Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.

com

www.ebook777.com
Representing Landscapes: Digital
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Most landscape architectural designs now include some form of digital representation, but
there is much more scope for creativity beyond the standard Photoshop montages. In this
new book on representing landscapes, Nadia Amoroso brings together contributions from
some of the leading landscape departments in the world to explore the variety in digital
illustration methods.
In each chapter, leading lecturers, professors and practitioners in the field of landscape
architecture explain a specific digital approach with the use of images from their
department to show how each technique can be used in inspirational examples.
Throughout the book over 200 colour images cover the spectrum of digital representation
to help discuss the various drawing types which are invaluable when communicating ideas
in the field of landscape architecture.
With worked examples in the chapters and downloadable images suitable for class use,
this is an essential book for visual communication and design studios.
Nadia Amoroso is an academic in landscape architecture whose work focuses on the role
of visual representation, digital media, urban design and creative mapping. She is the co-
founder and Creative Director of DataAppeal™, a data-design visualization and GIS
company. She also teaches design studios at the University of Guelph. She holds and has
held a number of international academic and administrative positions, including Lawrence
Halprin Fellow at Cornell University, the Garvan Chair Visiting Professor, and Associate
Dean. She has a PhD from the Bartlett School of Architecture and degrees in Landscape
Architecture and Urban Design from the University of Toronto. She is the author/editor of
a number of books, including The Exposed City: Mapping the Urban Invisibles,
Representing Landscapes: A Visual Collection of Landscape Architectural Drawings and
Digital Landscape Architecture Now.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

Representing Landscapes
Digital
Edited by Nadia Amoroso

www.ebook777.com
First published 2015
by Routledge Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Nadia Amoroso
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Representing landscapes: digital/edited by Nadia Amoroso.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Landscape architecture—Computer-aided design. 2. Landscape design—Data processing. I. Amoroso, Nadia, editor.
SB475.9.D37R47 2015
712.0285—dc23
2014031789
ISBN: 978-1-138-77837-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-77838-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73185-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Garamond
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Additional materials are available on the companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/Amoroso
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

Contents
Notes on Contributors
Foreword by James Corner
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Representations of the Landscapes via the Digital: Drawing types
Nadia Amoroso
Diagrams and Mapping Drawings
2 Datascapes: Maps and diagrams as landscape agents
Andrea Hansen
3 Photographing the Hyper-Index
Eva Castro and Federico Ruberto
4 Mapping and Refining the Site
James Melsom
5 Digital Diagramming
Kofi Boone
Presentation Plans
6 Digital Presentation Plans: Still the foundation of landscape design representation?
Joshua Zeunert
7 Aerial Visions/Ground Control: The art of illustrative plans and bird’s-eye views
Karl Kullmann
8 The Site Plan is Dead: Long live the site plan
Roberto Rovira
Axonometric Drawings
9 Chunking Landscapes
Christopher Marcinkoski
10 Landscapes that Fit Together
Maria Debije Counts
Section-Elevations
11 Vertical Plane Typologies: Examining sections and elevations

www.ebook777.com
 Daniel H. Ortega and Jonathon R. Anderson
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
12 Landschaftslinien: The obvious, the hidden and a method for their decryption
Dietmar Straub
13 Alternative Revelations of Sections: Origins of the subjective section
Andrew Hartness
Perspectives
14 Sensing Landscapes through Perspectives
Maria Debije Counts
15 Reinforcement through Opposition: Metrics and emotion in project visualization
Andrew Hartness
16 Hover Craft
David Fletcher
Digital Modeling and Fabrication
17 Land Formations, Tectonic Grounds
José Alfredo Ramírez and Clara Olóriz Sanjuán
18 Terra Automata: Beyond representation of landscapes and ecologies
Bradley Cantrell
19 Digital Media and Material Practice
David Mah
All Drawing Types: Case Studies
20 Recasting Jakarta: Processing the “Plastic River”
Christophe Girot and James Melsom
21 Repairing Greyfield Sites: Visual narrative in describing emerging urban landscapes
Kofi Boone
22 The Case for an Alternative Creek, Arroyo, Puerto Rico
Roberto Rovira
Afterword: Closing remarks
Roberto Rovira
Bibliography
Index
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

Contributors
Jonathon R. Anderson is an independent designer and assistant professor in the School
of Architecture at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Jonathon has been published,
retailed, and exhibited at an international level, and explores how industrial manufacturing
and computer numerical control technologies influence the design and making processes.
Kofi Boone is an associate professor of Landscape Architecture at NC State University,
College of Design. Professor Boone is the recipient of several awards, including the Opal
Mann Green Engagement Scholarship Award, the Department of Landscape Architecture
Professor of the Year, and the Alumni Association Outstanding Teacher.
Bradley Cantrell is an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He
was the Director and an associate professor at the Robert Reich School of Landscape
Architecture at Louisiana State University. He is an academic and landscape architect
whose work focuses on the role of computation and media in environmental and
ecological design. He is currently working on the Mississippi Delta, creating technological
interfaces which imagine new forms of settlement, infrastructure, and habitat.
Eva Castro is visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing and at the Architectural
Association, where she has been teaching since 2003. Castro is cofounder of Plasma
Studio and GroundLab. She has been recognized with several awards, including the Next
Generation Architects Award, the Young Architect of the Year Award and the Contract
World Award.
James Corner is the founder of James Corner Field Operations, a renowned landscape
architectural and urban design practice based in New York City. His projects include New
York’s High Line, Santa Monica’s Tongva Park, and a new city for Qianhai, Shenzhen. He
is also professor of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania School of
Design, and author of The Landscape Imagination (Princeton Architectural Press, 2014).
Maria Debije Counts is a visiting instructor at the Stuckeman School of Architecture and
Landscape Architecture at Pennsylvania State University. Maria is also project designer
and director of business development with Christopher Counts Studio, based in Brooklyn,
New York.
David Fletcher is a landscape architect, urban designer, professor, and writer. His work
addresses process, urbanized watersheds, green infrastructure, and post-industrial
urbanism. Fletcher is the founding principal of Fletcher Studio, an innovative and award-
winning practice based in San Francisco. He teaches at the California College of Arts.
Christophe Girot is Full Professor at the Chair of Landscape Architecture at the
Department of Architecture of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH).
He is an award-winning landscape architect and researcher. He founded Landscape
Visualization and Modeling Lab (LVML) and Institute of Landscape Architecture (ILA).
Andrea Hansen is the principal of Fluxscape (www.fluxscape.net), which focuses on data
visualization, web-based mapping, and data-driven landscapes in post-industrial cities.

www.ebook777.com
She is the editor of Visualizing Systems, and also lectures and teaches widely, most
recently at Harvard Free ebooks
Graduate ==>
School www.ebook777.com
of Design, California College of the Arts, and
Louisiana State University, where she was the 2013–2014 Marie M. Bickham Chair.
Andrew Hartness is an adjunct professor in the department of Landscape Architecture at
Rhode Island School of Design and principal of Hartness Vision, a design and
visualization studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He studied architecture at the Ecole
Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris, France, and Urban Design at Harvard Graduate School of
Design.
Karl Kullmann is an assistant professor at the College of Environmental Design, UC
Berkeley, where he teaches digital delineation, design studios and landscape architectural
theory. Representation of the landscape is a consistent theme in Karl’s teaching, design
practice and research.
David Mah is a lecturer at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Previous to Harvard, he
has taught at Cornell University’s departments of Architecture as well as City and
Regional Planning from 2007 till 2010 and at the Architectural Association’s Graduate
Design School in London from 2004 till 2007. He is also a principal at asensio-mah, a
multi-disciplinary design collaborative active in the design of architecture, landscape
design, masterplanning, interior design and installations.
Christopher Marcinkoski is an assistant professor of landscape architecture and urban
design at the University of Pennsylvania, and founding director of PORT A+U, a leading-
edge urban design consultancy based in Chicago. Prior to his appointment at Penn,
Christopher was a senior associate at James Corner Field Operations, where he led that
office’s large-scale urban design work, including the Qian Hai Water City in Shenzhen,
China and Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, Tennessee.
James Melsom is a practicing landscape architect and member of the Boston Society of
Landscape Architects, collaborating in projects in Switzerland and throughout Europe. He
teaches and is research fellow at the Institute of Landscape Architecture, Federal Institute
of Technology (ETH) Zurich. He leads the Landscape Visualization and Modeling Lab
(LVML), focused on modeling and visualization research.
Daniel H. Ortega, ASLA, is an associate professor of Landscape Architecture and
Coordinator of Landscape Architecture and Planning at University of Nevada, Las Vegas
(UNLV) School of Architecture. He is also a co-principal investigator, for the Laboratory
for Innovative Media Explorations (LIME) at UNLV School of Architecture.
José Alfredo Ramírez is an architect co-founder and director of Groundlab. He studied
Architecture in Mexico City and the Architectural Association (AA) Landscape Urbanism
graduate program in London in 2005. Alfredo has worked and developed projects at the
junction of architecture, landscape and urbanism in a variety of contexts such as China,
India, Dubai, Mexico, and Spain, among others. He has experience in large-scale
developments like the Olympic Master Plan for London 2012 or the International
Horticultural Exhibition in Xian China 2011. He has lectured on the topic of Landscape
Urbanism and the work of Groundlab worldwide and currently co-directs the Landscape
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Urbanism MA at the AA.
Roberto Rovira is Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department at Florida
International University and principal of the interdisciplinary Studio Roberto Rovira. A
registered landscape architect, his teaching, research and creative work explore the field of
landscape architecture through art and design and often test the concepts of time and
transformation and the potential of landscape architecture to play a pivotal role in
envisioning and shaping public space. He was recognized as one of Florida International
University’s Top Scholars in 2009 and his work has been published and recognized by the
American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Institute of Architects, the
International Federation of Landscape Architects, the Council for Educators in Landscape
Architecture, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Van Alen Institute,
Routledge/Taylor & Francis, and Princeton Architectural Press.
Federico Ruberto is co-founder of reMIX Studio and a PhD researcher at the European
Graduate School. He graduated in Architecture and received his Masters in Urban and
Landscape Design at the Polytechnic of Milan in 2008. He is currently a tutor in the
Landscape Urbanism unit at Tsinghua University and at the Laboratory for Computational
Design (LCD), both located in Beijing. He has taught in numerous international
workshops, including the Architectural Association Visiting School in Beijing 2012 and
São Paulo 2013.
Clara Olóriz Sanjuán is a PhD architect, tutor and practicing architect. She graduated
from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura Universidad de Navarra (ETSAUN)
and obtained her PhD on the relationship between architecture and technology, focusing
on industrialized systems of production at the ETSAUN and at the Architectural
Association (AA). Previously, she worked for Foreign Office Architects and Arquitectos
Cerouno. Currently, she teaches at the AA Landscape Urbanism Master’s program as a
design tutor as well as at the ETSAUN. She is also co-directing the AA Visiting School
Computing Topos in Bilbao and the AA Research Cluster Urban Prototypes.
Dietmar Straub is a landscape architect, and principal partner of Straub Thurmayr CSLA
Landscape Architects and Urban Designers. He is currently teaching Landscape
Architecture at the University of Manitoba, Canada. Dietmar is a full member of both the
Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA) and the Bavarian Chamber of
Architects in Germany.
Joshua Zeunert is a registered landscape architect from Australia, where he worked in
practice and academia in Sydney and Adelaide before relocating to the UK where he is a
lecturer at Writtle School of Design. Recent career achievements include being labeled
“Adelaide’s greenest ex pat” (Adelaide Magazine 2008), being awarded the Australian
Institute of Landscape Architects Future Leaders Scholarship (2009) and being featured in
a portrait exhibition titled Celebrating Innovators at Parliament House in Canberra,
Australia (2012).

www.ebook777.com
Foreword Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
James Corner
This book examines a wide range of digital media techniques used in the representation of
landscapes, particularly designed landscapes, the invention of landscape architects.
Historically, one can demonstrate that landscapes themselves have never been separate
from representation. Indeed, the very concept of landscape, the various ways of seeing and
comprehending the environment as landscape, begins with representation – primarily the
map and the perspective painting. Indeed, these very old representational types are as
pervasive and influential today in shaping the landscape imagination as they ever have
been. Maps and plans are fundamental for any form of land navigation, demarcation or
organization, while images in the form of paintings, photographs, sketches and drawings
capture space, scale, mood and character. So what happens to our understanding and
creating of landscape when we enter the world of digital media?
This book attempts to answer this question, through a state-of-the-art survey of digital
techniques and conjecture about possibilities for design. One obvious answer is that digital
media has quite radically advanced the speed with which landscape architectural projects
can be visualized and developed. The plan, section, axonometric and perspective can all
be conflated into one digital model, a networked and thoroughly linked amalgam of
seemingly infinite cuts, views and layers. Subsequent studies, revisions and modifications
can be made endless times with great speed and accuracy. Any change in one dimension is
caught and embedded in all other dimensions and viewpoints instantly. Impressionistic
renderings and views can also be generated with relative ease. For imagining, thinking and
showing to others, digital media opens up a rapid-fire and indispensable panoply of
techniques for landscape architects.
There is more than just speed, impressionism and inter-linked vectors of information
though. Digital media radically suggests a host of innovative and hitherto unimaginable
possibilities for thinking about landscapes, both spatially and temporally. There will
always be the importance of traditional ways of seeing and doing – maps, plans, sections,
perspectives, and so forth – but digital media allows for wholly new conceptions of space
and time. One obvious effect in this regard is parametric modeling, or the creation of very
complex curvilinear geometries to produce supple, pliant, continuous and enfolded forms
of surface and space – forms often likened to biological and organic forms through both
likeness and genesis of process. Another example might be the serial repetition of small
multiples, each unit varying by a very slight degree to produce a field that is self-similar
yet locally differentiated – extensive intercellular mat-like constructions. Again, both the
likeness and process invoke natural life forms and patterns of adaptive emergence through
multiplication. A third example might be datascapes: both the representation and
projection of landscapes through the analysis and deployment of massive amounts of data.
Information has always been a fundamental part of environmental design and planning,
but in the world of the digital its effects are multiplied exponentially.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Other examples might include various animation techniques, simulation and analogue
modeling, serialized sections, scalable fractals and miniaturization, not to mention the
very exciting interface between imaging and digital fabrication, both as physical model
and as actual production and delivery of a project through construction. This book
explores these and other forms of digital media and technique in the advancement of
landscape representation, composed by students in the field from various landscape
architecture programs worldwide. It is exciting and provocative. These abstractions may
seem worlds apart from the tactile pleasures of simply experiencing landscapes in their
sensuous physicality, but the possibilities for innovation and design are endless.
James Corner
James Corner is the founder of James Corner Field Operations, a renowned landscape
architectural and urban design practice based in New York City. His projects include New
York’s High Line, Santa Monica’s Tongva Park, and a new city for Qianhai, Shenzhen. He
is also professor of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania School of
Design, and author of The Landscape Imagination (Princeton Architectural Press, 2014).

www.ebook777.com
Acknowledgments
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
This book would not be possible without the vision, efforts, research and support of the
contributors. I would like to acknowledge all the contributors (many are my friends and
colleagues) from various universities across the globe who have dedicated their time to
help shape and make this publication a reality. Their ongoing collaboration, dedication to
teaching, forward-thinking approach and expertise in visual communication using digital
means have made this publication possible. This book has also become a medium to
reconnect with colleagues and connect with new ones along the journey, and offered a way
to explore the impressive works created by their students.
I would like to express my gratitude to all the contributors involved in the workings of
this publication, including: Eva Castro, Federico Ruberto, José Alfredo Ramírez, Clara
Olóriz Sanjuán, Joshua Zeunert, Bradley Cantrell, Roberto Rovira, Andrew Hartness,
Dietmar Straub, Kofi Boone, James Melsom, Christophe Girot, Christopher Marcinkoski,
David Fletcher, Karl Kullmann, Andrea Hansen, Maria Debije Counts, Daniel Ortega,
Jonathon Anderson and David Syn Chee Mah. Their personal and professional expertise
on the topic of digital representation in expressing landscape ideas has framed the book as
a broad visual resource for anyone to enjoy. Along with the professors’ input, their
students’ drawings are equally important, and offer the “meat” of the book. Without their
creative thinking and digital skills, this book would not be possible. Therefore, many
thanks extend to all the students whose works are featured in the publication.
I would like to offer a special thanks to James Corner for his inspirational and thought-
provoking Foreword and for setting the tone of this book. His professional and theoretical
works have made an extensive positive contribution in the profession and society. I
personally have followed his work as a student and in my academic career. His ongoing
passion for landscape architectural design and landscape representation is clearly evident
in the success of his final products.
I would also like to send a special thanks to my friend and colleague Roberto Rovira,
for contributing the closing remarks. Roberto’s passion for teaching is clearly evident in
the remarkable works by his students and his Council of Educators in Landscape
Architecture (CELA) award for excellence in Design Studio Teaching.
I would also like to thank my former student Matt Perotto for his assistance.
Thank you to Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group) and for the creative vision of Alex
Hollingsworth, Louise Fox, Sadé Lee and their team, in helping to shape this idea and to
make this visually rich publication a reality.
Finally, I am grateful to my parents for their ongoing support and encouragement; to
Serena, Sofia, Siena and Giuliano; and to my husband, Haim, for his devotion and
patience, which have made this process a positive experience.
Nadia Amoroso
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

Introduction

www.ebook777.com
1 Representations of the Landscapes via the
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Digital
Drawing types
Nadia Amoroso
As designers of the built environment, we are tasked with how to provide innovative and
creative design solutions for a given environment. Coming up with great ideas can often
be a challenge. And, once we arrive with plausible concepts, ideas most likely will fall
short, if they are not conveyed in a visually compelling and informative manner.
Consequently, we may risk losing the interest of the reader. Representing Landscapes:
Digital is a publication celebrating an array of visual representations of various landscapes
created by students in landscape architecture programs across the globe, using digital
means. This publication is meant to be both instructional and inspirational for students at
all college/university levels and for instructors and professionals alike. As students and
designers of the built environment, we tend to look at a collection of landscape graphics
books as a resource to help us visually communicate our ideas and to learn a visual
vocabulary to depict our concepts. From Grant Reid’s or Francis Ching’s classic
instructional books or the loose yet evocative sketches and techniques offered by Mike
Lin, these kinds of books have provided such a wealth of resource with regard to drawing
techniques and tips on how to draw the concept via specific drawing types. Hand graphic
skills, though becoming a lost art, are still an important skill to acquire, since they are a
good way to quickly sketch ideas and start the process of a digital drawing. Landscape
architects are becoming much more dependent on skill sets focusing on communication of
ideas processed and generated via software programs. More and more, styles and
techniques that were often composed by unique pencil or brush strokes and media such as
watercolor, graphite, or pen and ink are now often replaced by a combination of features
within specific software programs to help compose a specific quality for the drawing.
Over the years of teaching studios and visual representation courses, the one issue that has
remained constant is students’ desire and inquiry to “see” and “understand” the graphic
language to best communicate their idea.
This book is a continuum from Representing Landscapes: A Visual Collection of
Landscape Architectural Drawings. It emphasizes representations of landscapes and ideas
using digital techniques and media targeted at the next generation of designers. The
purpose of the publication is to capture visually various landscape types and case projects
using drawing conventions (drawing types), composed digitally, and taught in the
profession to communicate concepts.
The creation of this book is a response to the overwhelming demands from students in
the profession on how to best represent landscapes by specific drawing types; the book is
also a means to quickly access a range of compelling visual examples done by other
students from various universities to depict landscapes and design concepts.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
I gathered a group of esteemed colleagues from various institutions teaching landscape
architectural studios and/or digital visual representation. They were tasked to search,
compile, judge, and select some visually compelling landscape graphics composed
digitally. The book is structured slightly differently from the previous edition. It is
organized based on the “drawing type” (presentation plans, diagrams/mapping, sections,
perspectives, etc.) similarly to classic instructional graphic books. Each contributor
(professor) has focused on a specific drawing type. The professors have contributed
critical and descriptive commentaries, defining each assigned drawing type and explaining
the impact of using different digital techniques and graphical styles. Some have redefined
the drawing type for today’s and future generations. Each professor has provided his or her
personal and professional reflection on the drawing type and how each drawing type is
part of an investigative design process, an artistic expression and communication devices.
Some provide more academic insight on the topic of the drawing type and its importance
in the profession to communicate ideas, referencing digital capacities.
These essays are accompanied by captivating images drawn by their students. In some
chapters, the images are directly referred to in the article. Collectively, the publication
offers a guide to foster creative and understandable visual communication of ideas. Since
the images are created by students, their fellow peers can resonate with the works. The
publication provides a one-stop shop to see examples of “good” visual techniques and
visual presentations of ideas.
Each drawing type serves as a specific visual communication device. The diagram can
be a very powerful communicative graphic to covey the complex nature of the site,
conditions, systems, structures, functions, flows, overall ideas, and all through simple line-
work and notations. Diagrams can be the simplest graphic expression, yet depict the most
complex ideas. Diagrams can depict analytical aspects of the site, showcase opportunities
and constraints and convey design process (Figures 1.1–1.3). Analytical diagrams can be
used to visually express a site in individual parts, organize and classify them and visually
describe how they can be used in other situations. Site, environmental and cultural
conditions, hierarchy and relationship of spaces or elements are typically conveyed via
diagrammatic notations.
James Corner argues that representation is both analytical and generative, and that
diagrams have these dual functions.1 He also argues that diagrams are tools or agents of
investigation and revelation, forming new ideas, design and operations of the space.2
Generative diagrams tend to convey new form and concepts—how the proposed ideas
operate and function. They “generate” new concepts (Figure 1.4). Diagrams can display
complex planting strategies and temporal/seasonal changes (Figure 1.5).
Mapping is another important visual instrument in landscape architecture and closely
tied to diagramming. Mapping in landscape architecture is often related to visual markings
and notations referenced to geographical areas. Mapping can be a creative process, as
described by Corner,3 and helps us understand the complexity of site, by visually
abstracting selected pieces of the geographies and visually recording objective and
subjective measures of the site. Professors Castro and Ruberto showcase some progressive

www.ebook777.com
3D site abstractions through “fabricated” mappings in their chapter. In this particular
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
article, the term “indexing” is defined as part of the exploratory process in understanding
sites.
Another important topic related to diagramming and mapping is “datascaping,” as
elaborated in Professor Hansen’s essay. Corner describes datascapes as:
imagings constructive and suggestive of new spatial formations … so “objectively”
constituted (from numbers, quantities, facts, and pure data) that they have great
persuasive force in the bureaucratic and management aspects of contemporary city
design. They differ from the quantitative maps of conventional planning in that they
image data in knowingly selective ways. They are designed not only to reveal the
spatial effects of various shaping (e.g., regulatory, zoning, legal, economic, and
logistical rules and conditions), but also to construct a particular eidetic argument.4
Datascapes are multidimensional representations of cities or landscapes based on data
associated with its site. They can visualize the intangible and often invisible forces that
shape our environment. We can further expand this term to “geodesign,” an all-
encompassing term that reflects the use of geographic data as a means to help generate
planning and landscape designs. Geodesign is a process that involves the capture and
visual production of geographically spatial information which can be facilitated by the
means of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications. The resulting information
can be incorporated with other scientific and social, cultural-based data sets, facilitating a
highly visual and communicable result. This ability to spatially analyze geographical
information, whether culturally, economically, or ecologically significant, can then be used
by landscape architects to design landscapes that are suitable and meaningful. This
evolves from the concepts of Ian McHarg’s mapping system and Corner’s creative process
of mapping. A suite of digital tools is available using geographically based information to
help craft and formulate new designs, as part of a data-driven process. More mapping and
geo-data visualization tools are offered online. Visually engaging 3D GIS and geo-data
visualization applications can offer landscape architecture and urban design students the
tools to analyze and visualize data from multi-dimensional perspectives (Figures 1.6 and
1.7).5 The designed 3D data models can be integrated into a master planning process, help
generate new forms, and allow for evidence-based design solutions (Figure 1.8).
Presentation plans are one of the most important tools in landscape architecture. In a
scaled format, plans provide a measured and descriptive visual layout of landscape design
(Figures 1.9–1.11). Professor Rovira speaks about the site plan through the aerial and
bird’s-eye view of the landscape at that “static” moment. The plan guides us through
various spaces: Rovira explains how new technologies can allow us to communicate
dynamics and changing conditions in the plan today. Karl Kullmann reinforces the
importance of understanding the site holistically from “a bird’s-eye view,” using new
technologies to communicate site from an aerial perspective, as the perception of the
landscape and its representation.
Axonometrics (projection plans/isometrics) or axo-drawings are 3D representations of
the plan skewed and extruded. Axonometrics is typically a measured abstraction
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
(extrusion) of the plan, drawn to scale on all axes. It is a type of parallel projection. Given
today’s technologies, designers often create a 3D digital model of the concept and
showcase it at aerial perspective, rotated at a 45 or 30 or 60 degree angle of some sort,
showcasing optimal views of the landscape spatially (Figure 1.12).
Professor Marcinkoski provides a brief historical and technical overview of the
axonometric. He describes how digital modeling software like SketchUp, Rhino,
Grasshopper or 3DS Max, used in combination with graphic editing software such as
Photoshop or Illustrator, has allowed for increasingly sophisticated abstraction and
extrusion of the plan. Professor Debije Counts presents an elegant chapter on the use of
axonometric renderings to describe landforms and landscape designs in general.
Sections and elevations are critical visual devices to illustrate the vertical dimension
and positioning of the landscape and its elements (Figures 1.13 and 1.14). Professors
Ortega and Anderson describe the section as “vertical plane typologies” and how various
technologies can quickly generate accurate “slices” of the landscape to depict the vertical
dimension of the design and see relationships between various elements to the ground
plane. The importance of the section in all processes in the design stage is advocated by
Professor Straub. He provides an analogy with the computed axial tomography (CAT)
scan, as a multiple computer-generated cross-section to examine slices within our body in
order to make sense and visualize complexity.
Perspective drawings capture the essence and character of the space. These drawings
are often used as marketing devices to seduce the reader about the design. The plan,
section and axonometric drawing provide a measured relationship of elements of and
within the landscape either on a horizontality (via the plan view) or vertically (via the
section-elevation). The perspective drawing provides a sense of depth and perception. The
designer can compose a fairly realistic “view” of the landscape via a photo-realistic
application in a perspective drawing. Photo editing and image modification (raster)
software such as PhotoShop offer students a platform to “create” imaginative and “eye-
candy” perspectives that can quickly capture the reader’s attention (Figure 1.15).
Shade and shadow effects depicted using graphite smudging and lighting effects created
by the eraser are now achieved by different filters, masks, and opacity levels in photo
editing software. We have adopted a new term to draw the perspective drawing
—“photoshopping.” Textures, colors, and effective lighting can be quickly added to
change the space. Existing sites transform into new landscapes with the addition of
elements, textures, people, and lighting effects overlaid on to aspects of existing site
context (Figures 1.16–1.18). “Photoshopping” techniques can alter the existing scene to
showcase seasonal and environmental changes (Figures 1.19 and 1.20). Creative
techniques that balance black and white and colored elements offer a sense of mood and
atmosphere in the scene; for example, the use of dramatic orange skies in the background
to set the “feel” of the foreground (Figure 1.21). Perspective drawings allow the reader to
become immersed in the space. Perspectives can convince clients about the idea and
persuade them to make a decision.
Models are important analytical and presentational tools of the design process. They

www.ebook777.com
convey the overall spatial and at times realistic portrayal of the site. Landscape form,
Free
building mass, street ebooks
furniture, ==>and www.ebook777.com
vertical horizontal elements all come together to
showcase the final design. Similar to a physical model, a digital model can be extruded
and “popped up” from its plan drawing. Elements and forms can be added, deleted and
modified in a digital construct (Figure 1.22). With parametric software like Grasshopper,
alternative designs of the landscape can quickly be generated and transformed by inputting
a set of conditions and functions. From the digital environment, the spatial
representational comes to life via a 3D printing process, laser cutting or computer
numerical control (CNC) process, fabricated into a physical measured thing (Figure 1.23).
The final chapter concludes with the packaging of the drawings into communicating
one’s ideas with a combination of drawing types to tell a story (Figure 1.24 and 1.25). The
professors have selected case studies (studio projects) to show how the combinations of
various drawing types collectively offer insights and convince the reader of the final
design. Each drawing type is a critical component of visually communicating and
educating the reader about the site and overall solution. This book is a resource to “see”
and “think” about ways to represent and communicate landscapes effectively. The
publication is meant to visually inspire and guide students and the next generation of
landscape architects. Each of the subsequent chapters will further elaborate on the drawing
type and composition using digital means. The capability to apply “innovative” digital
representation becomes successful when one understands not only how the image was
achieved, but more importantly, why that specific drawing type was visualized in a
particular manner. As more sophisticated digital tools become available, coupled with
comprehension of why and how to use them, the ability to create more complex surfaces
and form, and the opportunity to explore these complexities become more plausible and
also expands students’ creative reach.

