradition. In Japan, garden makers have for well over a millennium been guided by the philosophy that nature is the first design teacher. That tradition has much to teach us about making places capable of answering ecological needs and providing visitors with a sense of space, stillness and balance even in a hectic, crowded urban setting. This three-day course provides 25 hours of theoretical and hands-on training in the Japanese approach to designing with nature and its modern use and application. Traditional techniques of arranging stone, plants, and water according to nature’s design principles are placed in historical perspective and given contemporary ecological and social context as tools for creating...Read More
How to Start Drawing – Simple First Steps
“I wanted to start drawing again, but I just never seem to find time for it” is a sentence we regularly hear from our colleagues. Obviously, many people would like to draw. Maybe they have fond memories of their student years when they were using sketching for design much more often or hand-drawing might have even been on the curriculum. But we believe that drawing is still a very viable tool for every designer and it’s worth picking up again, even if you haven’t been doing it for years or you want to start from scratch. Why draw? Picking up anything new is always a challenge. One has to have reasons for it and a good amount of motivation. We’ve recently written on Land8 about the motivation for drawing in “3 Reasons Why You Should Start Drawing Now”. Firstly,...Read More
3 Reasons You Should Start Drawing Now
When is the last time you packed a sketchbook and went drawing outside? Sitting down, really observing a place, understanding it more with each traced line? Maybe you’ve been drawing during your studies and stopped because you do not have the time anymore. Or you might be new to hand drawing and want to learn. We strongly believe hand drawing is something every landscape architect can benefit from. That’s why we’d like to share 3 reasons why you should definitely pick it up: 1. A New Trend Think five years back – a brief scan of competition entries in architecture and landscape architecture would show almost nothing but photorealistic renderings or photoshop montages. It was an attempt to come as close to the visual reality that is suggested to get built as possible. However, r...Read More