Notes
1 See James Corner’s article, “Representation and Landscape: Drawing and Making in the Landscape Medium,” in
Word & Image, vol 8. no. 3, 1992, pp. 243–275.
2 See Jacky Bowring and Simon Swaffield’s article, “Diagrams in Landscape Architecture,” in The Diagrams of
Architecture: AD Reader, by Mark Garcia. Chichester: Wiley, 2010. Refer to pp. 144–145.
3 See James Corner’s article, “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention,” in Mappings, edited by
Denis Cosgrove. London: Reaction Books, 1999, pp. 213–252.
4 See James Corner’s article, “Operational Eidetics: Forging New Landscapes,” in Harvard Design Magazine. Fall,
1998, p. 25.
5 I co-founded a company called DataAppealTM that developed a web-based, intuitive and visually engaging 3D GIS
and geo-data visualization application. The tool stemmed from my PhD research and the need for students and
landscape architects to have access to an easy-to-use GIS software that does not require any training, and a tool that
generates 3D designed maps and datascapes on the digital globe. It also provides users with the opportunity to
customize the presentational look of their data into beautiful multi-dimensional maps.
I would like to acknowledge my University of Guelph colleagues, Sean Kelly and Lise Burcher: we co-taught the
final-year studio group. A few of the images selected in this chapter include some from my former students of the
University of Toronto. I would like to acknowledge studio instructors from University of Toronto: Pete North,
Stephanie Cheng, Liat Margolis, Fionn Byrne, Francesco Martire, Gerardo Paez Alonso, Sandra Cooke, Jane Wolff,
and Elise Shelley
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.1
This panel illustrates the conceptual design development for Riverdale Park in Toronto. The drawings, composed on a
large panel, convey the design development process by first conducting an in-depth inventory and analysis using a
SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. Movement, flow patterns and barriers are articulated
following the analysis component, which help formulate the design development. Once the ideal flows of movement
were finalized, the patterns were then “translated” into physical form. Specific techniques were achieved in various
software such as ArcMap, AutoCAD, and Illustrator. The site plan was completely rendered in Illustrator using a variety
of opacities, blending styles, line weights, and customized brush swatches. By Matt Perotto.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.2
This exploded map diagram, created by placing several images created in AutoCAD, SketchUp, and Photoshop. The
aerial photo from Google Earth was overlaid on to the SketchUp as a base map, followed by a “clay” layer rendered in
SketchUp. The topography was crafted in AutoCAD. The final composition was crafted in Photoshop. By Shain
Wasserman.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.3
The composition for this “opportunities and constraints” diagram was inspired by the shape of the stream on site. The
intent was to move away from the traditional rectilinear parceling of lots to outline a project site and to create an
alternative visual representation of site analysis. Photoshop was used to create the base image and Illustrator was used
for the shape and line-work of the drawing. By Gillian Hutchison.

1.4
Generative diagrams illustrate layout and composition of park components. The line-work was composed in AutoCAD
and refined and rendered in Illustrator. By Adam Patterson.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.5
The style for the plant productivity diagram was inspired by James Corner’s diagrammatic style used in the NYC High
Line project. Form, color scheme, plant species and the comparison of plant productivity over time are expressed in the
time-line diagram. Photoshop was used to create the individual plant images and Illustrator was used to compose the
remaining part of the diagram. By Gillian Hutchison.

1.6
Mapping pedestrian movement and activity flow for a project in Calgary, Canada. Geo-coordinates were collected for
the site, along with the overall people activity levels (numerical values), which were generated as 3D maps and
datascapes in DataAppealTM application, placed on to Google Earth’s digital globe. This datascape, reflecting pedestrian
movement, assisted the student with design decisions in regard to pathway systems and passive green spaces, as seen in
Figures 1.9 and 1.12. By Adam Patterson.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.7
The 3D data map showcases CO2 readings for the Riverdale Park area in Toronto. The CO2 numerical values along with
the geo-coordinates were captured using a hand-held environmental sensor device. The CSV file (containing the CO2
data and the latitude/longitude) was uploaded into DataAppealTM and rendered using a red color, semi-transparent
spherical model surrounded by its 3D city context. A watercolor base map was selected. This datascape was part of the
site analysis process and revealed hidden elements of the site. The datascape was generated and designed in
DataAppealTM application placed on to Google Earth’s digital globe. By Matt Perotto.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.8
The top images were crafted using DataAppealTM. The 3D prints were created by importing the datascape into Rhino for
further modification and later printed in 3D (MakerBot Replicator). The track layout was composed in SketchUp and
rendered in V-Ray. The bird’s-eye image was created in SketchUp, rendered in V-Ray, and colored in Photoshop. By
Shain Wasserman.

1.9
The plan illustrates a design for a high-volume pedestrian traffic network, overtop grade level railway infrastructure in
Calgary, Canada. The plan was generated in AutoCAD and digitally modeled in SketchUp, rendered in V-ray and
finished with Photoshop techniques. By Adam Patterson.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.10
This site plan is part of a thesis project dealing with rising sea levels and extreme climate conditions in the Maldives. A
key component of the project focused on coral reef regeneration located within the reef flats. The site plan represents this
key component through the selective use of color, showing the reef flats in blue. The base of the site plan was created in
AutoCAD, edited in Illustrator, and rendered in Photoshop. A complex combination of hatches, textures, and aerial
underlays was applied to place the drawing in context and to strengthen the overall visual representation of the design.
By Megan Esopenko.

www.ebook777.com
1.11
The rendered plan for this park design project in Guelph, Canada was digitally modeled in Rhino 3D and rendered with
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Flamingo nXt. Final rendering techniques, including overlay of textures and adding of colors, lighting and filters were
done, in Photoshop. By Adam Patterson.

1.12
Axonometric of pedestrian pathway system overtop railway infrastructure in Calgary, Canada was generated in
SketchUp, using the AutoCAD plan as a base for model extrusion. The model was further rendered in V-Ray and
finalized with some Photoshop techniques, including opacity effects. By Adam Patterson.

1.13
This section-elevation was composed using Illustrator. The digital model was used as a guide to compose the structural
line-work of the section-elevation. Winter effects were added using Photoshop. By Adam Patterson.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.14
These seasonal section-elevations for Guelph River Park, Canada, depict vegetative color palettes along with river
fluctuations. The drawing was composed in AutoCAD and rendered in Photoshop. By Adam Patterson.

1.15
A base model was constructed in SketchUp. Various Photoshop techniques and effects were used to convey slow-moving
water. This included the Lens Blur filter to create ‘elongated’ reflections; the Gaussian Blur filter was used to soften the
vegetation, shadows and water. By Nicholas Gosselin.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.16
This image was created by overlaying original photos as well as found images, using Photoshop. Layer masks were used
to assemble the desired arrangement of landscape elements and filter masks were used to develop the atmosphere of the
space. By Stephanie Payne.

1.17
This project focused on creating new pedestrian trail connections throughout the Don Valley in Toronto that would
provide the opportunity to experience rejuvenated sensitive ecosystems in engaging ways. This perspective was
composed using a base image, looking north towards the Prince Edward Viaduct from within the Don Valley (downtown
area) and superimposing various images of people and vegetation in Photoshop. Specific techniques used include layer
masking, adjustment layering, and blending modes to bring the various layers in the process together to make a cohesive
composition. By Matt Perotto.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
1.18
“Vanishing point perspective” of boulevard is achieved by the one-point constructed perspective and “ghosted” building
mass in the distance. The background context is rendered black and white to contrast with the colored foreground
landscaped surfaces. The image was composed using SketchUp, V-Ray, and Photoshop. By Adam Patterson.

1.19
This project is focused in New Orleans and dealt with issues of flooding and disaster management. This perspective
illustrates the flood-prone wetlands along the Mississippi edge and envisions what this experience would be during a
storm event. Techniques used to produce this perspective include Photoshop collaging of various images superimposed
on a background image of the skyline. To achieve the rain effect, a number of Photoshop brushes were used and overlaid
on top of the composition. By Megan Esopenko.

1.20
This winter scene perspective was created in SketchUp and rendered in V-Ray. The image was then colored in
Photoshop and entourage added in Photoshop. By Shain Wasserman.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.21
Perspective was crafted using digital model as base and rendered in Photoshop. Photos erased in straight edges add a
stark transition from photo to model. By Adam Patterson.

1.22
Digital model was created in Rhino 3D and rendered with Flamingo nXt. Winter atmospheric effects were added using
various Photoshop techniques. By Adam Patterson.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.23
This fabricated model illustrates the topographic relief of an area of the Don Valley in Toronto. It tests how “light” can
be used in the presentation of a physical model. The entire model is built out of laser-cut Plexiglas, and each elevation of
the topography is placed on top on its respective aerial image, printed on Mylar. Once assembled, the model is placed on
a light table, and the combination of Plexiglas and aerial Mylar produces a vivid and unique final product that captured
the audience’s attention. By Kaly Manson, Robert McIntosh and Matt Perotto.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.24
This panel illustrates sustainable alternatives to replant and grow Toronto’s urban tree canopy after the devastating
December 2013 ice storm. It proposes repurposing bio-waste produced at the North Toronto Sewage Treatment Plant,
and combining it with sediment dredged from the Lower Don River to produce high-nutrient soil that could then be used
to grow native trees directly from within the city, and irrigated with captured rain water. The trees could then be easily
transported to where they were needed the most by repurposing abandoned rail infrastructure that ran through the
proposal site. The students used a number of resources, including geospatial data from the city of Toronto, ArcMap,
AutoCAD, Illustrator, Photoshop, and minor physical painting, to compose the various drawings in the panel. The
individual drawings were assembled on the panel using InDesign. By Matt Perotto and Megan Esopenko.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

1.25
This panel combines two components of the proposal: the site plan and a perspective. Dissolving one image into another
resulted in a visually captivating illustration, where viewers were lured in to discover both a technical and experiential
component. The base of the site plan was produced in AutoCAD, edited in Illustrator, and rendered in Photoshop. The
perspective was created using Photoshop. The images were then combined in Photoshop using a variety of operations,
including the clone stamp, opacities, overlays, and brush erasers. By Megan Esopenko.

www.ebook777.com
Diagrams and Mapping Drawings
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

2 Datascapes
Maps and diagrams as landscape agents
Andrea Hansen
What are maps and diagrams in the context of landscape architecture, and why do
landscape architects use them? A diagram is a symbolic representation of information for
the purpose of communication. For landscape architects, this might mean an abstraction of
a complex physical system, a visualization of change over time, the interconnected
network of inputs or outputs, or the explanation of a design concept. The word map,
meanwhile, while conjuring cartographic projections in the minds of most, is really a
synonym for diagram in the broadest sense. When we consider that map, taken as a verb,
means literally to forge an association between one thing and another, it becomes clear
that both maps and diagrams are simply after one thing: the mapping of information to
visuals.
Both maps and diagrams have two things in common: the abstraction or simplification
of complexity with the intent of fostering clarity, and the selection of an appropriate
visualization method. The latter (visualization method) is in direct service of the former
(clear communication), as Jacques Bertin writes in The Semiology of Graphics: “Graphic
representation constitutes one of the basic sign-systems conceived by the human mind for
the purposes of storing, understanding, and communicating essential information.”1 To put
this in simpler terms, diagrams share a common visual language, with individual elements
—axes, legends, symbols, grids, tick-marks, and other kinds of content—forming a rule-
driven, yet endlessly flexible, lexicon. Thanks to both nature and nurture, when we see a
familiar type of diagram, we are primed to understand its graphical language and the
information each structure conveys: when we see a bar chart, we understand that the bars
have a linear relationship with their axes, and when we see a map, we understand it to be a
scaled-down representation of a place, real or imaginary.
Rather than separating into two categories—maps as spatial and diagrams as not—
embracing a confluence of the two terms enables us to think of representations that forge
much more interesting relationships between space, time, information, and design. Given
that landscape architecture necessitates an understanding of both space and time, as well
as the intimate and dynamic relationships between them, it is these hybrid diagrams,
henceforth referred to as datascapes, that have the most potential to shape the profession.
Datascapes, defined by Bart Lootsma as “visual representation(s) of all the measurable
forces that may influence, steer or regulate the work of the architect,”2 encompass all of
the information that may inform site design, both internally and externally. With the
plethora of data now at our fingertips—real-time weather feeds; Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) layers detailing streets, buildings, and infrastructure; or even Twitter and
other social media streams providing insight into collective mentalities—editing becomes
critical if the datascape is to communicate effectively. Bertin, in a 2003 interview,

www.ebook777.com
expressed this succinctly: “Data is transformed into graphics to understand. A map, a
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
diagram are documents to be interrogated. But understanding means integrating all of the
data. In order to do this it’s necessary to reduce it to a small number of elementary data.”3
The question of editing raises the question of authorship, and as such it is very
important to address agency when discussing datascapes: a datascape’s ability to stake a
claim; to put forth an argument in service of the author’s beliefs. Agency also implies an
audience, and the composition of that audience is to be carefully considered. Historically,
landscape architects and architects alike have primarily considered three audiences: their
clients (diagram as presentation tool), their contractors (diagram as explanatory tool), and
themselves (diagram as design tool). The datascape most excels, however, when it speaks
clearly to a public audience, thereby advocating for the criticality of design. James Corner
writes in his seminal essay “Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes” (emphasis mine):
In a similar vein, contemporary urban designers (such as Koolhaas, MVRDV, and a-
topos) have developed a series of techniques they call “datascapes.” These are
revisions of conventional analytical and quantitative maps and charts that both reveal
and construct the shape-forms of forces and processes operating across a given site.
Not only are these imagings constructive and suggestive of new spatial formations
but also they are so “objectively” constructed—derived from numbers, quantities,
facts, and pure data—that they have great persuasive force in the hugely bureaucratic
decision-making and management aspects of contemporary city design. Where they
differ from the quantitative maps of conventional planning is in their imaging of data
in knowingly rhetorical and generatively instrumental ways…. Unlike the assumed
and passive neutrality of traditional data maps, datascapes reformulate given
conditions in such a way as to produce novel and inventive solutions.4
To better elucidate the design agency of the datascape, I will focus on three types of
hybridized datascapes which transcend the static map or diagram by integrating multiple
types of metrics: the process datascape, the space–time datascape, and the qualitative–
quantitative datascape.

The process datascape

Design is a complex task, and at its best, it provides an elegant and simple solution to a
complicated problem. In describing the thinking process that enables these design
solutions, Hideo Sasaki notes three phases: research, analysis, and synthesis. It is this final
task, of “articulat[ing] the complex of relationships into a spatial organization” that Sasaki
argues “distinguishes a designer from an engineer or a technician.”5 Synthetic design
drawings, then, merit separation from an engineering drawing, and thus is born the process
datascape. These drawings have been used by everyone from Le Corbusier,6 who was a
progenitor of the proverbial “bubble diagram” of programmatic spaces, to Cedric Price,
who used it to illustrate the choreography of movement through architectural space.7
Students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design draw inspiration from these and other
precedents to illustrate complex, multi-phase design processes, both real and hypothetical,
for scales ranging from intimate to global.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
The space–time datascape
Landscape is inextricably tied to time as much as to space, and the former significantly
influences the latter. The passage of days, months, and seasons weathers materials, while
daily and weekly cycles produce patterns of program and occupation, both predictable and
unpredictable. Relationships between space and time have been married in landscape
drawings to harness a greater understanding of landscape’s value and use, for instance by
Lawrence Halprin, whose RSVP Cycles measured and choreographed landscape
performance through “motation” studies inspired by dance notation.8 In addition to the
micro-timescales of movement and program, space–time datascapes can also measure a
site’s geological, ecological and cultural history, as well as the phases of its planned
future, as illustrated in drawings from students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The qualitative–quantitative datascape

Landscape architecture’s uniqueness as a discipline stems from its materiality as much as
its temporality, with a range of ephemeral textures and stimuli affecting all of our senses in
equal measure. Conceptually, design drawings in landscape must strive to document these
desired sensations as well as the precise metrics that compose them; as such, the
qualitative–quantitative datascape is a hybrid drawing that is both illustrative and
measured. James Corner and Alex MacLean’s collage drawings from Taking Measures
Across the American Landscape serve as excellent reference points for this kind of
drawing, with field surveys annotated with measurements as well as photographic
elements in plan, section and perspective.9 These techniques and others are employed to
great effect at Harvard, with the interoperability of digital design tools such as Rhino,
Grasshopper and Illustrator enabling highly sophisticated mergers between analytical and
illustrative drawing.
As sites become larger and more complex, landscape architects have an increasing
opportunity to shift dialogue and policy through built work. However, the role of diagrams
and maps—datascapes, collectively—should not be underestimated in facilitating this
opportunity. By visualizing and clarifying relationships between spatial, temporal,
quantitative and qualitative information, datascapes act as both generative agents and
communicative agents. More than mere presentation tools, they serve an active role in the
design process by helping the designer think through concepts, make decisions, and
understand how different systems relate to one another as well as to form, massing, and
material. But perhaps more importantly, they serve as important mediators between
designers and the public, bringing complex ideas to life and solidifying the role of design
in addressing our most important contemporary challenges.

Notes
1 Bertin, J. Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983, p. 2.
2 Lootsma, B. “Synthetic Regionalization: The Dutch Landscape Toward a Second Modernity.” In Recovering
Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, ed. James Corner. New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 1999.

www.ebook777.com
3 Dürsteler, J. C. “Interview with Jacques Bertin.” Infovis.net. Web. January 2003 (accessed April 15, 2014).
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
4 Corner, J. “Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes.” In Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape
Architecture ed. James Corner. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.
5 Sasaki, H. “Thoughts on Education in Landscape Architecture: Some Comments on Today’s Methodologies and
Purpose.” Landscape Architecture 1950; 40, no. 4: 158–160.
6 Le Corbusier. Schéma de l’organisation des services communs, unité d’habitation. Fondation Le Corbusier 1945;
27145.
7 Price, C. Diagram Mapping Programme and Community for Inter-Action Centre, London, England. Montreal: Cedric
Price Fonds Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture / Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1977, DR1995:0252:621.
8 Halprin, L. The RSVP Cycles: Creative Processes in the Human Environment. New York City: G. Brazilier, 1970.
9 Corner, J. with A. S. MacLean. Taking Measures Across the American Landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1996.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

2.1
This simple diagram imagines the digital reconfiguration of HTO Park in Toronto by Claude Cormier and Janet
Rosenberg, using clear icons in lieu of text for instant legibility. By Nina Chase.

2.2
Process diagrams need not always be serious, as demonstrated by this whimsical datascape using narrative details to tell
the story of integrated landscape processes. By Anne Weber.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

2.3
Space and time can be illustrated cyclically—in which case circles or spirals work well—as shown in this diagram of the
little bluestem plant’s seasonal seed dispersal due to changing wind directions. By Lisa Caplan, Wenling Li and Michael
Keller.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

2.4
Cyclical diagrams of sun, wind, and other repeated environmental patterns benefit from a continuous, incremental
format. In this case, a plan view of a 3D model is rotated in 45-degree increments to showcase how the same formal
design may experience very different shadow patterns—and resultant microclimates—depending on how it is oriented.
By Ken Chongsuwat, Tzyy Haur Yeh and Hannes Zander.

2.5
Vivid colors and textures can be quite stunning when paired with line-work overlays, such as in this speculative section
of a marine archipelago overlaid with sequential sectional contours. Darker colors allow the overlay to pop, while the
fine line-weight ensures that texture reads through. By Gabriella Rodriguez.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

2.6
In this series of datascapes, restrained technical drawings are brought to life by the addition of photographic imagery.
The relatively large photographs in a consistent location and the cohesive color palette allow the set to have good
“macro” readability, while the detailed technical drawings at two different scales reveal much more information at the
“micro” level. By Daia Stutz.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

3 Photographing the Hyper-Index

Eva Castro and Federico Ruberto
Map – | diagram – index | – hyper-index
We understand mapping and diagramming as both exploratory and pro-positive, acquiring
critical mass along the design process. Territorial readings are amplified to translate
environmental, social and economic, topographical and geographical parameters into
enacting mechanisms capable of uncovering veiled relationships.
Indexes are understood as an amalgam within the territory, which acknowledging its
intrinsic gradients, ranks and hierarchies, prompts further interaction and manipulation.
This fosters an approach that fundamentally discusses the effect of relationships instead of
the remediation of discrete parts. It is a specific flow of operations that points toward the
definition of the “hyper-indexical,” which, difficult to define on its own, is always
correlated with the map, the diagram and the index.
If we imagine a structure of territorial apprehension we could conceptualize it as a
three-fold interwoven system. Firstly, the “map” occupies the first layer with an
immediate and descriptive approach towards the territory; on the second layer we find a
synthetic operator, which bounces between “diagrammatic” and “indexical” qualities. This
being factual, yet analytical, it makes it possible to locate areas and subjects of interest,
becoming inductive and establishing conjectures. The third layer is the “hyper-indexical”:
the ultimate merger of the previous layers, it consolidates their logic. Whilst still
evocative, it is a “projective” endeavor grounded in the “instructive” capabilities of the
terrain, of the system.
If this practice at first is assertive, two-dimensionally determined at down, computable
and numerically quantifiable in its own finitude, at last it is essentially gaseous and
expansive, boundless, subjective and utterly actual in its human practice. The indexical
process is hence both a record and the emergence of a singularity—of the original.
The main quality of the new space is not to be “objective” as a naïve definition of
realism often claims, but rather to have optical consistency. This consistency entails
the “art of describing” everything and the possibility of going from one type of visual
trace to another.1
Maps and drawings display an organized system of signs and are a semiotic assemblage of
spatio-temporal markers. As Latour argues, their combinatorial potential, to function and
be co-operative, lays on a certain essential resemblance. Drawings have to correlate to
each other to be relational and to do so they need a specific and semiotic “optical
consistency.” Such consistency is only possible by adopting representational techniques
that, instead of exacerbating differences, uncover similarities, signaling new intensities.
The indexical information and the two-dimensional inscription are, should be, organizable,
describable, movable and combinable,2 to shift from layer to layer, from object to subject

www.ebook777.com
to matter, to form the “grounds” of “prehension.”3
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
This transit between the index and the hyper-index is maintained as a continuum or
zone of action that allows both, to (infra)structure the ground as a means for spatial
organization and to return back to the object–map–territory, through feedbacks and re-
adjustments.

Three-dimensional representation
By working on papers alone, on fragile inscriptions which are immensely less than
the things from which they are extracted, it is still possible to dominate all things, and
all people. What is insignificant for all other cultures becomes the most significant,
the only significant aspect of reality. The weakest, by manipulating inscriptions of all
sorts obsessively and exclusively, become the strongest. This is the view of power we
get at by following this theme of visualization and cognition in all its consequences.4
There is a long history to account for the over-powering dominance of the drawing over
the territory, whereby the latter is often flattened up, stripped off from its materiality, its
relief and the information inherent to it taken away to facilitate its control. The governance
of the land has resided by default in the hands of the very few who could afford its
ownership and benefit from it. The drawing has been utilized as a tool to manipulate-
multiply its coordinates though endless segmentation. We seek to challenge this
understanding of the space as a thing in itself, a consumable good deprived of any
material particularity; questioning the absolute space, objective/objectified, in the pursue
of fostering human practice, capable of “regaining” the (public) ground.
This brings us necessarily to seek about different modes of production, perhaps
stemming from a more relational understanding of the space, capable of engaging with the
immenseness of the territory without controlling its values, projecting new virtues that
operate at all scales, escaping top-down ruling and rules, promoting new multi-scalar
bonds.
So, why do we feel it is necessary to undertake the shift from two-dimensional purity to
three-dimensional complexity in the process of analyzing, describing and forming the
territory?
The photographs of the models we are presenting display a twist in the understanding of
“indexicality.” The indexical three-dimensionality of the model’s layers shows an
interactive and interpretative peculiarity; the visual, perceptual simultaneity of two
registers, planar inscription and material thickness, allows us to multiply and actualize
latent correlations, bearing a much more elevated “relational” potential than any other
form of representation.
The navigational possibilities of a three-dimensional apparatus augment the spatial-
mental sophistication otherwise impossible to achieve through a two-dimensional
representation.
The objective-geometrical patterns displayed in space at different heights—on a specific
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
plateau—derived and translated from a former two-dimensional interpretation, are spatio-
temporally re-combinable. The meta-space in between the layers is generative, creative,
intensive; it structures the system inter-connectivity, it generates through its interstices a
diagrammatic machine of production.
There are subliminal “lines of flight” in the physicality of the model from which the
creative potential of the designer departs; the latent, virtual, but consistent possibilities of
seeing-imagining connections between the layers alters the way we approach the territory.
It is not anymore mere description but a vision grounded-constructed on a specific
materiality that discloses cognitive projection.

Spatio-temporal interfaces—photography as the ultimate

indexical threshold
We are presenting the models in the form of photographic inscriptions. Photography is a
practice that is undergoing quite a severe dispute due to the fact that it stands in the critical
discourse between factuality-provability and effectuality, between the subjective and the
objective. The photographs here displayed are the last step in a series of synthetic and
scalar abstractions. The modeling of the space-territory passes from the real physicality of
the system, to the bi-dimensionality of the drawing, through then the abstract three-
dimensionality of the layered model to finally be filtered by the light and the camera.
Materials, lights, signs, drawings, maps, indexes are all involved in defining the flat
spatiality and the “semiotic consistency” of the photograph, which in most of the cases is
here the recombination of different temporal inscriptions mediated and identified by the
differential of light.
The result is a choreographed “diachrony” of stuttering time(s) of a layered space, of
temporal thresholds, of traces that blurs the boundaries between description-prescription-
projection, between representation and production.
It’s an “epigenetic landscape” of geometric and visual references, an archive of
intentional and unintentional epiphenomena, a system of signs deconstructed-reassembled-
structured; a designed grammar, an abstract machine that operates not only to represent
but to continuously combine and to produce an “anexact and proto(photo)-geometric”
reality. The final photographic output is a twofold indexical synthesis of codified digital
signs and analogical traces, the consumption of light in the mist of territorial emergencies.

Notes
1 B. Latour, “Visualisation and Cognition. Drawing Things Together.” In H. Kuklick (ed.) Knowledge and Society
Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present. Greenwich, CT: Jai Press, 1986.
2 Ibid.
3 See A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. New York: The Free Press, 1978.
4 B. Latour, op. cit.
Other image and description credits include: Eva Castro, Libny Pacheco, Federico Ruberto, Nicola Saladino
(Tsinghua University, Landscape Urbanism, School of Landscape Architecture).

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

3.1
Proto-ArchSite – This photo-drawing uncovers existing layers within an archeological site, including the old traces of
previous excavations that have been exhausted, turning into a differential within the existing topography. By Wenling Li,
Wang Chenyu and Zhou Lin.

3.2
Loop. The connective layers—pedestrian, bicycle and vehicular—emerge as a “trace of intensification” from the
“mesh”—the synthetic result of the potentialities of land use, topography and soil productivity. By Shen Sisi, Wang
Ruyun and Wang Jianiv.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

3.3
Clusters. The top rapid-prototyped layer—mainly housing and community-related services—is the concretization of the
four layers beneath: wastewater channeling, topography, solar irradiation and agricultural plot optimization. By Hui Lyu.

3.4
Summer branches. Zoom-in of agricultural land, defined through the differentiation of productive patterns and
infrastructural lines for irrigation. By Yijun Zhu.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

3.5
Weaving gardens. The image displays the morphological–programmatic stratification of the site. From the newly
planned water reservoirs to the agricultural and sport-related facilities, the pedestrian connections and the bicycle tracks,
the resulting image shows the hybrid aesthetic between the fittest-computed land performances and the student’s socially
driven design agenda. The triad “map” (descriptive)—“indexical” (instructive)—“hyper-indexical” (projective) displays
how the territorial system is structured as a web of “relational,” scalar and time-based operations. By Catherine Lee.

3.6
Productive flows. Indexical model representing on the bottom layer the relationship between productivity and land
accessibility of the agricultural plots, and on top the newly designed road network with the integrated water system
accompanying it. By Zhang Qianyu, Zhuang Yizhang and Li Yunyun.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

3.7
AgriFabric. The top two mesh-works, interwoven at particular heights and conjoined only at specific locations, are
indexing determined types of slops that define the terrain accessibility; they are materially and geometrically congruent
with the two overlapping fields appearing in the layers underneath. The graphical differentiation of the circles within the
layers below represents the indexical analysis of soil and air pollution. By Cao Mu and Chan Hong Wan.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

3.8
AgriFabric. This set of images uses multiple photographic exposures to collapse spatial conditions that take place at a
variety of times during a period of 24 hours, proposing the multiprogramming of certain areas within the project where
overlaps occur. The highlighted areas uncover material adjacencies that could be intensified to form a more robust
system, showing the potential for further activation. Due to the medium deployed, those adjacencies are understood fully
three-dimensionally, making it possible to think on a multitude of scales that traditionally, within planning, are dormant.
By Cao Mu and Chan Hong Wan.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

4 Mapping and Refining the Site

James Melsom
Mapping can be understood primarily as the cognitive process of the individual, as a
relationship to place is generated. It is in the resulting need to refine, describe, and
communicate these mappings that the visualization phase of mapping begins. By the time
it is visualized, every gesture recorded in a map has undergone filtering, reassignment, and
prioritization; whether conscious or otherwise. Paradoxically, while the map is often held
as the most objective of documents, the process of mapping must be understood in light of
its fundamental selective and subjective process of formation.
The didactic process of mapping has become a key element in the education of
Landscape Architecture at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, in order to
refine conceptual reasoning within design tasks and work confidently with complex
decision-making processes. The interdisciplinary Landscape Visualization and Modelling
Lab (LVML) was founded by Professors Christophe Girot and Adrienne Grêt Regamey in
order to extend the scopes of Landscape Architecture and Planning to a multi-scalar level,
able to operate simultaneously at the detailed and territorial scale (Figures 4.1 and 4.2).
This shift has resulted in a measurable transformation of the teaching and research
methods conducted within the LVML and Institute of Landscape Architecture, and a
distinctive response within the resulting projects and within studio discourse. As our
methods and tools have allowed ever-increasing modes of data and site information to be
accessed, the students have been encouraged to nurture a healthy degree of data
skepticism. Site analysis should be guided at all times by the fundamental design question.
As this design problem is refined and sharpened, the complexity of the design response, its
nuances and technical issues can remain structured and connected to the initial design
inspiration and premises.
In this manner, the process of mapping data over the course of a design project can be
seen as a conversation between the designer with various existing, simulated, and
envisioned data sources.
The development of the discipline of geodesign has occurred during a phase where the
manipulation of data has become not only a possibility, but a necessity in order to generate
refined answers to ever more complex design issues (Figure 4.3).
A key research work was the Synchronous Horizons project, in which ambient data was
collected simultaneously by students and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone at
various horizons, creating a volumetric temporal model of the invisible site. Such adaptive
models for spatial data collection sharpen the critical understanding of site beyond a
traditional planning model.1

Mapping the known

Within the design process, the first intuitive responses to the site and project brief are

www.ebook777.com
fundamental to the development of the following process. In order to combine the unique
spatial and cultural Free ebooks
responses to site ==> www.ebook777.com
with predefined empirical data such as Computer-
Assisted Design (CAD) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the students use
methods which seek to combine and refine the often divergent sources of inspiration and
direction.
As described by Ben Fry, one of the founders of the Processing programming language,
various modes of data collection, processing, and dissemination can be identified from the
creative and scientific fields, taking place in a non-linear and often cyclical fashion.2
Through a critical understanding of how we are sourcing, filtering, prioritizing and
relating to our data, designers are able to engage and control ever more complex scenarios.
Third-party data is integrated with the designer experiences and site intuitions, to develop
a synthetic phase of designed analysis. The teaching and research work of the module3
were then combined with the computer numerical control (CNC) milled modeling module
of researcher Ilmar Hurkxkens, in order for the students to project their maps on to the
topography of the site. When combined with animation, a rich and detailed discourse over
the symbiotic nature of landscape systems is possible (Figures 4.4 and 4.5).

Delving into data

A specific course module focuses on the possibilities of programming within Landscape
Architecture design—both in building custom, project-oriented tools, and the possibilities
of “programming reasoning”—a methodical, and specific approach to problem solving.
This phase of visual experimentation with programming is a developing landscape method
for the reading of site potential and the relaxation of formal mapping concepts (Figure
4.6).
Using the Processing platform, lecturers Pia Fricker and Jörg Munkel have encouraged
the students to experiment directly with all of the data available from the landscape design
site, experimenting with the possibilities and boundaries of “mapping” itself. Processing,
as applied by our students, performs as a flexible platform to graphically investigate, filter,
distill and compare data, while allowing flexible possibilities for abstract graphical
refinement (Figure 4.7).

Design refining
A key shift has taken place in our relationship as landscape architects to the site. With the
development of the design project, our relationship to the site evolves, as does our
requirement for deeper specific understanding. The humble site re-visit has evolved to
facilitate the generation of our own analog and digital data, to be integrated with existing
data sources such as GIS, environmental weather fluctuations, and behavioral or
movement data. The resulting generation of project-specific data accepts all possible
means—sensors, images, abstraction—yet must refine the design problem, rather than
expand its scope (Figure 4.8).
Through the distribution of specific sensors and other forms of ambient measurement,
the designers are able to map the invisible site through their movement and project-
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
specific investigations. Continuing upon the previous design-oriented site-mapping
investigations,4 the students have studied the method and use of Arduino-based sensors,
and the development of other tools of ambient measurement and design application. The
necessity for real-time feedback, both as experimental control and refinement tool, allows
students to adjust their data collection strategy as the site-visit process evolves (Figure
4.9).

Shifting the face of mapping

The fundamental shift to empower designers with the ability to manipulate and create their
own data has resulted in a tangible shift in the role and scope of landscape design within
the built environment. The clear implications of the development of intuitive data
interaction, projection, and animation demonstrate clear implications for mapping and
geodesign within landscape education.
The ongoing Ciliwung River project of Jakarta, Indonesia is a testament to the extent to
which the border of the discipline of Landscape Architecture has been extended as a result
of these developments in the area of combined mapping, simulation and visualization.
Urban spatial design and geodesign applications can also be invented which refine
existing city models and the sustainability of our urban fabric. The dynamic nature of our
urban landscapes in turn generates its own data and function, providing opportunities to
generate alternate models in city development.5
The emergence of geodesign and related concepts has coincided with several
fundamental shifts in the realm of spatial design, such as the geo-localisation of data and
the emergence of open source, customisable hardware and software systems. Rather than
generate static maps of territory the strategy to animate all mapping processes is both a
didactic and a natural tendency when dealing with dynamic landscape systems. Within the
LVML the challenge remains to develop methods which continually test the boundaries of
the discipline, and fundamentally lead to the empowerment the designer.

Notes
1 Fraguada, L., Girot, C., and J. Melsom. “Synchronous Horizons: Redefining Spatial Design in Landscape
Architecture Through Ambient Data Collection and Volumetric Manipulation.” In: Peer-Reviewed Proceedings
ACADIA 2012: Synthetic Digital Ecologies. San Francisco: ACADIA, 2012.
2 Fry, B. Visualising Data. California: O’Reilly Media, 2009.
3 This module was led by James Melsom.
4 James Melsom was joined by guest Luis Fraguada (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia) to teach the
method and use of Arduino-based sensors.
5 Fraguada, L. and J. Melsom. “Urban Pulse: The Application of Moving Sensor Networks in the Urban Environment:
Strategies for Implementation and Implications for Landscape Design.” In: Peer-reviewed Proceedings Digital
Landscape Architecture 2014, ETH Zurich. Offenbach: Wichmann Verlag, 2014.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

4.1, 4.2
Images from the Synchronous Horizons student workshop process, in which the students moved sensors on the ground,
mapping a detailed site area which was then scanned by sensors mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) (Figure
4.1). The resulting data was refined to demonstrate a temporal model of the local differences in humidity levels on site
(Figure 4.2). The images were generated in Rhino with Grasshopper and GHowl plugins. By Luis Fraguada.

4.3 a, b
An early student analysis of the Linth plain site topology, developing a logarithmic mapping process to understand the
micro-topography of the site (Fig. 4.3a). The resulting strata, refined to a detail of 2m, reveal the historical hydrological
transformation of the plain (Fig. 4.3b). A combination of SAGAgis and Rhinoceros was used to generate the content of
the presentation. By Angelos Komninos and Maki Hasegawa.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

4.4
The micro-topography of the Linth plain was contrasted with the variable inclines of the surface-water network of the
surrounding mountains, in order to understand the underlying system of switches and water distribution dynamic. The
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and topology data was prepared using Rhinoceros and Grasshopper to generate
the real-time animations. By Alexandre Roulin and Argyro Theodoropoulou.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

4.5
The development of housing within the valley is mapped over time, showing urban expansion and the relative duration
of settlement since circa 1800. Rhinoceros and Grasshopper were used to analyze a combination of pre-processed
historical plan images and GIS inputs. By Sofia Prifti and Mohamed Abdel Wahab.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

4.6
Due to the extreme shaded condition perceived on site, the Alpine valley of the Reuss was analyzed to determine the
direction and duration of the shadow cast within the valley, in this case based on the movement of the sun on a typical
March 21st. The resulting animation, produced in Processing, demonstrates the potential of the abstract interpretation of
familiar data sources. By Wolfgang Novak and Tasos Roidis.

4.7
Here Processing was employed to generate a real-time “line of sight” tool, which revealed the visibility of certain

www.ebook777.com
landscape structures within the Linth plain, such as water, forest, and infrastructure and their distance from the viewer.
By Angelos Komninos and Argyro Theodoropoulou.
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

4.8
Aside from static sensors deployed on site, Arduino-based mobile sensor kits featuring temperature, humidity, light
(Vis/IR/Lux), sound (freq/dB), and soil moisture were deployed on site. These paths were geo-located and synced with
mobile-phone GPS on site, using a combination of Rhinoceros, Grasshopper, GHowl, and Processing. By Jacqueline
Frizi and Georgios Sarmaniotis.

4.9 a-e
At various viewpoints throughout the site investigation area (Figure4.9a and b), detailed sensor measurements (Figure
4.9c) were combined with simple image analysis (Figure 4.9d) in order to generate an understanding of the vegetational
densities recognized on site. Once related back to the micro-topography and detailed soil moisture readings taken on site,
the resulting mosaic can act as a template for similar fluctuating wetland situations in the design synthesis projects
evolving parallel to the module teaching format (Figure 4.9e). Open-source image geo-tag editing software, Rhinoceros,
Grasshopper and GHowl were used in order to generate the images. By Angelos Komninos and Argyro Theodoropoulou.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

5 Digital Diagramming
Kofi Boone
Well-conceived diagrams can help landscape architecture students more effectively
communicate the intentions of their design process and outcomes. From exploratory
drawings used to visualize elements of design thinking, to analytical drawings designed to
isolate design factors, to synthetic drawings that reveal the issues and opportunities
presented by simultaneous forces, diagrams can inform every step in the process.
Diagrams can strategically deploy color, line, text, icons, perspective, repetition,
montage, and white space to create visual vocabularies easing understanding by designers
and others.
The use of color and selecting an effective palette are essential to constructing useful
diagrams. Value and hue can allow the viewer to understand the hierarchy of design
factors, as well as identify patterns presented by the graphic. Digital media such as Adobe
Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator allow for selecting from pre-packaged palettes, or
designers can sample their own from various media. Adobe Kuler provides an incredible
range of tools and has the capability to build palettes based on the dominant patterns in
design reference images, drawings, and photographs.
Strategic use of line weight and line type can increase the clarity of diagrams.
AutoCAD and Adobe Illustrator offer students the most control of line-work, especially in
plan view, where topography, buildings, roads, and other systems each need their own
distinct visual identity. By adding color and indications of direction (like storm water or
pedestrian movement), designers can differentiate multiple layers of information contained
in diagrams.
Text can be designed as an integral part of a diagram. Font selection can communicate
information about the mood and intent of the information presented in the diagram.
Generally, it is easier to see sans serif fonts than serif fonts, especially when diagrams are
seen from a distance. The hierarchy of text, from overall titles to detailed descriptive
labels, should be designed as well as the other graphic information contained in the
diagram. Adobe Illustrator offers an incredible array of font control, even allowing the
creation of custom fonts for digital drawing use. Additionally, numerous online resources
are available to download the best fonts to serve the diagrams.
Icons, the dominant visual language of interaction design and user experience, offer
great opportunities for landscape architecture students to condense complicated content
into visual “sound bites.” Using icons to align landscape architecture diagrams with the
conventions of user experience can allow drawings to feel and potentially function in the
same manner as interactive media. The range of potential icons is unlimited, and there are
numerous online resources available for inspiration. Adobe Photoshop and Adobe
Illustrator offer simple tools for transforming sample images and symbols into
iconography.

www.ebook777.com
 The perspective of a diagram impacts the ability for it to communicate design
Free
intentions. Plan views are ebooks
useful for ==> www.ebook777.com
showing spatial organization and two-dimensional
relationships. Section-elevation views are suitable for highlighting between the surface of
a landscape and other factors. Aerial perspective views are useful for showing the impact
of the third dimension on design thinking, as well as showing design situations in a
broader context. In the case of exploded axonometric views, individual analytical layers of
information from a site can be presented simultaneously but also referencing their context.
In some cases, appropriating the graphic language of other disciplines and using them to
present landscape architecture findings can indicate that the designer is considering the
implications of his or her work beyond the boundaries of landscape architecture.
Repetition of drawing characteristics allows users to compare the differences between
diagrams, and become participants in the discovery of patterns in design thinking.
Repeating the same point of view but altering the content overlaid on the perspective can
activate serial vision—the ability for the mind to “connect the dots” and assemble
individual drawings into a complete narrative. In landscape architecture diagrams, this is
useful for showing any form of change: weather, growth, decline, and movement.
Montage, or the layering of images, allows diagrams to leverage different forms of
media and content simultaneously. Mixing media allows for each form of media to address
its specific content, and also allows for useful visual contrasts. Aerial photos can be used
as diagram bases and through digital tools, the opacity and saturation of the base content
can be modified to allow additional descriptive diagramming to be more visible and clear.
Intuitive diagrams highlighting non-analytical design discoveries like emotions and
perceptions lend themselves to montage techniques as well.
Finally, white space or blank space containing no information helps the viewer of a
diagram to take visual breaks while reviewing information, and can increase
understanding. The density and complexity of content in diagrams can communicate the
designer’s intent but can disorient those not engaged in the design process. Digital media
such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign are useful layout tools that can assist
designers in the determination of the amount of visual content to present in a diagram.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

5.1
Adaptive strategies for Crabtree Creek. The software used included ArcGIS, AutoCAD, SketchUp, Adobe Photoshop,
Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign. By Guo Li.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

5.2
Bridging divides: re-connecting people to places. The software used included Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.
By Matthew Jones.

5.3
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Devereaux Meadows Eco Park. The software used included AutoCAD, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe
InDesign. By Mary Archer.

5.4
Intensive urban wetland. The software used included AutoCAD, SketchUp, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and
Adobe InDesign. By Yinglin Ji.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

5.5
Rethinking Mission Valley. The software used included ArcGIS, AutoCAD, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and
Adobe InDesign. By Jeff Israel.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

5.6
Uncovering Southwest Raleigh: ecology. The software used included Arc GIS, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator.
By Jared Kaelin.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

5.7
Uncovering Southwest Raleigh: mobility. The software used included SketchUp, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe
Illustrator. By Di Gao.
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

5.8 a–c
Vacant land: Buffalo Eastside. The software used included Arc GIS, Auto CAD, SketchUp, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe
Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign. By Laura Underhill.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

Presentation Plans

www.ebook777.com
6 Digital Presentation Plans
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Still the foundation of landscape design
representation?
Joshua Zeunert
The parameters of the orthographic plan drawing largely compel the observer to view the
plan image from a single vantage point and in a single instant. The plan drawing places the
viewer at a fixed distance—looking from above—at an abstract flattening of a curved
surface area of the earth. Landscape architects, who often deal with expansive scales,
appreciate how the view from above enables survey and understanding of space of large
(or small) tracts of the landscape. The view enabled by the plan, in this case, of a
landscape design, allows inscribing and printing on to 2D flat surfaces (computer screens
and paper). This process facilitates the sizing and scaling of elements. Plans allow for
measurement without distortion of scale afforded by cartographic and drawing techniques
that skew space and perspective. Thus the strength of the plan drawing is enabling
construction. Its merit as an imaginative, exploratory medium, however, is less
convincing.1
Plan drawings are the cornerstone of landscape representation and presentation plans
(PPs) are usually the most engaging plan drawing. PPs are usually richly rendered and
colored. They are a scaled drawing intended to persuade and seduce clients, the general
public and other designers. The PP usually accompanies the initial stages in the landscape
design process before its translation into a black-and-white line, hatch and symbol
drawing for tender and construction. PPs can sometimes defy the limitations of the plan
drawing and effective PPs are capable of creating a sense of depth, texture, time and
immersion.
Currently, PPs do not receive the prominence of past times as they have been
supplanted by digital perspective images. Unlike many 3D computer-generated images
produced by student landscape architects, a scaled orthographic PP cannot so easily
“fudge” or hide poor design and the lack of resolution at scale. A landscape design
proposition without a scaled PP is incomplete, unresolved, a preliminary idea, or academic
exercise. Plans facilitate the core design process; sketch testing of multiple scenarios and
options, design resolution and representation at scale, and communication of the spatial
layout proposed.
PPs require some design literacy to be interpreted, which also helps to explain their
decreased prominence in the assemblage of design drawings in recent times. Clients can
readily understand 3D images whereas PPs are less spatially effective at communicating
design intent to non-designers. PPs form a key component in a suite of drawings (sections,
3D images, axonometric/isometric, 2D/3D diagrams) and the PP should ideally be
accompanied by a plan schematic—a simplified diagram that distils the PP into its most
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
basic form, gestures, spaces, elements, flows and programs. Such a drawing makes the
design intent clear, more accessible and readily interpreted by viewers. The suite of design
drawings should be conceived and produced as an ensemble. Many times, plans are
produced in isolation, resulting in flat, poorly resolved spaces that resemble the 2D
screens that they were produced on. To create an effective PP usually involves several
stages, which often combine several computer programs and possibly hand-rendering
techniques. Optimum timing and the sequencing of these stages are important to maximize
efficiency in the design process.
Many designers produce draft and early plans through hand drawing—using pencils and
pens on trace/butter/sketch paper over a printout of a scaled base plan of the existing site.
This approach allows rapid and flexible scenario and design testing. Once a proposition or
direction has been agreed, the design is usually taken into a precise 2D computer-aided
design (CAD) program to give spatial precision and scaled accuracy. This CAD program
is usually used for either line-work-only (Figure 6.1) or line-work and color rendering.
Some PPs include 3D modeling of the site context and also the design proposition. This is
sometimes done in CAD or programs such as SketchUp and Rhinoceros (Figure 6.2), or
through combining several programs. Building a 3D model of the site and design assists a
PP to communicate light quality, shade and shadow, making the PP a more accurate
representation of the site design vision, intent and possible outcome. It also facilitates a
more considered and resolved design response than only providing unscaled 3D images.
Once the spatial layout and massing are complete then rendering processes usually take
place—both rendering of shadows and light quality, and color rendering—which can be
approached through hand or computer techniques, or a combination of both. Use of hand-
drawn textures and rendering techniques is still commonplace in landscape representation;
the combination of hand-drawn and computer technologies (Figures 6.3, 6.8, and 6.9) is
often effective in overcoming the sometimes soulless output of the computer alone.
The tactile and textural surface of the printing medium and the ink itself have a
significant influence on the qualities of the final drawing. Multi-sensual qualities are often
lost in the digital medium. The often generic paper types available for use in plotting
machines can be restrictive when compared to the choice of papers suitable for hand
drawing. Vivid rendering techniques in Photoshop can offset this somewhat (Figure 6.4)
and some plotters are capable of plotting on to a range of media such as canvas. A high-
quality PP renders depth and “vertical lift” of the drawing from the flat 2D medium it is
printed, drawn or projected upon (Figure 6.5) and helps the process of the appearance of
the image leaping from the page.
Fading, darkening, simplifying and increasing the opacity of the surrounding context to
the design site help to focus the eye on the design rather than its surrounds. Applying a
darkening layer with illuminating elements can offer a “night view” plan of the site
(Figure 6.6). Use of aerial photography, ideally black and white, as the contextual
background to the design site helps to graft the design vision into a tangible and realistic
context, aiding comprehension of the drawings by non-designers. It also avoids the design
resembling an object floating in space. Due to the large scale of many landscape
architectural projects, PPs often involve zoomed areas or focused areas that provide detail

www.ebook777.com
at a closer and more human scale (Figure 6.7).
Free
In most cases, the use ebooks
of text for ==> www.ebook777.com
labeling key elements in the plan should not be
excluded. Labels are useful on the plan. Excessive amounts of text should be contained in
a key/legend to not clutter the drawing; however, a complete absence of text makes the PP
a more artistic drawing rather than an essential communicative tool that outlines programs
and site elements. Use of a small, simplified outline plan drawing to show section lines
and 3D view angles is usually preferred and this can be combined with a plan schematic
drawing. If section lines are shown on the PP they should only be indicated at the outer
edges of the drawing.
Often overlooked, but not unlike 3D images (and depending on the scale used),
activating a PP through adding people and activity increases the presence of the drawing.
Plans of large sites can use effects such as “clouds” to increase the depth and elevate the
sense of mastery and persuasion (Figure 6.8). Many landscape plans and drawings use
exaggeration to gain attention, especially in competitive design scenarios. This is often
achieved through over-saturated and vivid color palettes that distort the reality of the
actual context and outcome (e.g. saturated blue skies in the UK, where grey and softer
tones are the norm, and vivid, tropical greens in semi-arid environments, where softer and
pastel colors are more common).
PPs can easily become homogeneous due to unsophisticated color palettes (e.g. using
default colors) or use of generic communication programs and techniques (line-weights,
tools, filters, opacity, lighting). Plans should express the (existing and proposed) nature of
the site: density and height of buildings; the intensity and quality of the light; angle of the
sun and depth of shadows; the color of the soil and nature of the geology; the openness,
enclosure or topographic experience, the shape, form and textures of site vegetation;
colors and patterns of hydrology, seasonal change, and so on. While architectural digital
communication has perhaps become more globally generic and homogeneous, landscape
communication should retain its connection and expression of genius loci and the special
characteristics of place. Good PPs capture these qualities and express these elements to
give the viewer a more tangible and connected sense of experiencing the design (Figure
6.9). Spending time on site observing and absorbing these qualities has decreased in recent
decades, facilitated through the digital age, ease of image capture and reproduction, and
the hyper-speed of modern life. Landscape architects and their drawings need to retain
their connection to place to avoid drawings and resultant designs that are “anonymous,
standardized, unseen, and lacking in regional or human character and involvement.”2

Notes
1 Refer to James Corner’s article, “Representation and Landscape.” Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual
Enquiry, Volume 8, Issue 3, 1992.
2 See Alon-Mozes, T. “Landscape Architecture and Agriculture: Common Seeds and Diverging Sprigs” in Israeli
Practice, Landscape Journal, 28:2-09, 2009, p. 168.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

6.1
AutoCAD drawing, Maldon Promenade Park, United Kingdom. Most presentation plans use a CAD package to
accurately “spatialize” the layout. Coloring and rendering are often done outside of the CAD program. By Luke
Whitaker.

www.ebook777.com
6.2
Stitched Space, Blackwood Library and Community Garden, Adelaide, Australia. 3D model plan. Presentation plan
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
using Google maps, Rhino 3D, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, AutoCAD and hand drawing. Google map and
CAD data assembled in AutoCAD and plotted to scale; hand-drawn overlays for initial volume massing and
programmatic layout; 3D modeling in Rhino; 2D CAD line-work exported from Rhino and edited in Illustrator; color,
texture, and shadows applied in Photoshop. By Danny Brookes.

6.3
Quarters, North Adelaide parklands, Australia. Presentation plan: AutoCAD line-work overlaid with hand-drawn plant
icons using watercolor paints and black pen detail. Enhanced with Photoshop texturing achieved through a collage and
shadowing technique. By Alix Dunbar.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

6.4
Sinking the Square and Raising the Spirit. Finsbury Square, London, UK. Presentation plan: CAD, SketchUp and
Photoshop. Various Photoshop brushes used, such as cloud, smoke, light beam. Populated with everyday urban elements,
including vehicles and people. Paving pattern created in AutoCAD. Road details with Photoshop paint brush. Textures
applied. Shadows created with a copy of object darkened and opacity decreased. Burn tool applied. By Liam Sapsford.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

6.5
Perpetual Pride, Soho Square, London, UK. Presentation plan: SketchUp model using block colors, with Shaderlight
plug-in for rendering the shadows and mood of the urban context. Photoshop to bring the render to life, including
textures for the paving, grass, etc. To give the textures depth paving textures were overlaid and cropped to desired area.
This layer was left on darken so it picks up the shadow on the SketchUp Shaderlight image. Textures such as watercolor,
canvas or grainy are applied and then the overlay or soft light blending option gives the paving more visual depth. Tree
foliage is desaturated and cut out using the polygon selection tool with a feather applied and laid over the paving on soft
light to give the image yet more texture. Another trick to give the impression of sunlight hitting the ground is to take an
image of the sky and overlay it on the whole drawing and select the divide blending option with an opacity of about
20%. This drapes all elements of the image with the same kind of light. Water color brushes were also used as the final
layer on the drawing and paint clouds over the edges. By Luke Whitaker.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

6.6
Sentient Landscape, River Torrens, Adelaide, Australia. Presentation plan: Near map aerial imagery, CAD line-work,
satellite imagery, Photoshop technique to darken base and highlight elements to present a night view. By Fiona Doman.

6.7
Detail plan: Finsbury Square, London, UK. Images of ground textures taken from 1–2m high overlaid on to zoomed area
of the presentation plan. By Liam Sapsford.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

6.8
Your Meadow Views: Experiencing the Aesthetic, Chelmsford, UK. Presentation plan: Hand-drawn design, brought into
AutoCAD, hand-drawn hatches for ripple effect, rendered in Photoshop. By Elizabeth Pledger.

6.9
Maldon Promenade Park, United Kingdom. Presentation plan: AutoCAD line drawing color-rendered in Photoshop.
Textures used to create the paving and ground cover, hard landscape and water. Mottled grass areas created from effects
in Photoshop with poster edges applied to the layer. Final image used a sunset sky to overlay the entire drawing with hue
blending option to give the landscape a sunset tone. A blue sky was also applied over the image, with the divide blending
option. Cloud effects were applied to achieve the final visual effect to the presentation plan. By Luke Whitaker.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

7 Aerial Visions/Ground Control

The art of illustrative plans and bird’s-eye views
Karl Kullmann
As is apparent in cross-sections, landscape is comprised mostly of thin air. The solid
features that we tend to fixate on are actually dispersed sparingly across the ground plane.
To make sense of these landscapes from the air, a drawing from overhead has long been
essential for the spatial organization and representation of design concepts. While this
perspective was once literally acquired from terrestrial vantage points, landscape
representation echoed modern cartographic constructions and projections of Cartesian
space. As a result, the orthogonal landscape plan supplanted the oblique overview as the
primary drawing of proof, with the latter relegated to a supporting scenic role.
Culminating in orbiting satellites, a century of progressively higher flight reinforced the
primacy of the downward gaze.
In the 21st century, two technologies have begun to reorient the directly downward
alignment of the satellite’s eye. Web-based mapping applications and consumer drones
enable the revival of the lower-altitude bird’s eye, which is angled down and across. To be
sure, this anachronistic oblique viewpoint dates from a time when we oriented off church
steeples and hilltops, while today we use mobile devices to triangulate off geostationary
satellites. Yet the renaissance of the bird’s-eye view suggests that, while our devices tell us
our precise location, they aren’t as adept at telling us where our place is. In effect, the bird
humanizes the satellite.
In contemporary digital landscape visualization, both modes of aerial imaging are likely
to co-exist, providing different points of view on the same site. For this reason, here they
are explored together; whether orthogonal or oblique, effective aerial visions
simultaneously soar overhead, while grounding us in a place. The techniques for achieving
these divergent objectives are collated into five key motifs, which inform the digital
visualization processes of students at UC Berkeley. Two themes span these motifs: (1) the
role of perception of both landscape and representation; and (2) the residual value of the
analogue, with which landscape design retains a greater affinity than other design
disciplines.

Precision/vision
With the exception of newly created ground, the landscape precedes designers’ projections
of their visions. As a result, illustrative plans and bird’s-eye views are most often tasked
with projecting possible futures whilst simultaneously mapping the present. Moreover,
landscape designs mandate precision to be credible but are paradoxically unruly and
indeterminate when actualized. These dual characters require representations that are both
spatially precise and temporally open-ended. Graphically, this goal is achieved by
combining exacting line-work with loose regions between the lines. This relationship is

www.ebook777.com
reflected in our tendency to visually perceive our environment through its edges and
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
outlines, which is why we so readily identify with the line-based representations common
in comics and animations. In landscape representation, even very thin lines continue to
structure the vision, whilst enabling messiness to colonize the territories in between. From
a distance, this looseness ideally presents a compelling vision that draws the viewer in.
From up close, exacting lines deliver a second wave of precision, and with it, credibility.

Lean in, step back

Analogue representations exist on the drawing board at the same immutable scale for the
duration of their creation. While visualizers may be drawn into the minutiae of the page,
this inward journey is curtailed by the focal length of their eyes, which also approximates
to the viewer’s focal length. When creating digital drawings, infinitely precise vectors and
tiny pixel grids exert a considerably stronger gravitational pull through the screen. As a
consequence, we tend to get drawn deeper into the substructure of the image, both by
physically leaning forwards and by zooming in. Being absorbed into the machine risks
adopting a myopic point of view and associated loss of context and scale, especially from
the viewer’s perspective. Since real-world scale is already one of the most difficult
concepts for a designer to master, seduction by the infinite magnification of the virtual
world undermines the already fragile spatial authenticity of illustrative visualizations. To
counteract the lean-in, it is necessary to periodically step back, view the work as a whole,
and recalibrate one’s sense of scale.

Event horizon
The horizon represents the key datum and perceptual limit within a landscape. As we
move, new territories and events cross the threshold of our individual horizons and enter
our field of perception. As representations of both the corporeal world and future
projections, landscape design visualizations are also conditioned by their horizons. When
included in bird’s-eye views, a horizon provides lift and flight; without this critical
orienting datum, the viewer may be vulnerable to perceptual vertigo. For the Cartesian
projection of illustrative plans, the horizon takes the form of the edges of the page. Here,
the frame separates the field of representation from the background world. In analogue
representation, the first act was to define the frame before drawing could commence.
However, 1:1 scaled digital mapping allows this definitive act to be deferred indefinitely.
This results in weak frames that ineffectively decipher the representation of a portion of
the world. Because designs are small and landscapes are apparently endless, the horizons
of effective illustrative plans and bird’s-eye views are defined with great care. Only then
can frames and horizons be graphically transcended.

Whitespace
To fill a 36-inch wide (A2-sized) page with ink requires 7,000 parallel lines hand-drafted
with a 0.13-mm ink pen. As a direct consequence of the medium, retaining whitespace is a
practical necessity. By contrast, digital technology delivers the capacity to fill an image
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
with utmost ease and speed. Often this results in the whitespaces that are essential for
ensuring sufficient contrast within an image being smothered. Whitespace is not an
absence waiting to be filled in with textures and effects; rather, it provides structure, space,
and hierarchy in drawing. As described by the Gestalt perceptual principle of closure, our
perception bridges whitespaces and completes inferred structures. As fundamental
elements in our perception and structuring of urban space, paths and buildings are
particularly effective candidates for fulfilling this role within the image.

Face the sun

As with photography and painting, light is fundamental in design visualization. Where
light is cast, shadows follow. Shadows formed by sunlight projected across the page instill
the third dimension into otherwise flat illustrative plans. For already three-dimensional
bird’s-eye views, shadows imbue the scene with the fourth dimension of time. As
photographers know, the best light time most often occurs at the ends of the day, when the
sun is low on the horizon. With the exception of sites in the tropics, the sun also sits quite
low on a plan’s horizon frame, creating shadows that are long, dark, and expressive. For
illustrative plans, sites in the northern hemisphere present an additional problem; sunlight
from the south dilutes the three-dimensional impact of the shadows, which appear to fall
off the page. To counteract this, north may be rotated away from the top of the plan. This
is not as controversial as it may appear, since north-up is a relatively recent cartographic
standard. Indeed, to disorient quite literally means to rotate away from the east-up
alignment towards the rising sun that characterized many pre-modern maps.
Landscape remains a challenging subject to represent due to its complex, expansive
nature and dynamic lifecycle. As a consequence, landscape visualization does not enjoy a
one-stop photo-realistic rendering technique as is widespread in architecture and industrial
design. Instead, effective digital landscape design visualization necessitates a diverse
range of non-linear and hybridized approaches that are often grounded in analogue
traditions.

Note
1 In addition to studio instructor Karl Kullmann, some illustrations in this chapter were composed in various studios
offered by Professors Linda Jewell, Alma du Solier, Marcel Wilson, Walter Hood, Kristina Hill and Mark Anderson.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

7.1
Illustrative plan demonstrating a possible future melded with a map of the present. The image was created by importing
AutoCAD line-work into Photoshop, where aerial imagery and texture fills were composited and manipulated to draw
out subtleties such as the wave lines in the water. By Erik Jensen.

7.2
Illustrative plan demonstrating precise line-work and loose textures, carefully composed framing, and long, dark
shadows. The image was created by importing thin AutoCAD line-work into Photoshop, where the aerial image and
texture fills were composited and deformed using Photoshop artistic effects. By Paul McGehee.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

7.3
CAD drafted plan illustrating the impact of meticulous line-work. The image was created entirely in AutoCAD, with
careful attention paid to the hierarchy of line weights and line types. By Cacena Campbell.

7.4
Design context plan combining watercolor and aerial photography in an image with depth and drama. The image was
created by compositing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and AutoCAD line-work, aerial photo, and watercolor
samples in Photoshop, where color masks were applied and the contour lines inverted to white. By Yolanta Sui.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

7.5
Bird’s-eye view framed by the ocean horizon, whose tilt invokes an avionic viewpoint. The image was created by
extruding city blocks from GIS data and topographic modeling in Rhino, followed by V-Ray rendering and compositing
with a view-matched Google Earth scene in Photoshop. By Richard Crockett.

7.6
Site plan illustrating the impact of considered framing and fragments of white space in an unbounded landscape. The
image was created by importing GIS and AutoCAD line-work into Photoshop, where a solarized and sepia-toned aerial
image was integrated and contour lines dissolved into transparent white. By Erik Jensen.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

7.7
Bird’s-eye view illustrating datascape expressed physically over an urban horizon. The image was created by 3D
modeling GIS data through a Rhino Grasshopper script, and compositing with Google Earth imagery in Photoshop. By
Kent Wilson, Jun Li and Alex Schofield.

7.8
Illustrative plan demonstrating white space constituted as elevated pathways underlain with deep shadows. The image
was created by compositing GIS and AutoCAD line-work and aerial photo extracts in Photoshop. The path shadows
were traced in Photoshop from observation of a sketch model placed in direct sunlight. By Michal Kapitulnik.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

7.9
Illustrative plan illustrating the use of white paths to structure the image. The image was created by importing AutoCAD
line-work into Photoshop, where texture fills were applied and line-work was either inverted to white or turned off.
Context background was darkened to highlight proposed design. By Tianyu Guan.

7.10
Urban plan with building blocks constituted as white space. The image was created by processing topographic and
cultural GIS data through a Grasshopper script in Rhino, followed by post-processing in Illustrator and Photoshop,
where texture fills were applied. By Kirsten Larson and Cindy Hartono.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

7.11
Illustrative plan comprised of watercolor, white space and strong shadows. The image was created by compositing
AutoCAD line-work, a Rhino 3D topographic model, and watercolor samples in Photoshop. Design contours were
generated off the Rhino model. By Yolanta Sui.

7.12
Bird’s-eye view that is dramatically illuminated by positioning the sun near the horizon. The image was created by
constructing a Rhino 3D model from AutoCAD line-work, view-matching the Rhino view to a scene captured in Google
Earth terrain view, rendering in V-Ray, and compositing the elements in Photoshop. By Richard Crockett.

www.ebook777.com
8 The Site Plan is Dead
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Long live the site plan
Roberto Rovira
In many ways, a site plan is not like a landscape, not like its layered dynamics that
qualitatively shift from season to season, not like the embedded ecologies that reveal
entropic throes from time to time, not like the expansive elements of infrastructures that
lie above and below the surface and extend well beyond the boundaries of a site with
varying degrees of clarity.
In many ways a site plan is like a landscape, obvious and present as when we privilege
our views through an omniscient window of an airplane or through the captivating power
of an aerial photograph that holds our gaze and seems to suspend the processes that shape
the land, rendering static the changes that are otherwise too far or too slow for us to
perceive.
As inadequate as a traditional site plan may be in conveying dynamic processes, it
nevertheless fulfills a necessary role in filtering the open-ended aspects of site and in
differentiating between the signal and the noise of a landscape and its idea. Robert
Smithson’s characterizations of Olmsted’s parks as existing “before they are finished” and
parks in general as “ongoing relationships existing in a physical region”1 resonate with the
Heisenberg-like uncertainty of a site plan that can never give us the fidelity of
representation, the more that it tries to depict ever-changing circumstances. Like the idea
of a photograph that to Smithson “indicates a break in continuity that serves to reinforce a
sense of transformation, rather than any isolated formation,”2 a site plan gives us a
momentary aspirational view of a site’s potential in that endless stream of transformation
that exists before it is finished. The rendered site plan is here to stay as long as we have
ideas to impose upon our surrounding environment, even if we have yet to tap its full
potential.
The question therefore lies in how we leverage the ever-increasing power of digital
representation to fulfill a site plan’s promise. Is it within the scope and agency of the site
plan to model incrementation and performance, to communicate iterative transformation,
to get us closer to representing landscapes’ ongoing relationships and change? As
landscape architecture continues to embrace sites, programs, and agendas of greater
complexity, it makes sense to look at ways to embed increased potentials on the site plan,
and to use the latest technologies to do it. After all, when a site plan succeeds, its power
transcends representation for representation’s sake and becomes a provocative agent for
political and economic advantage as much as a physical blueprint for things to come. It
would be hard to imagine Olmsted’s prolific career and expansive practice without
contemplating the power of the site plans that helped translate his prescient visions into
tangible transformations. Olmsted helped the public park become “a source of health and
pleasure … a work of art, and … a powerful influence on the evolution of the city”3 and it
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
was in large part through the agency of rendered site plans that these powerful ideas came
to be understood, recorded, communicated, and realized.
Digital representation facilitates the expansion of the site plan with the implicit digital
power of duplication, scalability, layering, and digital precision, among others. Some of
these strategies are in evidence in the work developed by landscape architecture students
at Florida International University in Miami, as seen in Figures 8.1–8.3 (collective
strategies for a regenerative waterfront). Here the images illustrate ways to reconfigure a
formerly commercially viable waterfront by introducing new urban and civic reference
points of urban life as well as places of collective recognition about the city’s past,
present, and future. The rendered site plan also shares a clear sense of materiality and
precision that digitally duplicates texture and rendering technique and integrates site plan
with perspective. The renderings show textures of water and turf in the site plan, a
technique that is reminiscent of collage, but which at the same time grants the plan a
selective realism that helps to tie it to the perspective and to the site.
The site plan for the Puerto Rico: South Coast (Figure 8.4) studio takes on a more
regional scale and hybridizes aerial photography with rendered areas in order to convey
design ideas, urban corridors, public space organization, and boundaries. In these
examples, the layering of aerial photography as backdrop contextualizes the site proposal
with clear specificity. Grayscale tones and white geometry clearly demarcate the precise
layout of architectural elements, and the design proposal is privileged through a
manipulation of background opacity and desaturation.
Three additional examples of site plans that demonstrate how duplication and layering
can be used to communicate phasing and systems can be seen in Figures 8.5 and 8.6, and
in phasing site plan proposal for limestone quarry (Figure 8.7) reclamation in Florida. In
Figure 8.6, a clever bird’s-eye view site rendering showcases hydrological, circulation,
open space, boundaries and industrial enclaves. The proposal posits that, through a
reconfigured hydrological system that includes new wetlands and canals, the post-
industrial and post-agricultural character of the region that was irreversibly altered in the
early part of the 20th century, can be redefined. Specifically, the design calls for a
rethinking of the hydrological infrastructure to create new attitudes about the land by
emphasizing habitability, technology, and landscape-centric research opportunities.
Figure 8.5 uses an exploded axonometric technique to effectively separate phases of a
design concept for a regenerative landscape, whereby an industrial region is slowly
transformed over several decades into research facilities that focus on post-industrial and
post-agricultural remediation. The “stacked site plans” illustrated in both of these
examples convey how various layers and networks correlate spatially in a landscape that is
comprised of various complex systems that are better understood as parts of an interrelated
whole.
Figure 8.7 phased plans additionally demonstrates the ease with which a site plan can be
repeated and selectively augmented to illustrate long-term transformation. Since the
design at its core dealt with the progressive accretion and erosion of limestone in various
forms and scales to create a fabricated landscape for educational, ecological, and

www.ebook777.com
recreational programs, the phased site plan vignettes illustrated how each of these
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
programs could be incrementally added.
While the site plan has historically served to communicate ideas about the landscape in
a relatively static format, digital representation provides many opportunities to exploit the
medium and grant it greater complexity and nuance. The ability to convey dynamic
processes within a site plan may not be immediately possible or even desirable, but the
multiple ways in which digital technology can facilitate a better understanding of site by
virtue of techniques like repetition, scaling, layering, filtering, duplication, and other
digital methods remain essential and powerful. As a concise representation of an idea
about the land, the site plan empowers landscape architecture with a primordial tool whose
potential will continue to lie in its ability to present with clarity and often elegant
persuasion the art of the possible.

Notes
1 Refer to Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings. Ed. J. Flam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, p.
160.
2 Ibid., pp. 160–161.
3 Jackson, J. B. A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. p. 114.
Illustrations provided in this chapter were part of various studios at Florida International University taught by
various faculty members, Gianno Feoli and Associate Critic Scott Bishop from Stoss.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

8.1
Collective strategies for a regenerative waterfront. Site plan of Colón waterfront, Panama. Some of the techniques and
software used include Adobe Photoshop post-production on CAD and Adobe Illustrator base. The rendered site plan
communicates materiality and duplicate textures of water and turf in both site plan and perspective, thereby granting the
plan a selective realism. By Carolina Jaimes.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

8.2
Collective strategies for a regenerative waterfront. Plan of Colón peninsula, Panama. Some of the techniques and
software used include Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator on an aerial photograph. The figure shows specific areas of
intervention and green infrastructure through montage. By Carolina Jaimes.

8.3
Collective strategies for a regenerative waterfront. Bird’s-eye view perspective of Colón waterfront, Panama. Some of
the techniques and software used include Adobe Photoshop post-production on 3d Maya model rendered with Maxwell.
By Carolina Jaimes.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

8.4
Alternative creek. Site plan from Puerto Rico: South Coast studio. Some of the techniques and software used include
Adobe Photoshop post-production on aerial photo and CAD base. By Martina Gonzalez.

8.5

www.ebook777.com
Regenerative landscape. Site plan from Puerto Rico: South Coast studio with adjacent exploded axonometric indicating
phasing. Some of the techniques and software used include Adobe Photoshop post-production on aerial photo and CAD
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
base, with final layout in Adobe InDesign. By María Inés Aragón.

8.6
Echoes of the landscape. Bird’s-eye view. Rendered areas convey design ideas, urban corridors, public space
organization, and boundaries. By José Alvarez.

8.7 a–d
Serenity in scale. Starting phase (a), 15 years (b), 50 years (c), and 100 years (d) site plans. Starting configuration for a
limestone quarry reclamation project that proposed progressive accretion and erosion of limestone in various forms and
scales to create a fabricated landscape for educational, ecological, and recreational programs. By Devin Cejas.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

Axonometric Drawings

www.ebook777.com
9 Chunking Landscapes
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Christopher Marcinkoski
Variations on the notion of chunking appear in a range of disciplinary discourses related to
the comprehension of an idea or the expression of a concept. For example, in
contemporary psychology scholarship, the term chunking refers to the memory capacity of
an individual and the unconscious tendency of the human brain to group similar or related
items in order to more easily recall them.1 In writing, the theory behind chunking relates to
the intentional separation of complex concepts or ideas into smaller components to make
reading comprehension faster and easier.2 In computational linguistics, chunking refers to
the unpacking and subgrouping of the components of a sentence in order to determine the
precise meaning of that particular combination and order of words.3 In the context of these
examples, I would suggest that a variation on this notion of chunking could also be applied
to discussions of contemporary landscape architectural representation—particularly as it
relates to the increasing use of parallel projection as a means of design expression.
Parallel projection—also commonly known by its variants axonometric, isometric or
oblique projection—is a mode of representation originally developed for the purpose of
producing technical drawings free of optical distortion. First seen in the late 18th century
and formally defined as a technique in the early 19th century, this method of drawing
endeavors to describe three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional picture plane by
means other than perspective.4 Upon its initial dissemination, engineers and architects
quickly appropriated the technique, as it offered them a method by which to easily and
accurately represent the measure of an object in all three dimensions within a single
drawing.
The 1920s saw the novelty of axonometric and isometric drawing become a motivating
influence on visual inquiry for both avant-garde artists and architects like Gerrit Rietveld
and Le Corbusier. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, these drawing types dominated
architectural discourse within the United States—frequently employed in the work of so-
called post-modern designers such as John Hejduk, Peter Eisenman, Robert Venturi and
Steven Holl, among many others. However, they were, for the most part, seen in only a
limited capacity in landscape architectural representation.5 As new tools for digital
representation became increasingly available in the late 1990s, the parallel projection
seemingly fell out of fashion within dominant modes of architectural representation, in
favor of the now ubiquitous (and increasingly easily generated) perspectival view.
Yet within the last decade, a variation on the parallel projection has increasingly
reappeared in the work of leading landscape architecture practices, including West 8,
James Corner Field Operations, STOSS and PORT A+U. I refer to this drawing type as the
landscape chunk, and contend that its proliferation within design schools and professional
practice is a noteworthy moment in the evolution of landscape architectural representation
as it provides a uniquely legible means of describing complex interrelated systems
operating in time.6
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Unlike the architectural examples seen throughout the 20th century, these early 21st
century landscape architectural drawings are not compelled by the need to represent the
precise measures of an individual object, or the desire to extract a particular design
intervention from its contexts. Rather, like the psychology and writing examples described
above, chunking in terms of landscape representation relates to the isolation of a particular
condition for the precise purpose of focusing attention on the specificity of that condition.
The grouping of separate, but related, strata of information associated with a certain
circumstance for the means of conveying design intent is fundamental to deployment of
the drawing type.7 In this sense, my use of the term chunk refers to both the physical
segregation of a condition (to take a chunk out of something), as well as a means by which
to explain the particulars of that condition (grouping related information into conceptually
digestible chunks).
In addition, chunking—as it relates to landscape representation—also implies a
conflation of drawing types. Whereas landscape architectural representation has long
employed the plan or the section or the perspective or (more recently) the diagram as a
means of conveying information, the axonometric chunk provides a method by which to
collapse the information conveyed in these individual methods into a single drawing type.
Here, the section is extruded into a fragment of the plan, and is then rotated in order to
understand both plan and section simultaneously. The material and spatial qualities of the
perspective are able to occupy the surface of this extruded section, while the relationships
embedded in the diagram can be overlaid on to this composition. When combined with a
discrete system of notation, the landscape chunk provides a powerful tool for conveying
complex and manifold ideas about urban form and strategy to both disciplinary and lay
audiences.
In this regard, the landscape chunk has the capacity to describe the multifaceted
relationship between vertical information such as topography or building volume, with
subterranean networks such as utilities, or conditions like geologic composition. The
chunk can easily describe horizontal information related to site organization,
programmatic adjacencies, circulatory systems and material surfaces, while
simultaneously depicting spatial information like the movement of water across a surface,
or a space’s degree of enclosure. Durational evidence related to the accumulation of
material or movement of a population over time can easily be represented using a
sequence or set of landscape chunks where descriptions of variation are the focus of the
array. Additionally, the extent of what can be included within an individual chunk is also
scalable—from a narrow segment of a walking path along a steep escarpment to an entire
new urban district at the periphery of a city. This repertoire of capacities allows the
landscape chunk to offer easily digestible, comprehensive, relational expressions of design
intent and spatial consequence.
Digital modeling software like Rhino, Grasshopper or Maya, used in combination with
graphic editing software such as Photoshop or Illustrator, has allowed for increasingly
sophisticated and descriptive versions of the landscape chunk to be developed. And in
some ways, perhaps the ubiquity of these software and their associated techniques can be
seen as a root of the proliferation of this drawing type. As such, there is of course a risk in

www.ebook777.com
the overly promiscuous use of the landscape chunk where actual conditions are obfuscated
Free
in order to deceive, ebooks
or where ==> www.ebook777.com
a circumstance is shown in an overly generic or non-
committal way that defers design resolution. Perhaps the landscape chunk might even be
viewed as too easy, too de rigueur. On the other hand, at present it remains almost
impossible to find another single drawing convention that offers such a robust capacity to
deliver a materially expressive, spatially dramatic, organizationally clear and universally
legible means of describing the intent behind a proposal for the transformation of a
landscape. As such, there should be little surprise as to the increasing employment of the
drawing type.

Notes
1 Contemporary discussions of “chunking” in psychology literature can be traced back to George Miller’s 1956 essay
“The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information” in
Psychological Review, 1956; 63(2): 81–97.
2 Nielsen, J. “How Users Read on the Web” in Nielsen Norman Group, 1997. http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-
users-read-on-the-web/ (accessed 22 February, 2014).
3 Abney, S. P. Parsing by Chunks. New Jersey: Bell Communications Research, 1994.
4 Sopwith, T. A Treatise on Isometrical Drawings, as Applicable to Geological and Mining Plans, Picturesque
Delineations of Ornamental Grounds, Perspective Views and Working Plans of Buildings and Machinery, and to
General Purposes of Civil Engineering. London: J. Weale, 1838.
5 Landscape architects Dan Kiley and Garrett Eckbo are two notable exceptions to this.
6 These examples for the most part are not pure axonometric or isometric drawings by geometric definition. In fact, the
drawing type is most often used in a slight perspective. However, there should be little doubt that the convention is
derivative from the modernist parallel projective mode of drawing that dominated architectural discourse in the 20th
century.
7 Unlike the exploded axonometric drawings popularized in the late 1990s that endeavored to unpack or delaminate the
systems present within a site or region in order to understand the individual components, the landscape chunk is
expressly concerned with the physical and spatial consequences produced by the interrelationship of these
components at a precise moment in time and space.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

9.1 and 9.2

North Philadelphia mobile learning labs are choreographed across vacant lots along a neighborhood loop armature (Lot
Loop). Each axonometric chunk shows variations in possible configurations using a basic kit of parts that includes
demountable Innovation Trucks (mobile), civic platforms (fixed), lighting and wi-fi (fixed), graphic murals (fixed), as
well as new planting (permanent). Base model was constructed in Rhino, rendered using V-Ray, texture, materiality and
shadows added in Photoshop, annotation overlay and key plans developed in Illustrator. By Brian McVeigh.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

9.3
Sequence of axonometric chunks showing a prototypical de-mapped street and vacant block in North Philadelphia
undergoing a process of active urban reforestation. Dimensional information, underground infrastructures, building
repurposing and ground manipulation are all embedded into a single drawing type. Base model was constructed in
Rhino, rendered using V-Ray, texture and materiality added in Photoshop, annotation overlay and key plans developed in
Illustrator. By Chieh Huang.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

9.4 and 9.5

East-West Fairmount Park Pedestrian Link connecting the Brewerytown neighborhood on the east side of the park to the
Parkside neighborhood on the west. Using primarily existing and abandoned circulation-ways, a series of new civic
landings are deployed at gaps within this network. The highly articulated nature of the individual interventions is
highlighted against the deep vegetal textures of the existing park. Base model was constructed in Rhino, rendered in V-
Ray, vegetal textures, materiality and shadows added in Photoshop, annotation overlay and key plans developed in
Illustrator. By Chi Yin Lee.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

9.6
Proposal for recolonizing the Northeast Rail Corridor right of way moving through North Philadelphia by introducing a
metropolitan-scale habitat corridor between the Delaware River to the east and the Schuylkill River to the west. Habitat
diversity shown relative to particular spatial conditions along corridor. Base model was constructed and rendered out in
Rhino, material texture and vegetation developed in Photoshop, annotations and species catalogue added in Illustrator.
By Jackie Martinez.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

9.7
“Light” infrastructural occupancy of incomplete development areas at Madrid’s periphery showing interim civic
production landscapes. The correlation of programmatic activities to temporary land uses is described by overlaying
annotations indicating activity flows across three vacant blocks eventually slated for collective housing developments.
Base model was developed in Rhino, exported as vector line work using Make2D command, animated and annotated in
Illustrator using raster material swatches and Live Trace command. By Alejandro Vazquez and James Tenyenhuis.

www.ebook777.com
10 Landscapes that Fit Together
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Maria Debije Counts
Depending on the complexity of a landscape, representing the landscape through an
axonometric drawing can explain not only the individual complexities within layers of a
design, but how those systems and spaces fit together to make an experiential space as a
whole. Axonometric drawings are uniquely poised to serve as catalysts for exploring these
complexities that range from small details to large parks and landscape systems.
Axonometric drawings are extremely effective drawing methods for illustrating the
integration of physical design ideas and/or existing conditions to form what we ultimately
experience as “space” in 2D. This chapter features examples of unbuilt conceptual student
work of The Pennsylvania State University. The primary criterion for the image selection
is based on showing a range in complexity, both in the landscapes they are illustrating and
in how they were done relative to design exploration, rather than a record or set of
instructions of one particular method to producing digital landscape axonometric
drawings.
Axonometric drawings of landforms reveal differences in topographic terrain both in
texture and scale. For example, Figure10.1 explores a series of distinctively different
naturally occurring landforms with the fabric of a city through axonometric comparisons
drawn at a 4-mile range. These studies show differences between landform types by
providing visual clarity of each in terms of formal compositions using three different
techniques in axonometric view: 3D “elevational” contours, terraced contouring, and
smooth surfacing. Each study is given its own space on the page as a means of
highlighting individual unique characteristics. The scalar relationship across the different
study drawings illustrates extreme complexity across a clear datum for comparison as a
form of topographic inquiry. In Figure 10.2, the set of axonometric drawings tests scale
and topography, while adding a detail level of investigation. Three specific scales are
maintained as a means of comparing each layer in axon view to compare those factors.
Through this process, data-rich illustrations reveal how Geographic Information Systems
(GIS) mapping can be applied to a site-specific location as part of inventory and analysis
at multiple scales of inquiry and representation.
Seeing an entire view and stratifying layers are extremely powerful when taking
complex information for the purpose of visually communicating and illustrating
landscapes. By “exploding” landscape data through axonometric depictions across a
horizontal axis, such as in the exploded transect axonometric drawing (Figure 10.3) of
Bald Eagle Ridge on Mt. Nittany, Pennsylvania, the visual space in between layers
provides the visual white space necessary to showcase detailed information, while still
illustrating the overall topography of the Ridge. As a result, “elevational” spot grades and
slope information, distances to small ridges along the transect, land use and native flora
become yet another “layer” of information to enhance the performativity of the drawing as
a told for understanding and clarifying the space that otherwise, if all combined, might
have been visually confusing. One can imagine how there might also be other dynamic
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
sections occurring across the site through reading this drawing. When paired with the
axonometric view, this exploded section drawing shows several levels of complex three-
dimensional views in one two-dimensional drawing.
By isolating and exploding data-rich layers within a landscape, otherwise unobservable
information is revealed. This can include information that may or may not be observable
from a plan, section or model. Figure 10.4 illustrates how the spatial configurations of a
small-town urban design project is faceted with layers that operate on their own, as
individual systems of organization, and together as one cohesive system. By isolating and
pulling apart the components of the design such as the circulation patterns, planting, and
contouring, each layer has a new level of importance, allowing the viewer to see clearly
further insights into the design that might otherwise have had different implications if only
shown in plan. The unique organization of individual layers and where they fit into the
larger plan are also illustrated by including the compiled set of layers as a layer all its own.
Site lines articulated as grey dashed lines guide specific components to where they fall
within the plan. This technique helps distinguish one layer from another so that they can
easily be understood as “fitting in” to the larger plan. The lines are intentionally drawn at
the same scale so that their placement and overlapping make this possible. When fused
together (as seen in the bottom layer), each element and layout reinforces the other to
enhance perceptions of complex spaces inherent to every landscape design in some
capacity or another, and work in harmony together.
Equally as important as showing where layers within a plan fit together is understanding
how individual concepts and features operate. Exploded axonometric drawings for
landscapes are particularly useful for illustrating a range in scale from larger site systems
to small details. For example, Figure 10.5 illustrates an abstraction of a conceptual design
for a 40-acre community site, in which the student explodes a series of plan layers stacked
above one another, each revealing where in space it falls within the larger master plan. By
separating the architecture from the landscape, we can understand their organizations and
logic on their own, as well as see where they fit into one another without the view of
where they fit into place being blocked by another object, such as might happen in the
case of a perspective. In addition, we can begin to see how they might operate on their
own as individual systems. The exploded axon of a floating wetland (Figure 10.6)
illustrates a detail scale of that design feature. This simple rendering shows overall form
and component to the design. It also allows one to critique the complexities of both the
concept and the design features.
Combining materiality with site structure through axonometric drawings is particularly
effective for revealing the application of such materials within a given site organization.
Form and material come together to reveal a complex web of interrelated relationships.
Through this process, as seen in the exploded axon (Figure 10.7) and rendered axon view
(Figure 10.8) of a landscape in winter, the formal geometries of the spaces are isolated to
reveal the basic principles of the design, and when combined in an axon view, reveal how
those spaces are interrelated relative to a programmatic richness that is a result of the two
together.

www.ebook777.com
 Axonometric drawings used in landscape architectural design communication can
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
reveal the complex integrated systems of landscapes in clear, measured ways. Depending
on the level of their complexity, various approaches to site inquiry and logics are utilized
to reveal their differences through scalar comparisons. Data can become a visual synthesis
of information that can be meaningful to site inventory and analysis and inform design
through unique scalar comparisons of axonometrics. Isolating layers provides the space to
see how certain aspects, data, or operations function and how they fit together. Complex
systems can be broken down and edited to show a range of information on any given layer
and how it fits within the space. This is just a small sample of the range in complexity of
landscapes, but hopefully it can serve as inspiration for the power of visualization in
where and how things fit together to show how landscapes are more than just the sum of
all of their parts.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

10.1
Axonometric topographic study of four landscapes, including a mountain, river, glacier and city at a range of 4 miles to
analyze terrain, elevation differences, and landforms. Images created with AutoCAD, ArcMap, Rhinoceros and Adobe
Illustrator. By Wang Boxia.

10.2
Axonometric inventory and analysis diagrams of existing site conditions at three different scales. Soil types and
hydrology and terrain are analyzed relative to the project site. Images rendered with GIS, ArcMap, and ArcScene and
edited in Illustrator and InDesign. By Amy Foster and Shannon Kenyon.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

10.3
Drawings illustrate the interior of the Bald Eagle Ridge Formation to the northwest and the Nittany Mountain formation
to the southeast representative of the characteristic ridge and valley formations of Central Pennsylvania through
illustrating the topography, land use and native flora. Distance, elevation, and slope information accompanies the land
use and vegetation “bars,” better orienting human habitation patterns in relation to both the entering and exiting of
Bellefonte. Section illustration rendered in AutoCAD and edited in Illustrator. By Julian New.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

10.4
Exploded axonometric and master plan drawings of a small urban park proposed for downtown State College,
Pennsylvania. Dashed extrusion lines illustrate how the different layers of the design fit together in relation to the plan.
Each isolated layer of the design is isolated in the exploded axonometric drawing to reveal its individual systems and
logic. Images rendered in AutoCAD and edited in Illustrator and Photoshop. By Jie Zhang.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

10.5
Exploded axonometric plan drawings of spatial relationships of architecture, landscape, circulation and hydrology
through site. Images rendered in AutoCAD and edited in Illustrator and Photoshop. By Wilson Lee.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

10.6
Exploded axonometric detail drawing of floating wetland. Images rendered in AutoCAD and edited in Illustrator and
Photoshop. By Wilson Lee.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

10.7
3D exploded axonometric drawing illustrating major site organization, including planting, land-form contours, and
pavement. Illustration rendered in AutoCAD and Rhinoceros 3D modeling and edited in Illustrator and Photoshop.
Illustration created in Rhinoceros and edited in Photoshop. By Zhen Tong.

10.8
The rendered 3D axonometric view in winter reveals both materiality and formal overall site-choreography. Illustration
created in Rhinoceros and edited in Photoshop. By Zhen Tong.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

 Section-Elevations

www.ebook777.com
11 Vertical Plane Typologies
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Examining sections and elevations
Daniel H. Ortega and Jonathon R. Anderson
Drawing is a pivotal skillset paramount to landscape architects, as it is not only a form of
visual expression or making but also a form of critical thinking. In the courses at the
University of Nevada Las Vegas, students are tasked to think about why and how we draw.
A typical response usually evolves into a convoluted account of “To communicate our
ideas.” When pushed to consider the deeper meaning of what each line represents, a
seemingly chaotic dialectic begins to reveal that the critical challenge of drawing is not
only to communicate but also to analyze, respond to, and envision, past, present, and
future tenses of complex, natural, technical, spatial, phenomenological, and cultural
conditions via graphical facsimiles of those circumstances. This challenge proves to be
anything but simple. While drawings serve as a practical means for communicating these
scenarios, they also uncover “poetic potential through their ability to create new
associations, to excavate affinities, to become vehicles for discovery.”1
As educators, we have both dedicated a great deal of time and effort to working with
students so they may begin to initiate and engage in an understanding of representational
typologies and techniques that embody the complex conditions that form our built
landscapes. Of primary interest to us is what we refer to as the vertical-plane typologies of
section and elevation drawings. In landscape architecture, elevations are typically used to
express detailed information regarding the placement of objects in the landscape and their
spatial relationships, for example, the size of a specific plant and its proximity to other
elements in the landscape. In contrast, section drawings extend the orthographic projection
of elevations to include an implied physical slice through a site and the elements found
therein, resulting in a topographical reading of the site or structure interface and revealing
information that is not apparent to the untrained eye.
We extend our pedagogical interest in these vertical-plane typologies to address Carlisle
and Pevzner’s criticism which suggests that, “While landscape plans and perspectives
have achieved high levels of graphic refinement over the last decade, helping to increase
the visibility of landscape architecture, sectional representation has lagged, not receiving
the same level of graphic exploration and experimentation.”2 With this critique in mind,
we have encouraged our students to fully explore the powerful and expressive potential of
section and elevation drawings. Upon initiating this engagement, we witnessed an
increased use in the vertical-plane typologies as a vehicle for exploratory landscape
representation, and more specifically we realized students were embracing digital methods
of reproduction to craft their site-sections.
The student drawings that accompany this essay start to illustrate the role that digital
media can play in becoming both experimental and exploratory with respect to examining
section and elevation drawings. We are not suggesting that analog methods of producing
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
section and elevation drawings cannot be used to explore and experiment; rather we have
focused on digital methods of representation, in accordance with Woodbury’s assertion
that designers view digital tools as “ambiguous and free.”3 As such, this implication of
“ambiguity and freedom” stands as fertile ground for exploration and experimentation. We
contend that the digital realm has made it easier to explore the workflow related to these
drawing types while offering a controlled sense of ambiguity that allows for building and
manipulating multiple layers of information and complexity in a way that was once
inconceivable. Digital drawings are now more robust and work across many platforms.
For example, 3D models inform post-processing of pixels and the creation of vectored-line
work. This process can also work in reverse, where vectors create topographic realities in
3D modeling software.
Our collective ambition in promoting a digitally fluid drawing process has been to help
our students cultivate an appreciative understanding of how vertical-plane typologies can
be used to create powerful depictions where site exploration and representational
experimentation can be collaboratively manifested. The students whose works we have
included used a variety of digital media platforms and workflow processes to produce
their works. The digital media packages employed in these drawings included Adobe
Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Rhinoceros, SketchUp, and AutoCAD. Students worked
through an iterative process of layering landscape entourage, plants, and materials into site
scenarios while addressing the need to convey their project’s spatial considerations. Each
student was challenged to use a digital workflow as a way of manipulating and
representing the expressive and informative qualities necessary to convey meaningful
landscape considerations. We hope that this collection of works reinforces the idea that
drawing acts as a critically determinant factor in forming an ideational stimulus for
students and practitioners of the design arts, including landscape architecture.

Notes
1 Bowring, J. and Swaffield, S. “Diagrams in Landscape Architecture.” In: The Diagrams of Architecture: AD Reader.
(ed.) Mark Garcia. New York: Wiley, 2010. pp. 142–151.
2 Carlisle, S. and Pevzner, N. “The Performative Ground: Rediscovering The Deep Section.” Scenario Journal: Online-
only Journal 02 (2012) 14 pages. Web. Accessed 12 February 2014.
3 Woodbury, R. Elements of Parametric Design. London: Routledge, 2010.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

11.1
Section-perspective model created in Rhino and exported into Photoshop, where materials, entourage, and weather
conditions were added. By Arely Lopez.

11.2
Collaged section created in Photoshop using erasers, marquee selection, levels, opacity, and blur tools. Final section line
was added using Illustrator pen tool. By Tanner Chee.

11.3
Rhino model rendered as base color blocks and sectioned for topographic expression. Entourage, plant materials, and
textures were added using Photoshop. Sub-grade overlay and vector text were added using Illustrator. By Marshall
Cowan.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

11.4
Rhino model sectioned and exported into Illustrator where additional line-work was added and the landscape was
applied using a series of clipping masks. By Nick Christopher.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

11.5 and 11.6

Plant materials and entourage were isolated in Photoshop and placed in Illustrator. A series of overlays and masks were
used to add complexity while opacity changes were used to convey depth. By Jamie Mitchell.

11.7
Site-section explorations using digital photography with section cut line-work, diagramming, and text overlays created in
Illustrator. All sub-grade textures and materials were inserted using Photoshop. By Diego Alvarez and Jacob Johnson.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

12 Landschaftslinien
The obvious, the hidden and a method for their
decryption
Dietmar Straub
Landscapes have outstanding memories. Over millions of years sediments have been
deposited, removed and deposited again. We can make this archive accessible layer by
layer or section by section, decrypting history and stories that landscapes are recording.
Thereby we reflect upon “the landscape of geographers. It is not the same as the landscape
of landscape connoisseurs, strollers, landscapists and tourists, even if there are some
connections.”1 I would like to add the landscape of landscape architects to this list.
What mainly excites me about landscapes is the invisible, the less obvious, and the
hidden. As a landscape architect and environmental designer I need to observe, explore,
and discover.
You see what you have learned to see. The perception of landscape is a skill that has
to be acquired. This applies to both historical and individual perception. Our culture
has become capable of perceiving landscape due to the works of Roman poets, late
Renaissance painters and English landscape gardeners who understood how to
represent landscape. Thus landscape is a collectively known cultural heritage.2
Sections and section-elevations, which are to scale, are essential throughout all phases of a
design, from analysis to site design and precise working drawings. I say this not because
sections and sectional views are one of my preferred methods of landscape representation,
nor because I am looking for an occasion to decorate presentation boards with graphically
pleasing slices of landscape, but quite simply because I want to fathom the secrets that
exist above and below the ground in order to cultivate a kind of vertical view connecting
the obvious with the invisible.
Students initially approach this specific representation request with some skepticism.
Sections and sectional elevations are stuck with the reputation of being boring and
traditional, especially in the age of painting by binary numbers where the media
revolutions of the 20th and 21st centuries have established a visual environment in which
simple floor plans, sections, sectional elevations, models and even photographs
increasingly tend to appear as hopelessly unspectacular. The analytical method of the
“sectional in-depth inquiry” and its advantages must therefore be explained and carefully
explored over and over again.
Cross-sections are a common display format not only in landscape architecture but also
in architecture, engineering, and machine-building. Computer-generated sections are also
used for diagnosis in medicine and archeology. The “body” to be examined is
systematically scanned and disintegrated into its nano-slices. This technology allows the

www.ebook777.com
precise visualization of abnormal changes and their spread in a three-dimensional view.
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
The procedure applied is commonly known as a computer axial tomography (CAT) scan.
This highly technological procedure is especially required for the purpose of medical
diagnosis and the provision of care or treatment. I am using this example to draw attention
to the potential of 2D slice images for landscape architecture. Depending on the issue and
the “region” to be investigated, very different graphs, methods and scales can be applied.
To illustrate this approach with an example I shall refer to a design studio taught in
Manitoba during the winter term of 2013. A series of field trips into the Canadian prairie,
including a snowshoe walkabout at temperatures below minus 40 degree Celsius, provided
an unforgettable climax for students studying landscape architecture in Winnipeg.
This studio focused special attention on water because all “Winnipeggers” live in the
same Super Bowl, the Red River Lowland, a particular wet place known for annual
periodic flood issues. Topics of discussion and investigation were: the role of landscape
architecture when dealing with industrial farming and watersheds, drainage systems and
environmental history, agriculture and deforestation, ecology and economy, plug and
prairie, private and common and chessboards and topography. Designing with the wet in
the prairie describes a specific research interest embracing urban and rural areas without
regard for municipal boundaries. The studio journey started at the Red River, continued
along the Rat River and led step by step into the finest branches of the prairie vessel
system. The watershed of the Rat River functioned as a research laboratory for retention
and purification in the context of a new architectural infrastructure.
The task involved mapping the pulse of the prairie through Landschaftslinien. For a
specific studio, lines were taken at intervals of 100m, 200m and 500m perpendicular to the
prairie rivers. Each of these Landschaftslinien had a length of 1000m drawn in the scale
1:500. Everything above and below these lines was recorded. As a serial sequence these
Landschaftslinien generated stratified pictures (tomograms) revealing distinctive
transitions and landscape changes.
The use of Landschaftslinien offered a spatial reference to the “pulse map of the
prairie.” Each studio group produced an examination and inventory by mapping at least
three to five Landschaftslinien in a specific segment along hierarchical waterways in the
farmland. The overall review of these “pictures” created a sense of the “anatomical”
relationship of this water system. The serial production of Landschaftslinien and its
sequencing offered a method for landscape investigation. The result obtained using this
procedure was an important contribution to the understanding of the landscape’s
“biography.” The “memory” of the landscape was examined layer by layer. Section by
section we rummaged in archives—a detective-like search.
Alain de Botton distinguishes between tourists and travelers in his book Die Kunst des
Reisens (The Art of Travel). On my personal landscape journey into the invisible, I prefer
not to follow the program schedule of a travel guide or the stories of a history book, nor I
am looking for those spectacular postcard motifs or scenic photographs. I want to
understand the landscape structures and the role of landscape architects as surveyors,
geographers, and landscape connoisseurs, and remain purely an analytical observer.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Sectional drawings document the analytical view. They are carefully selected, sorted by
topic and presented as a short outline of the landscape.
The illustration of the deepest landscape layers in this way is far more than just
Photoshop and pixel swank. The illustrations visualize complex realities below and above
a simple line in the landscape. “We are not simply looking, but gaining a deep
understanding of its components and consequently we are able to remember more
precisely.”3
Canoeing and snowshoe walkabouts are adventurous activities. Spending time on a
river or in the cold of the wet prairie helps students to understand how austerity and
sensuality are not necessarily contradictory terms. At the same time, students learn about
many aspects of design, including landscape and ecology, water and light, stone and
shadows, wildlife and habitats, stillness and geomorphology. Drawing Landschaftslinien
can help to enhance their awareness.
I use Landschaftslinien as a method in both my own design process and in the teaching
of design. What Landschaftslinien can provide is the ability to decrypt a location’s
potential and the ability to gain access to invisible conditions and to communicate these
aspects through simple drawings along a line.

Notes
1 Burkardt, L. Design = Unsichtbar. Ostfildern: Cantz Verlag, 1995, p. 162, translated.
2 Burkardt, L. Design = Unsichtbar. Ostfildern: Cantz Verlag, 1995, p. 206, translated.
3 De Botton, A. Kunst des Reisens. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2002, p. 238, translated.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

12.1
Trans-sections. This image set depicts the seasonal variations in color and texture through a 1-km section of agricultural
field outside Otterburne, Manitoba. The group decided to digitally draw the section line (using the sites existing
topography) in AutoCAD and Vectorworks. Elements such as trees and wildlife were added to illustrate the different
seasons and diversity of species that exist on the site. By Tommy Allen, Jenna Atkinson, Pui Kei Chan, Meaghan
Giesbrecht, Janis Leighton, Pearl Yip, Tatum Lawlor, Lui Minjia, Heather Scott, Darko Sajdak, Garth Woolison, and
Haikun Xu.

12.2
Prairie Rambla. A base of the section made in Vectorworks is brought into Photoshop where the buildings and vegetation
are added. The base line is created by crinkling a piece of trace paper, scanning it, bringing it into Adobe Photoshop, and
adding a layer of solid color which then uses the Multiply function over the scanned trace paper. The bottom is erased
with 25% opacity using multiple strokes and fitted into the section. By Sara Brundin, Vincent Hossein, and Anna
Johansson.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

12.3
Manoomin seasons habitats. The group aimed to graphically illustrate the diversity and dynamism of wild rice (Zizania
palustris) and the connection it could have to the project’s central focus on water and ecological awareness. The simple
section-elevation combined a line drawing through the site done in AutoCAD at 1:500 scale, utilizing topographical
information to demonstrate the landscape features. In Adobe Photoshop, layers were added with native tree species,
wildlife examples, as well as details that showed the seasonal color and textural variability of rice fields, all overlaid on a
map showing the region’s topography. By Tommy Allen, Jenna Atkinson, and Lui Minjia.

12.4

www.ebook777.com
Evapotranspiration. The focus of the case study was on the intricate system of storm water collection and groundwater
protection. In order to emphasize the importance of the water, vertical swathes of color were chosen in contrast to the
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
mainly black and white section. Watercolor crayon was used to create the water and the texture of the base of the section
was achieved by scanning corrugated cardboard and applying a noise filter in Photoshop. Finally, CAD drawings of
building facades and photographs of vegetation and people were layered in Photoshop. By Kristen Struthers.

12.5
Growing fields, university campus. All images adjusted in Adobe InDesign. Section elevation in AutoCAD and Adobe
Photoshop. By Anna Johansson.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

12.6
Stones in cages. The image was constructed using a combination of hand drawing, Adobe Photoshop, and Illustrator.
The piece began as a simple hand draft of the gabion structure and its relationship to the water in order to establish the
proper bones, character, and dimensions of the section. The drawing was then brought into Photoshop to retrace and to
collage various textures and images into a grid to communicate dimension, form and material intent within the gabion
structure. The body of water and overlaying grasses were layered on to the grid and made slightly opaque to indicate
depth and transparency. The section was completed in Illustrator with the addition of color vector lines to indicate the
interaction of process and exchange within the created environment. It was an attempt at illustrating action, materiality,
possibility and intimacy through both imaginative and technical representation. By Justin Wolters, Lindsey Weller, and
Kaleigh Lysenko.

www.ebook777.com
13 Alternative Revelations of Sections
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
1

Origins of the subjective section

Andrew Hartness
The section as we know it—or the elevation for that matter—is relatively new to
landscape architecture. Vitruvius alludes to complicit relationships of constructed and
natural forms in the Ten Books on Architecture. Despite obvious demonstration of spatial
and material understanding, structures were not borne of sophisticated scaled drawings
until the early Medieval age. Before that time, buildings worthy of foresight were planned
and laid out, relying on the mastery of artisans and craftsmen. Landscape architecture
followed a similar trajectory in the development of design documents during the
Renaissance, most dramatically with André Le Nôtre’s creation of a complicated and
synthesized landscape for Louis XIV.
Characterizing the section’s insertion into the discipline requires some conjecture about
what role the section was expected to fulfill, as well as which etymology of “landscape” it
was intended to represent … Few examples of true construction documents remain from
any design discipline—most drawings were produced after-the-fact to document the
grandeur of built projects. Further, due to its more phenomenal presence, the landscape
was analyzed and depicted (not necessarily documented) in similar phenomenal terms,
usually in a painting or etching.
Defining delineated landscape sections as relevant required an instructive provision. In
the 18th century, as estate planning and garden design moved beyond the pursuits of high
aristocracy and into the domain of the merchant class, illustrated “how-to” manuals indeed
began to be published. These guides catalogued terraced gardens in addition to generalized
sections showing scale and construction.2
The official purview of “landscape architecture” was for a long time limited to
decorative ground plane interventions; large infrastructural endeavors were under the
auspices of “civil engineering,” while structural applications were credited to
“architecture.” Both engineering and architecture have historically employed the
orthographic section. That landscape architects adopted the orthographic section at some
point is not surprising—it was historically the least ambiguous mode for drafting clear
construction guidelines. However, the section under these terms abstracts the spatio-
phenomenal experience more for landscape architecture than for civil engineering and
architecture. The landscape, in all its vastness, depth, experience, mutability and time-
lapse is so compressed that its relationship to sensation is lost.
Conventional orthographic sections have since evolved to incorporate the motives,
geology, and experience that distinguish landscape expression from other design
disciplines. The Hybrid Drawing curriculum at Rhode Island School of Design explores
the balance of visceral and quantitative components of visualization through hybrid
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
representation techniques. Digital methodologies are fully embedded in the design
processes, from conception to production, and all the steps in between. Hybrid Drawing
courses seek to reconcile the individualized acts of perception and craft with the digital
capacity for measurement and clarity. In order to initiate this dialogue, we reformulate the
objectives of conventional sections into more open formats. Applying a more flexible
interpretation of “section” both graphically and semantically offers an opportunity to do
more than simply cut. Students and guest critics alike are emancipated from the ubiquitous
elongated site section (which we also explore, and improve upon).The section and its
spatio-phenomenal objectives have proven to be a provocative platform for both student
assignments and class discussions. Though less binary and conclusive than a Turing Test,3
our Hybrid Drawing course reviews foster dialogue on the manner in which analog and
digital applications influence the capacity for experience, clarity and message.
Sections and elevations are typically identified as end products. Within the
interpretative forum of Hybrid Drawing, sections and elevations are existentially recast as
tools or techniques that reinforce an experiential statement as credible. The course
emphasizes multi-layered attributes of graphic communication, which exist in the same
drawing simultaneously and selectively. Final documents can assume the graphic identity
of sections, but the expression of “section” is usually subordinate to the criteria of
narratives and processes in the holistic visualization. And in fact, true to the spatial
implication of landscape architecture, sections are usually cut into a perspectivally derived
base image, so the document retains that experiential and systemic connection to the
original place.

Notes
1 In cases of design and representation, arrested semiology can impede a concept’s capacity to evolve graphically.
Tempting though it is to creatively rename “the section” for contemporary visualization, I have found the effort futile,
without dispossessing the “traditional” section of its clarity and necessity. Also, Hybrid Drawing’s varied spatial
application of sectional designation renders even the cleverest neologisms restrictive and uninspiring. The terms
“profile” and “window” are both applicable.
2 I am indebted to the historical insights of Scheri Fultineer on the nuances of sectional representation in La Théorie et
la Pratique du Jardinage by D’Argenville and Le Blond.
3 More precisely, a Total Turing Test, a variation of the Turing test, wherein the interrogator can also test the perceptual
abilities of the subject (requiring infographic capacity) and the subject’s ability to manipulate objects.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

13.1–13.3
The perspective cut is quickly replacing the conventional site section as a dominant archetype, as it allows the rigor and
clarity of an orthographic cut and the spatio-phenomenal qualities of a perspective drawing. By Judy Tung (Figure 13.1)
and by Sean Kelley (Figures 13.2 and 13.3).

13.4
“The radiographic section,” as I refer to it here, uses transparency or wireframe techniques to allow for an interpretation
of collapsed depth. Typical criteria for this X-ray section involve simultaneous representation of a complex ground plane
and identification of three-dimensional objects. By Jessica Luscher.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

13.5
“The geo section” characterizes the geological make-up of a site. Often serving as a base image for data callouts, it is an
interesting fusion of spatial abstraction and material representation. By Jessica Luscher.

13.6
Analytic infographic sections are not bound by spatio-phenomenal requirements. They emphasize system relationships,
and one could say, could elude the sectional moniker. By Ponnapa Prakkamakul.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

13.7
The process section employs similar spatial flexibility as the infographic section to illustrate the occurrence of a process
or evolution in landscape space, such as erosion or phytoremediation. This may or may not emphasize the passage of
time. By Frank Hammond.

13.8
Interval cutting describes the application of multiple section slices at more or less regular intervals through the depth of a
perspective. This method allows us to understand a characteristic as it evolves through the landscape’s depth: site
topography, geology, program, etc. By Christina Vanelli.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

13.9 and 13.10

Multiple-narrative sections involve identifying cutting into several key moments or locations in a perspective to reveal
what is taking place. This reinforces a complex notion of process or narrative across the entire project space. By Laura
Cabral.

www.ebook777.com
Perspectives
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

14 Sensing Landscapes through Perspectives

Maria Debije Counts
Landscapes are complex three-dimensional living mediums. Graphic representation of
them involves a complex understanding of temporal, geometrical, and technical
information. Landscape perspective drawings, in particular, can be used as an effective
medium for design explorations as a means to expand sensory-based landscape design
investigations: the negotiation between ourselves and the environment. This chapter is
intended to show selected examples of digital student perspective drawings of the
Pennsylvania State University that test the experiential qualities within the context of
student studio design projects at various stages of conceptual development. While
qualities of the selected drawings may share similarities in content, stage within the design
process, and/or style, it is my hope that the distinctiveness between these similarities and
differences relative to how each student is testing sensibility through perspective drawing
approaches is most evident.
Recent advances in 3D digital modeling have made testing the spatial compositions of
landscapes a task that students can utilize at an early stage of the design process to reveal
the perceptible geometries and 3D qualities of a site with relatively basic modeling
techniques. Such digital 3D representation may have an impact on the direction of the
design, depending on how the design was generated. 3D digital landscape models provide
a platform from which the scale, spatial “rooms” or “occupiable” areas, and views into
and out of spaces, can be understood. No matter what the scale or stage in the design
process such a model is incorporated, all of the above have an effect on the experience of
any given site. As illustrated in the digital 3D model views (Figure 14.1), a digital
landscape model has been generated from contours and plans in AutoCAD. This provides
not only accurate dimensions in 3D of the proposed site and its spatial arrangements of
forms and features with surfacing, but also creates digital “occupiable” spaces that begin
to suggest the overall circulation of how one might move through it and what it might look
like compositionally. In this example, landforms, paths, buildings and canopy trees are
constructed as measured abstract forms and then intentionally rendered with a limited
color palette to allow the student to focus on the spaces that the elements within the
designed landscape will create in terms of “rooms” or spatial sequencing.
Using this approach, the student is then able to use the digital model to generate
multiple perspective views from the same model at different viewpoints. Because of the
relative ease and speed at which a variety of views can be shot, saved and edited to show
only desired layers of information, the student quickly grasps the overall configuration of
the site itself and is able to test this composition through views and later use them as a
basis for design revision. How does something look from that angle? Will the site be
visually engaging? What sorts of spaces will the formal geometries of spaces create? Will
there be spaces of enclosure or openness? These are the sorts of questions that are
generated from this form of perspective rendering through visually articulating the 3D
qualities of a landscape.

www.ebook777.com
 Testing temporal conditions of a place affects the landscape and the experience of a
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
landscape. “Digital lighting studies” in perspective drawings can aid in the visualization of
how a space changes over the course of time. In Figures 14.2 and 14.3, two students
explore this notion of time through an amplified landform study over the course of one
day. Two-hour digital rendering sketches reveal dramatic shifts in sunlight and shadows on
the site. This process reveals how the orientation of the sun affects the visual experience of
landscapes. Renderings have been generated from 3D models and lighting and shadowing
techniques were applied within the digital model and edited in Photoshop. Natural
elements such as sky backgrounds, planted form, and digitally sketched textures have been
incorporated to suggest what time of day the perspective is of, while more advanced
lighting techniques are generated in the digital model and later enhanced in Photoshop.
Artificial lighting is explored for those areas as needed within the design in need of
illumination. As a result of these two studies, the canopy strategy in both designs was
improved in some areas to provide more shade and open views. In addition, these
perspectives triggered a series of enquiries which led to design improvements. Examples
of these questions were: “to what extent will lighting be controlled on the site?”; “will
dappled lighting play a role in the overall site design?”; “to what extent will the path and
other formal geometries be choreographed around light?”; and “how will the site be
experienced at different times of day?”.
Materiality in landscapes is essential to the internalization of environments. Bridging
the gap between conceptual ideas about materials and how those ideas manifest into real
textures and things of substances can be an extremely productive exercise through
perspective-collaging. Figures 14.4–14.6 use texture and materiality along with various
atmospheric techniques to convey seasonal changes and environmental conditions, such as
portraying the “quality” of the landscape during wet weather conditions.
Programmatic ideas are tested in Figures 14.4 and 14.5 through a patch-collage
technique. By creating the basic structure of the picture in these two illustrations, these
students quickly alter the quality and overall design idea of the spaces by collaging
materials to specific designed geometries that were originally built in a 3D digital model.
This process involves a series of rendered perspective views from a digital model and a
library of digital material clippings from which the students then quickly have collaged
and stitched together into the perspective views, to showcase new ideas. The base drawing
provides the structure and overall view of the space, while the technique of using
Photoshop to add materials is quick and flexible. As a result, interesting juxtapositions of
materials and forms meet each other, some of which will remain, while others will be
replaced by another texture based on best judgments, learned through completing this
exercise study. These materials and geometries suggest particular programmatic ranges of
the site that are extremely useful to see at this stage of the conceptual design process. In
this case, it was important in testing how the site is proposed and likely to be used and
how the elements of the designed spaces will actually function as a place. In addition to
testing program through materiality, these students also tested programmatic range
throughout the year by rendering the drawings in winter. Figures 14.7 and 14.8 depict
elegant ways to showcase winter scenes with snow-covered hills, usable winter landscape
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
spaces and activities for people to experience the site even in the cold. The planting palette
is also challenged. The additions of dogwoods in the foreground (Figure 14.8) frame the
scene and add dimension and character to the overall picture.
Both these two studies as well as Figure 14.10 are examples that showcase further
development of materiality and expanded programmatic range. For example, the textures
and materials reveal the juxtaposition of architectural features such as the bridge and the
landscape coming together to form spaces. Textures are applied to the surfaces of the
model itself and, at this phase of the design, test not only what material is going where,
but how it will be affected by other factors such as light, season and use. These two 8–10-
hour drawings depict more highly rendered effects and as a result, are more photo-realistic
and more accurate depictions of what happens when form, materiality and light come
together than the previous figures discussed above. “Pulling out” landscape elements of
the picture frame creates an “extended view” of the space and brings to the viewer’s
attention the “designed elements” within the landscape (Figure 14.9).
Whether it is testing the formal geometry of site, temporality, materials, or elements
such as water or the planting choices, 3D digital perspectives provide the platform for
representing landscapes; complex 3D living media, as a means to impact our perceptions
and sense of spaces. Approaches to revealing sensual qualities of existing and proposed
sites alike can vary from simple abstract drawings (Figure 14.1) through complex night
scenes (Figure 14.11). When used as a design tool, experiential perspectives of conceptual
unbuilt projects, such as those included in this chapter of student work, demonstrate
different approaches and outcomes that can aid in the development of the design process.
As a collection of images, they illustrate a richness of dynamic inquiry and reveal
something different about the perceptive qualities of landscapes.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

14.1
Three perspective views generated from a 3D digital model created in Rhinoceros of a designed landscape testing as a
means to test site composition, geometry and occupiable spaces through abstract trees, landforms and paths. Three
materiality digital sketch-studies using the 3D model renderings and edited in Photoshop. By Xinxin Li.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

14.2 and 14.3

Two-hour perspective landform and path studies at different times of day. 3D digital landform modeling rendered in
Rhinoceros using V-Ray and edited in Photoshop. By Emily Hahn (Figure 14.2) and Jonathan Ross Van Wagoner
(Figure 14.3).

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

14.4 and 14.5

Fall creek rendering exploring site and seasonality. 3D digital model generated as base for perspective drawing in
Rhinoceros, including landforms and architectural features. Materials, textures, lighting and people digitally collaged in
Photoshop. By Alex McCay.

14.6
Temporal perspective study of a bridge-park design. Landform contours and site features created in AutoCAD and later
textured and rendered with V-Ray. Lighting, sky, wind and rain added in Photoshop. By Emily Larkin.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

14.7
Ten-hour refined sketch of skating pond and entry plaza of 40-acre community design project in Bellefonte,
Pennsylvania. 3D digital site model created in SketchUp, textures enhanced in Photoshop. By Liu Yang.

14.8
Green roof pavilion and topo study exploring architectural interventions and site program in winter. Created in
Rhinoceros and Photoshop. By Andrew Seifarth.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

14.9
Fall dusk perspective of outdoor amphitheater. 3D design model generated from AutoCAD line-work and surfacing
created in Rhinoceros. Materials and visual effects rendered in Photoshop. By Kathryn Nguyen.

14.10
Creek and bridge perspective of park project exploring “experientiality” in the landscape. Digital site model rendered in
Rhinoceros and later rendered in Photoshop. By Alex McCay.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

14.11
Outdoor amphitheater at night. Image generated using 3D modeling in Rhinoceros and edited in Photoshop. By Qin
Fang.

www.ebook777.com
15 Reinforcement through Opposition
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Metrics and emotion in project visualization
Andrew Hartness
Few disciplines accord a more varied spatial scope of visualization than landscape
architecture. This pendulum swings from wetland parks to urban hardscapes to private
roof decks, and so on. Phenomenal and spatial resonance of these spaces is just as varied:
we understand and feel what we can fathom spatially. “Landscapes” are intuitively
understood by people. A design project operating at the landscape level resonates with the
most basic human foundations of depth perception, ground plane, and imagination.
Because of this deep anthropological ontology, landscape—and landscape design projects
—can take on a number of identities: environment, ecosystem, map, media, and metaphor,
to name a few. It is not a surprise that the landscape metaphor was one of the first methods
used by the information visualization community to depict data that are not inherently
spatial.1 As landscape architecture merges its objectives with the larger scale of
metropolitan infrastructure and regional systems, so does visualization space shift to a
more elevated and diagrammatic viewpoint. The 3D “spatialization” of data—whether
synthesized with cartography or calculated into its own “volumetric” or superimposed on
to other variables—can be stunning and informative. In this case, as space and data are
both abstracted and quantified, they are not in opposition.2

The visceral space of hybrid drawing at Rhode Island School

of Design (RISD)
Equally as interesting, but on the other end of the spectrum—and, I might add, rooted in
opposition—the curriculum for Hybrid Drawing at RISD explores the simultaneous spatial
synthesis of emotion and metrics within a more subjective and nuanced context of
drawing. Inserting data metrics into qualitative phenomena realigns the discussion on
experiential terms. When successful, this hybridized gestalt allows the visceral to become
factual, the metric to become experiential, and each characteristic to exist independently
and spatially.
I would be remiss without adding a few course-specific caveats for Hybrid Drawing: (1)
As this is not a studio course, there are no site criteria or assigned objectives driving a
project. (2) Explorations of the esthetic experience are prioritized over knowledge;
therefore metrics are subordinate to emotions and data is only relevant and interesting if
its “host” experience is relevant and interesting. (3) Data serves to elucidate and justify,
but does not initially generate a design.
This inverted relationship appears to substitute numerical strategy with improvisation,
and rigor for caprice. But our mission is not the spatial representation of numerical
strategy, rather the recounting of a visceral, esthetic experience, rendered more credible by
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
data. Interestingly, “data” is often only rendered relevant and palatable by graphic
adaptation. If the focus is to be “spatio-phenomenal,” it is appropriate that the arena of
debate consist of sensorial standards. Perspective, proximity, and relationships, as
determined by individual esthetic criteria, play an important role in the fusion of emotion
and rationalization.3

The measured landscape experience, in three steps

The assignment which focuses most on the hybridized relationship involves three crucial
steps: perception, idea, and dérive (alluding to filtered applications of Latour, Deleuze,
and Debord to visualization processes). Each step utilizes a discrete approach for
representing a different way of measuring experience.
Let’s use, for example, the visualization of a floodplain in which students might be
asked to emphasize characteristics of a particular view. Eye-level photographs or drawings
of landscape sites manifest qualitative characteristics: vegetal textures, seasons, depth of
field, a sense of vastness, etc. We apply a “spatio-phenomenal-based” reading of the
drawing to emphasize properties associated with perception of place. We call the image
manipulated in this first stage a container image. This initial image should be a sort of
spatial armature, suitable for a diverse spectrum of data sets or narratives: interesting, but
not caricatured; neutral, but not devoid of character. The container image should inspire
codification while affirming the potential for experience. Landscape container images
work well for these diagrams where they are spatial, narrative, or metaphysical. This is
because representation of the open landscape is less affected by the material specificity,
structural prescription, and protocol that so dominate architectural representation. As a
result, the potential for new narrative expressions is more easily found.
In a second step, we identify ways in which these sensational characteristics can be
transcribed into data. This begins to create a quantitative interpretation, or an idea4 of the
floodplain. The idea from the second process takes the embellished container image and
recasts it in numerical terms. Some students propose metrics for flood cycles, some
analyze geological makeup, still others examine flora and fauna. The original drawing
exists, but must share its space with abstracted and “spatialized” data which itself takes on
qualities of texture, object, and character.
In a third step, we introduce additional metrics that underpin alternative narratives. Like
Situationists’ drawings of the city—albeit less politically motivated—we reposition
“analyzed” landscapes to embrace new realities, or structured drifts (dérives). Expressing
migratory bird corridors, inserting data-driven structures, and overlaying suburban
development blueprints, for example, all offer alternative narratives. This final iteration is
not in the service of data—rather, data reveals some of the factors behind a previously
inexistent experience or projected outcome. Butterfly sanctuary image (Figure 15.1)
embodies the nuances of this exercise. The color palette is subdued; the sense of space and
depth is dominant. The student’s idea expressed prevailing wind currents, tides,
topography, species, and handwritten notes. Here, the student’s dérive added migratory
information for the monarch migration corridor, and eliminated that data outside of the

www.ebook777.com
main character’s zone of perception. The perspective of verdant landscape of the Canadian
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
prairie (Figure 15.2) is defined cartographically, then reconfigured within a reprogrammed
landscape populated with busy workers. The vertiginous panorama of Chinese rice
terraces (Figure 15.3) emphasizes topographical influence on agronomy. The sense of
depth is further heightened by contour lines. In this case, the student’s dérive spatially
reframed seasonal data narratives in the 3D landscape. Within this new narrative of the
landscape’s alternate identity lies the precursor for a project, or at the very least an
empirically derived experience. And isn’t this creative process the reason students enroll
in design schools in the first place?
One last tenet, old as humanity, sketches out an essential criterion for representation.
The third of Vitruvius’ qualities, venustas, has been sculpted through the ages by
undertones of maturity, proportion, charisma, virtue and the sublime. Student drawings
that promote idealized experiences and explain phenomena are vehicles not only for that
experience but in and of themselves. Their beauty—or more contemporaneously, their
esthetic intrigue—assures that their narratives are heard. It is the ultimate visual synthesis
of a process that communicates complex narratives and leaves an artifact worth
remembering.

Notes
1 Fabrikant, S. I., Montello, D. R., and Mark, D. M. (2010), The Natural Landscape Metaphor in Information
Visualization: The Role of Commonsense Geomorphology.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science
and Technology, 61: 253–270. doi:10.1002/asi.2122.
2 “In opposition” alludes to the opposing means by which cognitive processes are derived: subjective experience is
derived from qualia, while objective knowledge is derived from data.
3 Optical consistency, mobile and immutable relationships and hybrid narratives can be digested through creative
rationalization. Latour, B. “Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together.” In Kuklick, H. (ed.) Knowledge
and Society Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present. Greenwich, CT: Jai Press, vol. 6, pp. 7–10,
4 Deleuze’s notions of difference, multiplicity, virtuality and intensity propose effective schematic criteria for our
objectives of experience, metrics and narrative. Here we apply the notion of Idea. Deleuze, Gille, Différence and
Répétition. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968, Chapter 5.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

15.1
Instead of a prescript design, the student has emphasized the characteristics that sustain the “place-making objective.” A
simple digital model was crafted in 3DS Max. Using this digital model base for the base layer, the student assembled a
montage in Photoshop, using stitched photos that blend and fade with varying degrees of saturation. Data vectors and
infographic overlays remind us that the experience is well analyzed and calibrated. By Jessica Gill.

15.2
A productive landscape in the Canadian prairie is defined cartographically to emphasize the territorial scale of
intervention, then reconfigured within a reprogrammed landscape populated with busy workers. This image was created
in Photoshop with entourage added via chemical transfer. By Christina Vanelli.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

15.3
Inspired by a travel photo of Chinese rice terraces, the image is used to assist in spatial analysis. Data overlays of site
topography (realized in Rhino), aerial perspective, and planting zones enrich this panoramic image, assembled in
Photoshop. This container image could be a good template for further diagramming or a stunning project perspective. By
Jessica Luscher.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

15.4
This drawing is part of a project that dealt with the topic of immigrant economics during the previous recession in Spain.
The structure and architecture was modeled in Rhino and rendered in 3DS Max; plan graphics were overlaid in
Photoshop. By Aaron Tobey.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

15.5
Evoking a literal data landscape of the recent economic crisis, this image makes use of perspective to establish direction
and a timeline of events, alluding to a resurgence. Spatially it frames this analysis within the territory of the famous Way
of St. James. Various components were assembled in Photoshop, with additional plan data brought in via chemical
transfer. By Aaron Tobey.

15.6
This project is situated in Miami. Infrastructure, recreation, and clean water are conveyed by collaging spatial zones:
ground plane, vertical bridge structures, and situational plan. Experiential coherence through over-exposition and light
overlay reinforces the “Miami feeling.” By Frank Hammond.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

15.7
Derived from a series of sketches done at Easter Island, the student has expanded the frame of view to heighten the sense
of spatial vastness and provide additional space for geological data. As a reiterative back-and-forth process of sketching
and digital enhancement, more sketching, more digital, etc. By Frederick Meatyard.

15.8
Starting with a wide-angle landscape perspective, the student had used various blending techniques in Photoshop with
scans and transfers of paintings, sketches, and colorized textures to correspond with other project diagrams. The line-
work model was created in Rhino. By Keiko Matsumato.

15.9
Through a multi-step reiterative process involving chemical transfers, traditional and digital collage, and heavy
Photoshop manipulation, the drawing showcases a coherent graphic palette to illustrate varying light scenarios of the
same place. By Ponnapa Prakkamakul.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

15.10
This landscape drawing emphasizes the drift experience from the point of view of a child. Various phenomena and
objects are stylized to create an experiential cognitive map. This was accomplished in Photoshop and manual application
of materials. By Ponnapa Prakkamakul.

15.11
This drawing highlights artistic solutions for infrastructure conversion in a vast rolling grass-scape. Created in Sketchup,
Rhino and Photoshop, it merges graphic styles of sketched data reveals and social experiences enveloped in ethereal
light. By Sean Kelley.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

15.12
The “feel of coldness” was one of the main objectives for this illustrator. Topographical data, wind vectors and pathway
studies reinforce the heavy phenomenological and atmospheric qualities of this wetland landscape. This illustration was
composed using Photoshop. By Tyler Kiggins.

www.ebook777.com
16 Hover Craft
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
David Fletcher
The aerial perspective rendering, or bird’s-eye view, has become one of the most powerful
and concise means of large-scale landscape representation. In the last decade, this image
type has replaced typical orthographic representation as the primary method of landscape
design expression. No other present form of representation is capable of conveying a
spatial composition to a broad audience. The rise in use and popularity of this visual
construction is due to many factors, such as the wide availability of web-sourced aerial
imagery for existing sites, and more recently to the increasing usage of unmanned aerial
vehicles in landscape photo-documentation. It is also due to increased computing power,
the availability of a new suite of sophisticated rendering programs, many of which were
first developed for the movie and video game1 industries. These programs, which may still
be out of the hands of the average design student or small firm, now allow for the
rendering of vast landscapes, with geographical inputs that replicate weathering,
photosynthesis, atmosphere and ecological succession.
The first step in creating an aerial rendering is often in the generation of a background
image, over which a given landscape design will be expressed. Depending on time
available, site scale and proximity, and on graphic intent, this background image might be
a web-generated aerial image, or a 3D model of the site. Until recently, source materials
for the creation of aerial perspectives have been rare and unavailable. Web-based search
engines such as Google Earth and Bing have revolutionized the way that we see our
planet, by allowing access to tiled satellite imagery, which has been draped over 3D
terrain. Google Earth source imagery is superb for the representation of large-scale sites or
entire cities, yet is quite limited as a source for scale site representation and analysis.
Luckily, many search engines now also provide satellite-based bird’s-eye site imagery,
allowing one to rotate around an existing site in order to select source imagery for
representation. In some cases, individuals can also geo-reference and upload 3D models
into programs such as Google Earth for viewing, evaluation, and for collaboration. If you
dig deeper into what is available online, you may find a great variety of aerial base
imagery available from hobbyists and professionals. Alternative sources include the Kite
Aerial Photography (KAP) Community,2 hot-air balloon photography, and commercial
and private pilots who photograph and document cities.3
The second step is to create a collection of 2D assets which can be used to layer over
and to populate an aerial rendering. The source aerial image vantage point should be
clearly studied to enable the author to collect source images from similar positions, which
might convey program, materiality, and structure. The source image location, with regard
to time of day and sun angle, should also be studied to provide careful continuity with the
intended rendering. KAP and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photography websites are
particularly bountiful sources of site imagery. In them, one can find aerial photographs of
parks, beaches, plazas, wetlands, and cities. A majority of specific assets might be found
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
in 2D “elevational entourage” collections. These collections may be found online, with
assets that are pre-trimmed for easy insertion into the image file. 2D elevational assets can
be used with almost any vantage point chosen, but their flatness becomes more obvious as
the vantage point gets higher.
The third general step is to begin the process of constructing the aerial rendering.
Adobe Photoshop is the most prevalent program for aerial rendering. It is used to
consolidate and insert imagery over the aerial base, and also to employ finishing
techniques to convey phenomenal effects. There are four main categories of aerial image
construction. They include the 2D, 2.5D, the hybrid 3D, and the 4D. Each may be selected
depending on many factors such as site scale, design complexity, availability of source
material, the time available to the image author, site systems and dynamics, and the degree
to which temporal projection is needed. The spectrum of 2D to 4D depends on the degree
to which 3D modeling and actual rendering are employed. The 4D category is one in
which the author might employ animation such as fly-throughs or the usage of serial
image repetition to represent staged transformations over time.
The fourth step is to develop a concept and a narrative for the rendering. This is critical
to all image creation. What is the story behind what you are about to represent? What are
the people doing, how do the activities relate the landscape in which they occur? What
time of day or year is it? Great images are constructed around great stories and
occurrences.
The final step includes a process of finishing techniques, which are common to all of
the categories mentioned above. These techniques and steps will be discussed in detail at
the end of this document.
The 2D is a quick and flat form of representation in which the perspective is composed
of a 2D aerial base image that is overlaid with assets such as trees, structures, and people.
This image construction does not require 3D modeling, material rendering or sunlight
projection. This is perhaps the purest form of aerial image construction and it works well
to rapidly convey large-scale site interventions that do not require a great degree of detail
and are meant to convey landscape structure, architectural massing and proportion, and the
site’s relation to its immediate context. Site spaces and structures may be drawn in a
vector-based program such as in Illustrator and then transferred to the raster program for
insertion in the aerial rendering. This aerial rendering begins with the selection of a
background aerial image, which the author will then apply assets in Photoshop and in
Illustrator as needed to convey the design intent. For this type of image, lower-resolution
base aerials are sufficient, but it should be noted that a greater degree of imagery and
layering will need to be applied in order to provide image complexity. Aerial image assets,
such as those from KAP sites mentioned above, should be overlaid on to the base aerial
image to convey materiality and texture. Shadows from vertical elements are added at the
end of the process to extrude the image, with the use of transparent black brushes or
shapes and with assets that have been made black and overlaid to convey shaded areas.
The 2.5D is a technique used in a majority of aerial rendering constructions. Basic 3D
modeling is used, typically in SketchUp or in Rhinoceros, to construct a monochromatic

www.ebook777.com
topographic ground plane and to mass out architectural and landscape structures. The
Free
model is simply and ebooks
quickly ==>
rendered www.ebook777.com
without material mapping in order to create an
aerial base on which to overlay assets. In all cases, this technique requires a rendered 2D
base plan, which might be generated in a raster or vector-based program. The goal is to
use and modify the flat base plan so that it can be used as a base for the aerial rendering.
The simplest technique is to simply warp and skew an illustrative plan image so that it fits
over an aerial base image. In Photoshop, this will require using the transform command
and manually forcing the site plan so that it fits within the aerial base. The fit will never be
perfect, but this is a quick method that will allow the author to distribute 2D assets in 3D
space in order to construct the rendering. The colors and the textures of the rendered site
plan also will convey a modicum of ground plane materiality on which to elaborate with
more sophisticated material image overlays.
3D rendering has become extremely sophisticated. The creation of virtual environments
that are indistinguishable from real environments is a threshold that was crossed in the
past few years. It can take hours to accurately render the thousands of leaves on a single
tree, the light cast through its canopy, and the texture of its bark. In large-scale landscape
representation, these techniques are rarely used, due to the massive front-end time
investment in detailed model construction. For those reasons, the most valuable technique
to use is the hybrid 3D, in which a flat rendered site plan is inserted into a modeling
program and modified to create vertical definition, or where the same plan is draped over
a constructed topography. One distinction, from the prior techniques, is the use of 3D
assets (trees, people, etc.) and the judicial mapping of textures to surfaces to convey
texture and materiality, such as might be done with vegetation, water, and hardscape. In
both cases, the ultimate goal is to quickly develop a basic 3D ground plan on which to
create or distribute 3D objects, and to apply general materials and textures to aid in the
final 2D Photoshop aerial rendering. The quickest process is to import a rendered plan into
SketchUp, to explode it, and then to extrude vertical elements directly from the flat plan.
The flat rendered plan may then be modified to create topography, through the
manipulation of contours or the use of specialized tools such as the sandbox tools. The
next step in the process is to redistribute the 3D vertical structures and spaces created prior
to topographical definition. The final step is to insert 2D “face me”4 assets, essentially 2D
objects that rotate to be perpendicular to the viewer’s vantage point. The goal of rendering
materiality should be to create simple fields of texture and color and to generate shadow,
and not to attempt a photorealistic rendering.
Once finally composed, all perspectival images will need to be finished. It should be
noted that the finishing techniques are the most critical step in the construction of
renderings. Photoshop finishing techniques are meant to unify the varying source image
resolutions, to increase image complexity, to achieve a specific mood and atmosphere, and
to provide image depth. They also can combine to create a uniquely individual graphic
expression, which should be the goal of every image author. The final composition should
be flattened,5 discarding unused layers and creating a simple and agile file with which to
work. The final image will have many different assets that may have been inserted, which
may have many different resolutions. These will need to be evened out through application
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
of the blurring and the “add noise” filters. All in all, designers can apply a combination of
layering effects, filets, transparency, desaturation (over aerial context surrounding the
proposed designed landscape) and “overlay blend modes,” blurring technique and burnt
edges to achieve the final desired and unique image that captures the quality of the space
and creates a sense of depth through atmospheric perspective.
As computing power increases, and as new 3D software becomes more accessible, the
creation of ultimately 2D imagery to convey complex landscapes will transition to full
immersive and interactive environments. We are beginning to see this transition in the
increasing usage of video game engines6 for landscape representation, in which on can
interact within a fully 4D environment, with sound, atmospheric effects, movement, and
growth. It is anticipated that recent advances in virtual reality will radically transform the
ways that landscape architects design and communicate design. Though the technologies
and techniques of image creation may change, the cultural and artistic expression behind
how we create images will not.

Notes
1 The author has been using the Unity game engine (http://unity3d.com/) for the rendering of landscapes and for the
development of presentation materials. It can be used free for non-commercial applications (accessed 18 April, 2014).
2 Kite aerial photography. https://www.flickr.com/groups/kiteaerialphotography/ (accessed 10 April, 2014).
3 There are many aerial image collections online; one of the better ones is http://www.wherecoolthingshappen.com/
(accessed 12 April, 2014).
4 In Google SketchUp, these are 2D images that always face the viewer, thus appearing to be 3D regardless of vantage
point or viewing angle. Free assets are available at https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com (accessed 22 April, 2014).
5 Always keep the original file archived in case the final image needs to up updated or changed.
6 The author has been working for Jonathan Blow (Thekla) in the design of an island for The Witness video game
(http://the-witness.net).

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

16.1
Kite aerial photography (KAP) imagery used as material overlays. Grasshopper-generated Vornoi circulation networks.
Software used: Adobe Photoshop, Rhino, Grasshopper, Google Earth. By Yuliya Grebyonkina.

16.2
Rhino models with perspectival ground-plane materials. Lighting effects and fandom-transparent image overlays.
Software used: Adobe Photoshop, Rhino, Grasshopper, Bing. By Yuliya Grebyonkina and Cassiopea McDonald.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

16.3
Grasshopper-generated gateways and pavilions, with light and shadow definition via 3DS Max. Other software used:
Adobe Photoshop, Rhino, Grasshopper, SketchUp, Google Earth. By Melissa Perkinson and Yasmine Orozco.

16.4
Hand-drawn tracing scanned and overlaid to define 3D components and to increase complexity. Software used: Adobe
Photoshop, Rhino, Grasshopper, SketchUp, Google Earth. By Fredy Lim, Garrett Rock, and Harrison Chou.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

16.5
3D structures generated in Rhino with shadows and definition rendered in 3DS Max. Other software used: Adobe
Photoshop, Rhino, Grasshopper, SketchUp, Google Earth. By Blake Stevenson, Kelly Hang, and Taole Chen.

16.6
SketchUp and Rhino models with monochromatic render in 3DSMax. Other software used: Adobe Photoshop,
Grasshopper, Google Earth. By Wing Tse and Maryam Nassajian.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

16.7
Collage of various greyscale aerial backgrounds overlaid with Maya-generated amorphous forms. Software used: Adobe
Photoshop, Rhino, Grasshopper, SketchUp, Google Earth. By Michael Barker, Connie Yang, and Hiram Boujaoude.

www.ebook777.com
Digital Modeling and Fabrication
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

17 Land Formations, Tectonic Grounds

José Alfredo Ramírez and Clara Olóriz Sanjuán
The Landscape Urbanism MA at the Architectural Association (AA) is engaged with the
idea of landscapes as the milieu for the development of a practice at a territorial scale.
This practice is concerned on the one hand with the geomorphological formations of
landforms (tectonic grounds) and on the other with the actual cultural, political and
economic forces that drive and choreograph the social formations of these territories (land
formations).
The understanding of these concepts as the primeval material to work with draws
knowledge and understanding from fields such as geomorphology and/or sociology, and
claims the seeds from where Landscape Urbanism recognizes the engines behind
territorial production. Territory thus is understood as an assemblage of manufactured
landscapes that requires a multidisciplinary knowledge from relevant fields, ever since it is
shaped by a myriad of both physical and social processes and dynamics.
Ultimately these territorial assemblages of land formations and tectonic grounds are
cultural productions derived from a constant and relentless human and natural activity full
of conflicts, struggles, alterations, and shifts, within or outside legal or institutional
frameworks. As such they become the result of specific historical processes with political
consequences, which lies at the core of Landscape Urbanism territorial practice.
The medium through which Landscape Urbanism MA engages, studies, researches and
tests these core interests and multidisciplinary approach is primarily via the constant
production and iterations of digital modeling, fabrication and representation of tectonic
grounds (meandering rivers, coastal erosion, sand dunes, riparian landscapes, deltaic
morphologies); the construction of new cartographic readings of the territory which reflect
land formations (production dynamics and processes, land administration and
management, infrastructural and logistics systems); and through the constant negotiations
of frictions in between them that ultimately provide the sources to alternative modes of
urbanism and territorial organizations.

Tectonic grounds
Tectonic grounds refer to the physical structure and properties of the earth’s surface upon
which human and natural inhabitation has been made possible—in short, its tectonics.
Tectonic grounds simulations thus are developed as a way to apprehend the materiality
and principles that organize spatially and structurally their shapes as physical outcomes.
However, these simulations are not pursued as a replication of natural systems or as
mimickry of their principles, but as an understanding of their logics and processes and the
way in which they could interact, open up and potentially unveil alternative forms or
organization with the intention of dealing with natural and social conflicts and
discrepancies.

www.ebook777.com
 Hence tectonic-ground simulations are understood as a constructing device with the
Free
capacity to articulate and ebooks ==>
orchestrate human www.ebook777.com
and natural interaction. They provide the
grounds for an articulated framework from where to intervene, modify or enhance certain
properties or, on the contrary, inhibit, hide or tuck into others.
In this regard the simulations become a generative tool that can be appropriated and
modulated in accordance with their own physical requirements whilst interweaving with
specific social dynamics that influence or will influence its formation and derive thus its
relevance for the territorial practice of Landscape Urbanism.

Land formations
Land formations could be defined as the association of social (economic, cultural,
political) processes and dynamics forming associations, networks and systems cutting
across, at different scales, entire regions. In many cases, they get actualized in specific
patterns or spatial organizations (agricultural plots, urban armatures, landownership
patterns, infrastructural networks, logistic facilities, etc.) which in turn shape and
configure territories to facilitate its management, distribution and/or administration. These
land formations entail, in essence, a radically different configuration from the tectonics of
the ground in which they are inserted. Landscape Urbanism at the AA uses digital
modeling to read and understand, borrowing from cartographic tools, these formations and
the patterns of association that have created, historically, different types of territorial
organizations. These readings of the territory are used to inform the development of
alternatives through the intersection, overlapping and opposition to the specific tectonics
of the grounds in which they are placed.

Tectonic intersections
Historically, formations such as riparian landscapes or coastal dynamics have been
constrained, controlled or hidden away when confronted with any human development. By
leveling the ground, tunneling the mounts, channeling streams, damming rivers or freezing
dunes, a constant reassertion of efficiency, free flow and frictionless environment has been
at stake to facilitate its administration, governance and ultimately profitability.
Through the use of digital modeling and fabrication, Landscape Urbanism envisions
potential scenarios to strategically intersect infrastructural networks that use riparian
landscapes as its engines, industrial forestry patches that interact seasonally and
productively with neighboring shifting dunes or meanders that provide novel urban
armatures and frameworks to decaying cities. These operations are not seen as direct
alternatives to existing territorial formations, since they will not match common
ambitions, traditional targets or efficient benchmarking schemes of corporate territorial
management. Neither do they have the capacity to fulfill every aspiration in a given
territory but rather they aim to provide the means to envision unconventional scenarios
that efficient and streamlined principles per se have undermined or restrained by the
implementation of technocratic goals, especially in the last decades.
By making compromises, establishing priorities, and empowering the landforms with
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
social gears, Landscape Urbanism at the AA explores tectonic intersections with a
capacity to unveil glitches, opportunities and frictions between conflicting systems. These
intersections will become the place to implement projects whereby the introduction of
novel regimes in territorial landscapes provides alternatives to their future. Dealing with
the territorial conflicts entails a set of negotiations for which a decision process is
paramount. These choices, far from seamless integrations, are informed by priorities
established in the definition of intentions and territorial stances and in turn, they have the
capacity to empower or affect the various agencies and interests at stake. It is in this very
regime and decision-making process, behind these intentions, where new territorial
relationships are designed; where our agency as designers resides.
In the understanding of tectonic grounds and land formations as a constant interaction
and negotiation of forces, Landscape Urbanism aims to develop a model that constantly
reconfigures itself through the aggregations of nature dynamics, social practices, cultural
traditions, and political visions
necessary for it to function at a territorial scale. Territorial forms or rather formations
are constantly retrofitted by these interactions, thus time becomes a question of utmost
importance. This poses new challenges to the way we design and define territorial
interventions as conditional scenarios, guidelines, dynamic models and process-informed
organizational patterns. Land formations thus will be unveiled-uncovered as primordial
drivers ready to tectonically inform, actualize and modulate its own grounds.
As a response to these challenges, digital modeling and fabrication play a twofold role
in the exploration of this new territorial praxis: on the one hand, in the elaboration of the
cartographies that define and put forward a vision of the territory, in both the
understanding of the tectonic forces and the land formations; on the other hand, in the
articulation or expression of dynamic novel regimes and guidelines to reorganize their
intersections. Digital tools, framed under a particular territorial stance, open up the
possibilities to put forward territorial proposals which are able to embody the temporal
complex conditions and scenarios, subject to multiple contingencies in our rapidly
changing contemporary environments.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

17.1
3D model describing the behavior and performance of water in a given territory. The reading includes water runoff,
evaporation average and rain water collection in relation to the topographical features. By Constanza Madricardo and
Giorgio Cucut.

17.2
Experimental 3D models exploring negotiations and possible formal outcomes between a top-down organizational
pattern such as the Fibonacci spiral and triangulation and the existing topography on a given site. By Zou Yujun and
Ayumi Nakagawa.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

17.3
3D model representing the re-description (via triangulation) of a topography in a given territory. The re-description
intends to produce a systemic reading of the site to allow the understanding of slope angles and south facing to find
possible intervention areas. By Jinton Tang and Thomas Van De Bospoort.

17.4
3D model composed of a sequence of prototypical sections to create a canal system. The sections are designed in
accordance with specific and performative requirements and then organized gradually in relation to specific terrain
requirements. By Karishma Desai.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

17.5 and 17.6

A physical model exploring ways of representing geo-morphological formations and the performative qualities latent
within. In this case the water catchment areas are extracted from existing mountainous landscape to create a mirror-like
but differentiated topography. Ultimately the model was used to devise a decision-making tool that confronts possible
interventions areas against water capacities and their valley locations. By Ignacio López Busón.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

17.7
A 3D model that hybridizes indexical values of water runoff and collection areas into its existing topographical terrain. It
depicts intensities of water presence in a precise geographical location and organizes them by their volumetric input. The
model was used to prioritize possible intervention with specific water requirements. By Olga Mikhaleva and Jason Chia.

www.ebook777.com
18 Terra Automata
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Beyond representation of landscapes and
ecologies
Bradley Cantrell
The conception of landscape through the lens of simulation and fabrication holds great
potential for future methods of construction and maintenance in physical landscapes.
Representation of landscape often defies the a priori need to develop environments that are
responsive to the ecologies they are enmeshed within. To develop landscapes that are
fundamentally expressive of their embedded ecologies requires a de-prioritization of
representation and a heightening of curated logics, competing hierarchies, and resistance
to singular goals. In this sense, modeling and fabrication must embrace a real-time
connection with the landscapes they construct as a way of layering, nudging, and evolving
ecological systems.
The processes of digital fabrication as it pertains to landscape is expressed through a
range of methods that embrace pattern and novel form generated from computational
descriptions of surface. These methods have provided a range of form that is speculative
as well as constructible and derived from combinations of analytical and intuitive
methods. These methods point to a partially tapped potential that is able to tap the
dynamic qualities inherent in the medium of landscape. Several current projects embrace
this methodology through autonomous land construction, flow interference, active
instruments, layered terrains, and non-physical processes. Each of these methods points to
evolving landscape interfaces that speak to a more articulated and active form of
landscape and ecological curation.
The work of the Landscape Morphologies Lab at the University of Southern California
led by Alexander Robinson couples autonomous land construction with computational
analysis. This work has focused on dust mitigation landscapes in the Owens Lake area of
Southern California through the hybridization of robotics, digital projection, and 3D
scanning. Physically, the project develops landforms within the constraints of tool paths as
they are applied to a six-axis robotic arm. The landforms are constructed through a range
of tools that form terrain through reordering processes. This process is coupled with 3D
scanning, digital projection, and virtual environments to provide real-time visualization of
the landforms and their performative qualities. This feedback loop provides a compelling
heuristic model for the generation and evolution of landscape terrain (Figures 18.1–18.4).
In a similar manner, work within the Media and Site Technologies Lab at the Louisiana
State University Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture is focusing on the
interception of entropic processes to develop methods of terrain generation. The project
has taken on multiple phases but aims to alter sedimentation in fluid systems such as rivers
or bayous through the manipulation of water velocity. The project uses a Microsoft Kinect
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
to create a real-time model of the deposition surface. This model is then analyzed to
determine how water flow is altered in situ or through a series of gates within an
articulated spillway structure. Using either method it is possible to print or erase land
through a range of operations. This process occurs in real time and merges representation
and landscape production through a composed logic (Figures 18.5–18.7).
The materials of fabrication are poor analogues for the manufacturing and construction
of earth. The inherent properties of soil behave as a composite, layered system driven
through the phenomena of adhesion, friction, and compaction. The process of fabrication
as it relates to the properties of soil and the stratigraphic soil layers is explored in the
speculative project StrATA, by Lydia Gikas and Matt Rossbach, that was part of the
Synthetic Urban Ecologies studio at the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture.
The project envisions earth constructed as a series of micro-depositions, slowly building a
highly articulated soil column. Similar to previous projects, this process is informed by
local monitoring and both short- and long-term simulations of environmental and cultural
phenomena. The project assumes that the curation of ecology is a process that not only
addresses terrestrial surfaces but should also consider the underneath. The deposition or
layering of soil becomes a process that is controlled and analyzed but works on new
timescales that are closer in sync to the habitats they support (Figures 18.8–18.11).
Fabrication often assumes that the material is the primary actor and ignores the actual
processes that are in motion. Many fabrication methods use shearing, grinding, burning,
dissolving, or adhering to alter a material’s current state. The work of Justine Holzman,
adjunct professor at the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture, focuses
specifically on the chemical alterations of material and how these processes can be used to
manipulate the earth in situ. Her project, Material Agency, uses the processes of ceramics
to explore the range of methods available to imagine the construction of earth as a
chemical rather than physical process. In this manner the project expresses manipulation
as a spectrum of liquefying and ossifying material (Figures 18.12–18.14).
Each of these projects attempts to imagine computational fabrication as landscape. This
repositions the tools as devices of construction rather than mediation through
representation. This direct connection leaps beyond represented landscape and asks how
our methods of construction might be actors over time, controlled by direct connections
with the landscapes they interface.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

18.1
Robot, projector, and 3D scanner working in tandem. Photo by Alexander Robinson.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

18.2
Island forms and projected tool paths. By Alexander Robinson.

18.3
Analytical data visualized and projected on to surface. By Alexander Robinson.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

18.4
Dune forms and projections showing analytical visualizations. By Alexander Robinson.

18.5
Sediment model with actuated spillway gates attached.

18.6
Actuated spillway, areas of cut and deposition.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

18.7
Monitoring diagram showing areas of concentration and sedimentation trends.

18.8
Material behavior tests. By Lydia Gikas and Matthew Rossbach.

18.9
Deposition tests. By Lydia Gikas and Matthew Rossbach.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

18.10
Pattern, deposition, and proposed landscape typologies. By Lydia Gikas and Matthew Rossbach.

18.11
Landscape form and strata relationship. By Lydia Gikas and Matthew Rossbach.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

18.12
Range of difference through chemical operations. By Justine Holzman.

18.13
Matrix of operations within surfaces. By Justine Holzman.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

18.14
Close-up of surface operations. By Justine Holzman.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

19 Digital Media and Material Practice

David Mah
As landscape design has for the most part operated as a material practice, there is
anticipation as well as apprehension of how it may develop or transform with regard to the
general accessibility and adoption of digital media and computational tools within the
design process.
The popular association between mathematical abstraction and computation often limits
the capability for the design profession to recognize its resonances with actual material
practices. This subsequently facilitates the general perception of a loss of material
engagement and craft with their adoption in the design fields.
While the widespread integration of computer-assisted design (CAD), image
manipulation and post-production software may have flourished in the design professions,
the persistence of long-standing design approaches is reinforced by this more established
engagement with digital media. These uses of computation for developing software that
for all intents and purposes transpose existing analogue practices to a graphical user
interface typically reinforce traditional design processes and approaches. A direct effect
that computation may have on promoting novel design practices can be seen more
explicitly by the potential adoption of computational methods in design as well as through
the use of programming as an instrumental design device.
A number of recent developments in programming have made the practice of coding
and scripting more generally accessible to the design community. From visual
programming to scripting languages built specifically for and by designers, program
writing now has the capacity to become a widespread component of the design process. To
reflect on what this may mean for design practice it may be worth considering a number of
key aspects of computation and the manner in which these may assist in elaborating on
contemporary forms of material practice.
A straightforward definition of computation is offered by the author, Paul Cerruzi, in his
concise history of computing, where it is defined as “the convergence of operations that
have been mechanized to varying degrees in the past.”1 These converging operations
include calculation, automatic storage/retrieval of information in coded form and the
automatic execution of a sequence of operations. This operational triad has enabled the
exploitation of iterative and recursive processes that may be applied to a large number of
potential applications. Their deployment in design allows for the possibility of creative
practices that benefit from what would traditionally have been an overly elaborate and
intensive process of circular “evolutionary” design.
Incidentally, the early history of computation had a very explicit convergence with
material practices. While developing an early mechanical version of the computer, Charles
Babbage had located within the punched-card system for automating Jacquard weaving
looms a technique for codifying information. The reverberations between an automated

www.ebook777.com
fabrication process with techniques for codifying and retrieving information in 19th-
century computing Free ebooks
suggest ==>of a
the prospect www.ebook777.com
shared intelligence between material and
computational processes. Among numerous contributions to the study of natural systems,
Alan Turing’s theories on morphogenesis coincident with many of his more well-known
contributions to theoretical computing and cryptography have also provided compelling
models for design processes that may leverage computational processes in articulating
material assemblies.
The definition of form offered by “cybernetician” Gregory Bateson as embedded
information allows for the design process to be understood as the indexing of formal and
organizational schemes with information.2 It also offers a model of design practice that
allows for a more integrated design development that has the capacity to actively
incorporate associations with various performance requirements that operate as active
constituents in the material formation process.
A number of material design processes have emerged that exploit computational
processes as design tools, including associative design as well as generative design
practices. These design processes paired with digital fabrication point towards the
transformative role that computation may have on the practice of design.

Associative design
Associative design enables the construction of relationships between geometry, form and
organization with variables and parameters that may be utilized to construct or augment
their arrangement into material assemblies.
This design practice resonates closely with certain preceding analogue modeling
techniques that have been developed as a means to either analyze or generate various
iterations of material configurations. Examples of this range from scaled engineering
models developed for hydrological study by institutions such as the US Army Corp of
Engineers to various design form-finding models, including the sand models of Frei Otto
and sandbox model used for the Candlestick Park project, developed by Hargreaves
Associates, Mack Architects and Douglas Hollis.3
With associative design, designers are offered a digital modeling medium to develop
design proposals with embedded material information. In the same way that the
materiality of the sandbox model was exploited for the possibility of the quick testing of
various design gestures with embedded material limits, the capacity to simulate material
behavior within a digital modeling environment also allows for iterative as well as
collaborative design exercises.
At the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), through a number of courses, studios
and workshops that I have directed and coordinated, students have developed a range of
projects that leverage the capacity for digital media to inform the development of material
design, ranging from full-scale material explorations and prototypes to the development of
associative digital models that embed the specific limits and performance of the
construction materials to the analysis of its resulting organizations to uncover the potential
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
cultivation or emergence of various vegetation and hydrological patterns.

Generative design
Another series of capabilities afforded to designers through the use of algorithms and
object-oriented programming (OOP) is the capacity for developing recursive operations
and agent-based modeling. By unleashing algorithms the design process may allow for the
possibility of generating material proposals that are emergent organizations. The value of
these approaches for design lies in the capacity for complex material assemblies to be
orchestrated rather than willfully designed. It opens the possibility for serendipity,
stochastic effects as well as for the parameters and concerns of the project to generate its
own unique responses in a procedural manner rather than through the reliance on
archetypes or established design languages or strategies.
Through the use of algorithms and programming, design through simulation is also a
possibility, where the construction of a simulated model environment allows for the
development of a series of unfolding scenarios. Like associative design, this allows
designers to generate, study and evaluate iterations or scenarios of design responses
relative to a particular series of triggers, expanding the potential role of design to the
orchestration of mutable systems and topologies rather than the delivery of singular
solutions.

Digital fabrication
In parallel to the development of digital design tools, digital fabrication also opens up
compelling opportunities for designers to engage with material aspects of landscape
design. Despite assumptions to the contrary, it can be argued that a sophisticated
engagement with computer numerically controlled fabrication and assembly processes
allows designers to reengage more directly with material practice and the notion of craft
within the design and delivery process.
Contrary to the loss of craft associated with the outsourcing of handiwork to various
sophisticated forms of machinery, the skill associated with making is reintroduced to the
field of design through a more immediate relationship between the design tools adopted by
contemporary digital designers with various techniques of digital fabrication and
construction. The tools of representation or design generation (the 3D model) are usually
the same descriptive media and formats that may be used as the information to generate
the source code for any number of fabrication or assembly machines from.
The scales of intervention are expanding as a result of an extension of the influence of
computation in the technology of construction beyond the workshop and in a number of
tools that have the capacity to affect the organization of material beyond tectonic scales to
larger landscapes. Large earth-moving or ground-keeping equipment linked to GPS and
the deployment of robotic machinery, which are already practices in the agricultural and
extractive industries, provide a scale of engagement typically not associated with the
capacity for control associated with digital fabrication. The influence of computational
design at landscape offers the possibility of seemingly direct design action at territorial

www.ebook777.com
scales.
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
The integration between the processes of design, construction documentation and actual
fabrication data through the use of digital media brings designers much closer to the actual
artifacts or material assemblages that they are operating on. The abstraction and distance
from the actual material of our labors that designers have been accustomed to can be
reconfigured through workflows that have a more immediate relationship between design,
analysis, simulation and subsequently actualization. It may allow for a return to craft as a
real possibility for design practice, overturning the concerns raised by Richard Sennett in
relation to the integration of digital tools in design.4 The negotiation between the
abstraction associated with drafting and construction drawing with actual construction
processes was typically bridged through the development of techniques that would
mediate the distance between these two realms of design. It is fair to say that, with the
digital model, this distance is reduced dramatically.

A digital material practice

The exploration into the potentials for digital media and computation to bring designers
closer to a material practice is a maturing enquiry, yielding a wide range of scales and
scope of elaboration. A return towards a more directly material design sensibility as well
as a reinvigoration of craft in design practice have been enabled and remain an expanding
promise with the creative exploration of computation within the design process. Through
the work developed by students under my direction and coordination at the GSD, a
multiplying collection of projects, exercises and techniques points towards the prospect of
a closer alignment between digital media and design as a material practice.

Notes
1 Cerruzi, P. Computing: A Concise History. New York: MIT Press Essential Knowledge, 2012.
2 Bateson, G. Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Epistemology.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
3 Rieder, K. “Modeling, Physical and Virtual.” In: Trieb, Marc (ed.) Representing Landscape Architecture. London:
Routledge, 2007.
4 Sennett, R. The Craftsman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

www.ebook777.com
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

19.1–19.4
The exercise involved the development of a small garden utilizing the capacity of associative design to generate formal
configurations through a model that embeds the limits of material (such as natural angles of repose of materials). It also
allows for the capacity to analyze and simulate the cultivation of different vegetal and hydrological patterns. Rhino and
Grasshopper were used to generate the models. Figure 19.1 by Xiaoran Du; Figures 19.2 and 19.3 by Michael Keller;
Figure 19.4 by Tzyy Haur Yeh.

www.ebook777.com
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

19.5–19.7
The development of landforms, constructed from dredged earth, is formalized through associative models that are able to
constrain the sizing, angles of repose and regularity of the landforms to the material behavior of the soil. These models
also offer the opportunity for evaluation of the performance of these substrates. Laser-cut models by Xiaoran Du and
Yue Shi (Figure 19.5) and by Elizabeth Wu and Tzyy Haur Yeh (instructed by Leire Asensio) (Figure 19.6) and by
Peichen Hao and Ken Chongsuwat (Figure 19.7).

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

19.8
The projection of deposition patterns along a shoreline in relation to a distributed landscape infrastructural field is
generated through the utilization of a series of scripts. An emerging material organization is simulated and generated
through the creative use of computational techniques to project the development of an emerging landscape over time.
Students used Grasshopper software. By Zi Gu and Jisoo Kim.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

19.9
The project utilized associative modeling to simulate the inflatable structures that were designed and constructed to
operate as a form or substrate on which snow and ice would be formed. This was developed as a means to construct ice
landforms that would be hollow, allowing for inhabitation. Besides the use of the computer numerical control (CNC)
machine to construct the patterns for the pneumatic structure, the installation was constructed using air and ice. By Carl
Koepcke and Marshall Prado.

19.10
A hanging textile installation was developed, utilizing the physical computing capacities of sensors and actuators in
order to construct a device that operates as an environmental indicator where parameters such as light and humidity
could be used as triggers for transforming the textile elements. Laser cutting, CNC milling and Arduino operations were
used. By Karol Malik and Kelly Murphy.

www.ebook777.com
19.11
This exercise involved the development of differentiated fields utilizing various triggers to generate a series of emergent
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
field patterns. The construction of different scales of transformation to the field is constructed from an associative model.
By Binbin Ma.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

All Drawing Types: Case Studies

www.ebook777.com
20 Recasting Jakarta
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Processing the “Plastic River”
Christophe Girot and James Melsom
2010 launched the start of the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL), an international design
research collaboration between the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in
Switzerland and the National University of Singapore (NUS). One of the original research
streams in FCL, called Landscape Ecology, focused on the massive urban and
environmental problems faced by the megacity of Jakarta in Indonesia. It questioned the
unique situation of the Ciliwung River flowing through central Jakarta, surrounded by
informal housing, and subject to devastating recurrent flood events. The combined
informal urban development, coupled with an absence of waste management within the
city, has led to what was has been dubbed the “Plastic River” by the research team—an
evolving urban condition, built literally on a coagulum of continually shifting rubbish,
sediment and detritus. The task at hand was to see how to bring possible melioration to
such a disrupted environment.
The Landscape Ecology team is an interdisciplinary group of landscape architects,
planners, and hydrologists, led by ETH Professor Christophe Girot, together with ETH
Professor Adrienne Grêt Regamey of Planning and ETH Professor Paolo Burlando of
Environmental Engineering. The academic mix of the team involved multiple
professorships, lecturers, PhD researchers, and graduate students working in design
research studios. The resulting mix of field investigations, design workshops, and
watershed simulations facilitated the elaboration of a multi-scaled vision of possible
remedial scenarios for the Ciliwung River that were rigorously tested in various
disciplines.
Initial design research studios were done with local students from the Masters in
Landscape Architecture program at NUS, under the lead of Professor Jörg Rekittke. It
focused together with doctoral researchers on the marked absence of reliable site data.
Initial surveying equipment ranged from the rudimentary—a combination of Garmin GPS
devices and common laser telemeters—to the use of drones and photogrammetry. Over the
course of several field operations, a useable 3D Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
data set was gradually built up for the Kampung Melayu district, selectively adding high-
detail information where it was needed. The resulting data gave insights into the
performance of the Ciliwung River. Pollution and recurrent flooding resulted from the
combined effect of uncontrolled urban development and roughly 500 tons of rubbish being
thrown into the rivers of Jakarta each day.
For the initial workshops data was collected and incorporated into digital models. Initial
design scenarios for flooding and housing typologies were tested and examined. The
resulting models replicated physical evidence of the study area, distinguishing high site
resolution from low resolution at the periphery. These models allowed for the testing and
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
experimentation of critical design interventions.
A precise point cloud model of Kampung Melayu was generated, used in further design
development stages, and required to recalibrate accurately the river. To generate this kind
of model, aerial drones combined with other terrestrial measuring devices were deployed
and used to capture the required resolution. The data collected was detailed enough to both
provide a base data fine enough for advanced design decisions, as well as to support high-
resolution hydrological simulations (Figures 20.1–20.3).
Through the use of point cloud models, an iterative interface was established between
the work developed on their river design at the Landscape Visualising and Modelling
Laboratory (LVML) at the ETH in Zurich, and with the environmental engineers based at
the FCL in Singapore. This exchange enabled a collaborative workflow between the
project engineers, landscape architects and planners and allowed the students to adjust
design parameters to actual flood simulations. Design visions were periodically updated
based on their effective hydrological performance in 3D geographically positioned
simulations (Figures 20.4–20.6).
In a challenging dense urban context like Jakarta, fundamental Western concepts of
“public open space” become all too relative, as the borders between ownership, dwelling,
recreation, ecology and symbolic meaning blur together. In order to generate a meaningful
discourse for local government and stakeholders, ETH students resolved their design
projects at various scales, proposing a synthesis of landscape and architectural typologies
for the Kampung Melayu neighborhood. FCL doctoral students in Singapore and Masters
students at the ETH in Zurich shared common file formats for the exchange of colored
point cloud data and digital terrain models, using Rhinoceros with the aid of various
plugins. Custom plugins for Rhino’s Grasshopper interface were provided by FCL
doctoral students, to allow for the design and construction of predictable bathymetry
models, and to help streamline landscape projects for further testing and simulation
(Figures 20.7–20.12).
Dynamic characteristics of river flow are becoming of prime importance in urban
landscape projects such as the Kampung Melayu site in Jakarta. When properly modeled
in geo-referenced 3D context, the designs can convey the resilience when effected by
flood. The various simulations can reflect the inherent complexity and fluctuation of the
natural environment at hand. Through a unique and extended process of project
development, various animations were generated. Footage was taken from drones manned
by individuals on boats traveling down the Ciliwung River. Animated footage of the
existing site placed next to the envisioned landscape projects clearly showed the potential
of remedial strategies based on landscape ecology. The various designs developed by
students showcased a broad variety of screening, modeling and projections, expanding
beyond the printed image.

Notes
1 Aspects of this project were exhibited at the 2014 International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, entitled Urban by
Nature.

www.ebook777.com
 The models were based directly on a point cloud model generated from photogrammetric data collected using aerial
2 drones. Key software programs used for these projects included Rhino with Grasshopper for modeling and project
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
development, custom-made plugins for point cloud editing, and bathymetry modeling, rendered in C4D (CINEMA
4D) with V-Ray and Laubwerk. Due to the site-specific vegetation, relevant parametric vegetation models were
commissioned for the project. The models were consistently detailed over the whole site, creating actuate views from
any angle. Certain aspects of the projects were parametrically modeled to respond to changes, and to offer flexibility
in the design process.
3 The research team included: Professor Christophe Girot, principal investigator and leader, Professor Adrienne Grêt
Regamey, Professor Paolo Burlando (from ETH Zurich); Ilmar Hurkxkens, Thomas Klein, James Melsom, Magda
Osinska, Philipp Urech (from LVML); Senthil Gurusamy, Ervin Shengwei Lin, Yazid Ninsalam, Kashif Shaad, Diogo
da Silva, Michaela Prescott, Derek Vollmer, Federica Remondi (ETH FCL Singapore); Professors Jörg Rekittke and
Philip Paar (NUS, Laubwerk).
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

20.1
Image from an animation of a point-cloud of the Kampung Melayu site, produced using photogrammetry from
unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) helicopter photos taken above the city. The resulting sectional reveal animation tracks
the varied urban topological fabric, produced within Rhinoceros with Grasshopper. By Erwine Lin and James Melsom.

20.2
A drone flight and aerial photogrammetry were used at the Gadog, Ciawi site on the Ciliwung River, and subsequently
developed by Future Cities Landscape (FCL), Singapore, doctoral researchers in the Landscape Ecology module to
simulate the potential hydrological impact of a dam construction on the Ciliwung River watershed. The resulting images
of the site model are not static, but track dynamic landscape phenomena and impact. The site can be processed using
VisualSFM, in order to generate the point-cloud and 3D model of the site. Various custom-made plugins for
Rhino/Grasshopper and Bathymetry modeling were then used to refine the various scenarios and judge performance
criteria. By Erwine Lin and Kashif Shaad.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

20.3
Hydrological models simulate the speed and depth of peak floods on the Ciliwung River in Kampung Melayu, Jakarta.
Tests on hydraulic performance conducted by the Landscape Ecology module of the Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore
developed by doctoral students were based on aerial scan data of the existing site made by drones. River designs
previously made in the spring of 2013 went through such tests and were then further adapted by Federal Institute of
Technology (ETH) students Lorraine Haussmann and Kylie Russnaik taking part in an advanced Design Research
Studio. By Erwine Lin, Kashif Shaad, Diogo da Costa and Senthil Gurusamy.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

20.4–20.6
Aerial view of the new Ciliwung green river corridor for Kampung Melayu, Jakarta, produced by ETH students in the
Landscape Ecology Design Research Studio. It allows for design scenarios to be tested in hydrological simulations by
doctoral engineers of the Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore. The designs are then further remodeled and refined down
to the appropriate 3D planting scheme. By Shoichiro Hashimoto and Benedikt Kowalewski.

www.ebook777.com
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

20.7–20.9
Example of a project within its Jakarta context, the historical floodplains of the Ciliwung now surrounded by dense
urban development. The section of the Ciliwung River project in Kampung Melayu, Jakarta, demonstrating the elegance
and accuracy of the proposal done by ETH students with local vegetation simulation, fluctuation in water levels, and
future habitation models further tested and elaborated within the model. By Lorraine Haussmann and Kylie Russnaik.

www.ebook777.com
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

20.10–20.12
Each of the student group projects worked at multiple scales, combining their on-site landscape and architectural
typology research to generate new synergies for the Kampung Melayu. The projects proposed urban landscape designs, a
combination of architectural and landscape typologies that work with the context and the local conditions. By Vladimir
Dianiska, Anna Gebhardt and Basil Witt.

www.ebook777.com
21 Repairing Greyfield Sites
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Visual narrative in describing emerging urban
landscapes
Kofi Boone
Digital representation can be a powerful tool for landscape architecture students interested
in communicating complex design and planning proposals. Through the use of different
views, media, and aesthetics, students can convey the intent of their proposals as well as
the process of their decision-making leading to their final work. However, digital
representations can also be a distracting and confusing tool for audiences outside of
academia.
How can we use digital representation not only as confirmation of our students’ level of
mastery of best visualization practices, but also as communication tools to enable them to
reveal design assumptions and thinking? And how can digital representation enhance
students’ abilities to effectively communicate to non-academic audiences?
Visual narrative theory, a transdisciplinary body of knowledge about how the structure
of visual storytelling helps people make sense of the world, offers landscape architecture
educators and students frameworks within which to compose coherent presentations.
Through the application of these tools, viewers can become versed in the grammar of a
visual narrative and better understand the content of digital representation.
Several student projects are presented as case studies of this approach to visual
storytelling. All of the work was produced by Master of Landscape Architecture students
at North Carolina State University in design studios focused on retrofitting “greyfield”
sites in urban areas. “Greyfields” are under-utilized automobile-centric areas (shopping
malls, etc.) that are not contaminated (like brownfields).

Recycle the site

As a part of a broader look at the Capital Boulevard Corridor, this site was selected as an
opportunity to restore floodplain health and activate the site through children’s play and
public art. The final presentation board uses a combination of digital representation tools,
but situates the conceptual site plan as the largest and most detailed representation of the
idea (Figure 21.1). The plan was layered on a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) base
map that includes existing buildings, roads, rail, and topography screened at 50% and in
greyscale in Adobe Photoshop. This allows viewers to orient themselves to site context
while also determining what is existing (screened and greyscale) and what is proposed
(color and full resolution). The dominant site features, the stream and the activity mounds,
provide a visual vocabulary of grids and curves that is reflected in the descriptive section
above, as well as the thumbnail context diagrams below. This unity, as well as the use of a
uniform palette, fonts, and a clear gridded structure, helps the viewer understand the
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
context, ideas, and results of this proposal.

Adaptive strategies for Crabtree Creek

The Crabtree Creek watershed is primarily developed as autocentric developments and the
extensive use of impervious surfaces (parking lots, roof tops, etc.) increase the impacts of
flooding on water quality and safety. As a part of a study of conceptual alternatives to
development in and around floodplains, diagrams (Figures 21.2 and 21.3) were created to
continuously reinforce the risk of continued traditional approaches to development, and
the potential rewards of using more sustainable approaches to development. The scale of
the area precluded detailed plans for the entire study area. However, through the
representation of views, especially plan (with greyscale and semi-transparent aerial
underlay) (Figure 21.4) and axonometric views which were crafted using SketchUp and
rendered in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (Figures 21.5 and 21.6), viewers are
empowered to assemble the kit of parts approach into additive strategies in this dynamic
riparian zone.

Intensive urban wetland

Site analysis revealed that this nondescript strip mall location occupied the headwaters of
one of Raleigh, North Carolina’s most polluted streams, Rocky Branch Creek. Through
the use of diagrams, especially the use of mapping and icons, storm-water runoff is
defined and quantified as a significant untapped resource. The performance of the final
design was quantified as well. The design strategy deploys layered best-management
practices to treat and conserve storm-water while also producing memorable place-making
settings including gardens, walks, and seating areas. SketchUp was used to create the
massing and guides for perspective views. Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop were
used to add layered colors, textures, and familiar visual references like plant materials,
animals, and people. These references are used in the diagrams and this produces
continuity in the overall graphic and final presentation panel (Figure 21.7) containing the
critical visual communication devices to convey the design.

Uncovering Southwest Raleigh: food and health

Southwest Raleigh, North Carolina is a “food desert” and lacks access to healthy food
choices. An evaluation of urban form and underutilized spaces revealed the potential for a
robust urban food system. The hub of this system would occur at a proposed light-rail
transit station. The challenging topography and need for easy pedestrian access to the site
drove the decision to visualize the urban food system and urban form in section elevation
views. These sections were modeled in AutoCAD and SketchUp, and later enhanced using
Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Vignettes of place-making elements were used as
icons to convey the experiential qualities of different locations in the site. The areas
associated with each form of urban agriculture were incorporated into the symbol key to
reinforce the underlying goal of the urban design strategy. All of the drawings were
assembled into one large flowing panel containing the key map, site systems diagram,

www.ebook777.com
overall rendered masterplan, aerial perspectives, statical figures, axonometric drawing and
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
character of space via perspective drawings (Figure 21.8). The drawings were connected
by cleverly positioned color gradients between drawings and separated by white spaces or
solid color bars.

Rethinking Mission Valley

The emphasis of this representation package was on the pedestrian experience of the
place. Numerous eye-level perspective views (Figures 21.9–21.11) were created using
SketchUp with lighting plugin Lumion, as well as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.
This allowed for more recognizable textures like metallic surfaces, green walls, shadows,
and different paving patterns. Combined with bird’s-eye perspective views montaged into
Google Earth aerial bases, the design proposal conveyed the scale and connections needed
to make Mission Valley a contributing people place near campus.
In total, these images reflect landscape architecture students’ attempts to convey the
value of working with the tools of visual narrative in digital representation. The work
attempts to uncover the potential of what could be considered to be mundane urban sites to
become exemplars of social, economic, and ecological repair through the use of a range of
regenerative strategies.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

21.1
Recycle the site. For this panel of drawings, the software packages used included ArcGIS, AutoCAD, Adobe Photoshop,
Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign. By Jacqui Harris.

www.ebook777.com
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

21.2–21.6
Adaptive strategies for Crabtree Creek. For this panel of drawings, the software packages used included ArcGIS,
AutoCAD, SketchUp, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign. By Guo Li.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

21.7
Intensive urban wetland. For this panel of drawings, the software packages used included Auto CAD, SketchUp, Adobe
Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign. By Yinglin Ji.

21.8
Uncovering Southwest Raleigh: food and health. For this panel of drawings, the software packages used included
ArcGIS, AutoCAD, SketchUp, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign. By Chayanika Mohan and
Geoffrey Kyle Chason.
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

21.9–21.11
Rethinking Mission Valley. For this panel of drawings, the software packages used included ArcGIS, AutoCAD,
SketchUp, Lumion, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign. By Michael Domanski.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

22 The Case for an Alternative Creek,

Arroyo, Puerto Rico
Roberto Rovira
As the setting for large-scale industrial, agricultural and urban transformations, the Florida
International University Landscape Architecture studio South Coast, Puerto Rico chose
the southern coast of the island as its study area. The last 100 years of development in this
area followed the model of economic growth of the 20th century that was largely based on
industrial production and rapid urbanization.
In the case of Puerto Rico’s South Coast, the industrial expansion that led to the
establishment of numerous petrochemical, manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries
followed a significantly transformed agrarian landscape whereby the region’s hydrological
patterns were previously altered substantially to support sugar cane cultivation and
processing.
As agricultural and industrial development came and went, following the decline of
economic and tax incentives that incentivized these production-based economies, not only
did the typical legacy of industrial use leave contamination and degradation behind, but it
left contiguous towns burdened with inadequate infrastructure and disturbed ecological
systems. Speculative urban development followed suit, producing expansive single-family
home enclaves notable for a lack of integration into the landscape and cheaply built to take
advantage of anticipated and eventually unrealized economic growth.
One student has studied Arroyo, Puerto Rico, a community on the eastern edge of
Puerto Rico’s South Coast via a proposal for a community-scale hydrological framework
titled Alternative Creek. As a potential model for the rest of the region, the drawings
illustrate various proposed transformations of the region’s hydrological system and
communicate a vision for a vital network that integrates urban water reclamation into
public spaces and public consciousness. A region that largely reflects the voids of industry
and the decaying vestiges of the sugar cane industry, the dramatic transformations that
ultimately led to nutrient-devoid soils, aquifer pollution and depletion, abandoned
infrastructure, and a disconnected sense of place in the community are addressed through
a reconfigured hydrologic/urban/vegetal strategy illustrated in Figure 22.1.
Prior to the agricultural expansion of the sugar cane industry, the landscape in and
around Arroyo was relatively dry. There are only three major aquifers in Puerto Rico and
the area is highlighted in pink in Figure 22.2. This is the given region of study and
receives fresh water from the South Coast Aquifer. Aquifer recharge for the region came
mostly from highly conductive soils along streams before a substantial canal system was
put in place to irrigate the cane crop through flood-irrigation techniques that multiplied the
aquifer recharge by a factor of three. This wholesale disruption of the natural water system
remarkably increased the growth of mangrove forests along the coasts because of all the
fresh water flowing from the canals. Once the irrigation technology changed to drip

www.ebook777.com
irrigation in the 1960s, however, recharge dramatically reduced and the aquifer stress
Free
increased as a result ebooks
of the ==>to hundreds
introduction www.ebook777.com
of wells whose draw continues to
jeopardize salt-water intrusion due to minimal recharge and industrial pollution from
runoff. The main canal that once irrigated the plantations of Arroyo sits unused and
unnoticed and community analysis inventory of areas of sensitivity in Figure 22.3 shows
that sources of pollution flow through or exist within the conductive zone of Arroyo
(Figure 22.4).
Arroyo’s landscape is defined by the neglected Rio Nigua river that runs through the
community. Not unlike other communities in the South Coast, the central creek is situated
in the middle of the urbanized area of Arroyo, a few blocks away from its public spaces,
the town plaza, and the port. Its potential to become the cultural spine of the town benefits
from this strategic location, and given that the Spanish word “arroyo” translates into
“creek,” it is appropriate that this community should have a connection with water, even if
the creek is currently overgrown with vegetation, littered and largely polluted.
Alternative Creek proposes changing the regional hydrology to increase water flow into
Rio Nigua. During the dry season, the creek, along with the other neighboring streams,
takes on the character of a large ditch, only receiving water during rain. Rather than
allowing the water from the over 8,500 residences to be lost and mixed with black water in
a combined sewer system, the proposal calls for its transformation into clean water within
the community that produces it. This proposed transformation takes place across many
scales: an immediate relationship from the sink to the back yard; an educational
understanding at schools; a public experience along the creek; a community-wide identity
all along the landscape.
The canal would be opened on to the landscape in order to supplement creek levels
during the dry seasons. During heavy rains, the canal flow reroutes back through its
original path to avoid flooding of the filtration ponds. Rain and storm water is used in
place of canal water during times of heavy rain. Blended into the engineered wetland of
grey-water are areas of recreation and observation along with bird habitats and
biodiversity increases.
Alternative Creek proposes an integrated network of hydrological and vegetal systems
that function differently according to their geographic locations, but that also work
holistically (Figure 22.5). This framework diagrams the functions of the landscape in
terms of water treatment; ponds, pumps, water movement in terms of topography and
proposals for future development. Infrastructure left over from the sugar cane industry, the
Patillas Canal, is repurposed and releases its water into a grey-water wetland, enabling
enough dilution to remediate the water, recharge the aquifer, revitalize the creek and
reframe the community’s relationship with water (Figure 22.6). Houses within the
conductive zone are an integral part of grey-water reclamation. The first stage of grey-
water filtration for these residences happens in back yards through small-scale systems
like grey-water ponds or channels. These unit-scale systems then redirect the water to
contained filtration ponds along the banks of the creek to complete the remaining stages of
filtration (Figures 22.7–22.9). A community network proposes important public spaces
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
and routes all water to the “alternative” creek. These ponds also serve as public space and
increase biodiversity. Grey water is treated in school yard and plaza, and public space is
used to educate and develop a relationship with water (Figure 22.10).
The creek allows a complete cycle to happen: water from the aquifer is up-welled, used,
turned into grey water, cleaned along the landscape, and returned back to the aquifer.
Additionally, this zone marks the boundary of where grey water can be treated on site and
where it cannot. Houses in and north of this zone can release their grey water in their back
yards through a network of wetland–home–gardens. This creates an intimate
understanding of the process of grey-water filtration and is the first step in reframing a
personal relationship with water.
South of this permeable zone, grey water is treated in a different manner due to the
proximity to the ocean and storm surges. Instead of filtering the water on the land, it is
pumped north-east of the creek on to another grey-water wetland, also used as an open-
space park. Though this southern half of the creek doesn’t witness a domestic exposure
with its grey water, the public spaces in the area serve as devices in reframing the
community’s relationship with water. Urbanized grey-water wetlands can be found in the
town’s port and town plaza. Additionally, the entire creek serves as a corridor for public
activity, providing places for repose or recreation while treating grey water and reframing
its relationship with its community all along its path.
In Figures 22.11 and 22.12, we see how Arroyo’s Alternative Creek can become the
catalyst for communal change, serving as a corridor for public activity, providing places
for repose or recreation while treating grey water and reframing its relationship with its
community all along its path. The edge piers show intimately scaled grey-water treatment
ponds which clean the grey water from adjacent restaurants, then release fresh water to aid
the growth of the estuarine life in the bay.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

22.1
Site plans of the proposed “alternative” creek, hosting various grey-water wetlands along the creek in Arroyo, Puerto
Rico and vicinity. By Martina Gonzalez.

22.2
There are only three major aquifers in Puerto Rico. The area highlighted in pink is the given region of study and receives
fresh water from the South Coast Aquifer. By Martina Gonzalez.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

22.3
During the height of the sugar cane industry, the South Coast Aquifer was receiving more than normal rates for recharge
due to methods of irrigation. As irrigation reduced, and water extraction increased, so did the stress on the aquifer.
Community analysis inventory of areas of sensitivity shows that some serious sources of pollution flow through or exist
within the conductive zone of Arroyo. By Martina Gonzalez.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

22.4
Community analysis inventory of areas of sensitivity shows that some serious sources of pollution flow through or exist
within the conductive zone of Arroyo. Conductive zones, or high rates of permeability, are denoted in this inventory map
with shades representing intense permeability. The community of Arroyo encompasses one of the major conductive
zones. By Martina Gonzalez.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

22.5
The proposal is an integrated network of hydrological and vegetal systems that function differently according to their
geographic locations, but that also work holistically. This framework diagrams the functions of the landscape in terms of
water treatment; ponds, pumps, and water movement in terms of topography and proposals for future development. By
Martina Gonzalez.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

22.6
Infrastructure left over from the sugar cane industry, the Patillas Canal, is repurposed and releases its water into a grey-
water wetland enabling enough dilution to remediate the water, recharge the aquifer, revitalize the creek and reframe the
community’s relationship with water. By Martina Gonzalez.
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

www.ebook777.com
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

22.7–22.9
Houses within the conductive zone are an integral part of grey-water reclamation. The first stage of grey-water filtration
for these residences happens in back yards through small-scale systems like grey-water ponds or channels. These unit-
scale systems then redirect the water to contained filtration ponds along the banks of the creek to complete the remaining
stages of filtration. By Martina Gonzalez.

www.ebook777.com
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

22.10
A community network proposes important public spaces and routes all water to the “alternative” creek. These ponds also
serve as public space and increase biodiversity. By Martina Gonzalez.
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

22.11
Perspective view of Arroyo’s port. Intimately scaled grey-water treatment ponds clean the grey water from adjacent
restaurants then release fresh water to aid the growth of the estuarine life in the bay. Reference images from 1898 and
2013 show before and after conditions. By Martina Gonzalez.

22.12
Arroyo’s Alternative Creek can become the catalyst for communal change, serving as a corridor for public activity,
providing places for repose or recreation while treating grey water and reframing its relationship with its community all
along its path. By Martina Gonzalez.

www.ebook777.com
 Afterword
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Closing remarks
Roberto Rovira
Whereas digital representation unquestionably leverages landscape architecture’s ability to
envision systems and networks in unprecedented ways, it remarkably empowers the field
with the ability to present a nuanced understanding of these ideas in the short and the long
term, in the micro and the macro scales. Site, community, urban, and regional strategies
can be juxtaposed via digital representation strategies that collapse before and after
conditions, that present infrastructural scales and systems as incremental and phased, and
that have the power to seductively present ideas to doubtful constituencies who may
otherwise be comfortable with the status quo or perhaps unaware of a better way.
Digital representation, like landscape architecture, is in the business of ideas. Perhaps
more poignantly, it is in the business of making ideas relevant, understandable, and worthy
of our attention. Digital representation in landscape architecture, when well executed, can
distill a sense from complexity and communicate intricate and dynamic narratives and
processes with clarity. When untempered and unrestrained, it can also do the opposite.
With the ability to layer, automate scripts, and quantitatively process vast amounts of
information, digital representation is an invaluable tool capable of contending with, or
further complicating, landscape’s expanding scope and complexity.
Whether digital or analog, the array of available drawing types provides a wide range of
possibilities to explore and communicate diverse options as part of the design process.
Mapping diagrams, plans, axonometrics, sections and perspectives have long been
standards. Digital tools and software, however, accelerate the ability to iterate and explore
permutation, design and create complex form, measure and accurately examine
alternatives and become agents in the fabrication process. Three-dimensional models have
long been an essential part of the design process, but digital tools’ generative potential
makes data-driven design and parametric modeling promising standards.
When one considers the inherent “rules” that implicitly inform landscape architecture,
whether they are municipal codes, material performance limitations, or ecosystem
relationships that abide by underlying ecological patterns, the potential of digital tools that
are inherently proficient in executing rule-based algorithms becomes profoundly powerful.
Representing landscapes digitally therefore implies working both “under the hood” to
predict and model systems and networks holistically, while also serving to illustrate the
end result of these processes when fulfilled. The technical precision and accuracy afforded
by digital tools are complemented by the very same capabilities to represent and often
illustrate the fantastic possibilities of landscapes in their ideally realized state.
The ever-increasing digital representation capabilities that grow with advanced realistic
modeling software and faster processing technology do not, however, relinquish the need
to prioritize ideas, define hierarchy, apply judgment, exert compositional sense, and strive
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
for a holistic understanding that considers the whole as well as the sum of the parts in the
ways that landscape architecture has always considered profoundly vital to its identity.
Ultimately, the ability to use state-of-the-art digital representation is better served by an
ability to establish why it is important to digitally represent in a particular way, as opposed
to how exactly it is done. After all, the methodologies of how will always change and
hopefully continue to become simpler and more intuitive. The ability to ask why and
leverage technology to come up with an answer, however, will always be essential to our
ability to advance the discipline and situate it in the larger landscape of solutions affecting
the relationship between human beings and their environment.

www.ebook777.com
Bibliography
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Abney, S. P. Parsing by Chunks. New Jersey: Bell Communications Research, 1994.
Alon-Mozes, T. “Landscape Architecture and Agriculture: Common Seeds and Diverging Sprigs.” Israeli Practice,
Landscape Journal, 28:2-09, 2009, pp. 166–180.
Bateson, G. Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays. Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Epistemology.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Bertin, J. Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.
Bowring, J. and Swaffield, S. “Diagrams in Landscape Architecture.” In: The Diagrams of Architecture: AD Reader. Ed.
Garcia, M. Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2010, pp. 142–151.
Burkardt, L. Design = Unsichtbar. Ostfildern: Cantz Verlag, 1995 (translated).
Carlisle, S. and Pevzner, N. “The Performative Ground: Rediscovering The Deep Section.” Scenario Journal: Online-
only Journal. 02, 2012. 14 pages. Web. (accessed 12 February 2014).
Castro, E. and Ramirez, A. Critical Territories: From Academia to Praxis. Florence: Laboratorio Editoriale, 2014.
Cerruzi, P. Computing: A Concise History. New York: MIT Press Essential Knowledge, 2012.
Corner, J. “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention.” In: Mappings. Ed. Denis Cosgrove. London:
Reaction Books, 1999, pp. 213–252.
Corner, J. “Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes.” In: Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape
Architecture. Ed. James Corner. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.
Corner, J. “Operational Eidetics: Forging New Landscapes.” Harvard Design Magazine, Fall, 1998, pp. 22–26.
Corner, J. “Representation and Landscape: Drawing and Making in the Landscape Medium.” Word & Image, vol 8., no
3, 1992, pp. 243–275.
Corner, J. and MacLean, A. S. Taking Measures Across the American Landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1996.
D’Argenville, A., J. Dezallier and Le Blond, J.-B. A. La Théorie et la Pratique du Jardinage. Paris: Jean Mariette, 1709.
De Botton, A. Kunst des Reisens. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2002 (translated).
Deleuze, G. Différence et Répétition. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968.
Dürsteler, J. C. “Interview with Jacques Bertin.” Infovis.net. Web. January 2003 (accessed 15 April 2014).
Elden, S. The Birth of the Territory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Fabrikant, S. I., Montello, D. R., and Mark, D. M. “The Natural Landscape Metaphor in Information Visualization: The
Role of Commonsense Geomorphology.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology,
2010; 61: 253–270. doi: 10.1002/asi.2122.
Fraguada, L. and Melsom, J. “Urban Pulse: The Application of Moving Sensor Networks in the Urban Environment:
Strategies for Implementation and Implications for Landscape Design.” In Peer-reviewed Proceedings Digital
Landscape Architecture 2014, ETH Zurich. Offenbach: Wichmann Verlag, 2014.
Fraguada, L., Girot, C. and Melsom, J. “Synchronous Horizons: Redefining Spatial Design in Landscape Architecture
Through Ambient Data Collection and Volumetric Manipulation.” In Peer-Reviewed Proceedings ACADIA 2012:
Synthetic Digital Ecologies. San Francisco: ACADIA, 2012.
Fry, B. Visualising Data. California: O’Reilly Media, 2009.
Halprin, L. The RSVP Cycles: Creative Processes in the Human Environment. New York City: G. Brazilier, 1970.
Jackson, J. B. A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Latour, B. “Visualisation and Cognition. Drawing Things Together.” In: Knowledge and Society Studies in the Sociology
of Culture Past and Present. Ed. H. Kuklick. Greenwich, CT: Jai Press, 1986.
Le Corbusier. Schéma De L’Organisation Des Services Communs, Unité D’Habitation. Fondation Le Corbusier 1945;
27145.
Letherbarrow, D. “The Project of Design Research.” In: Design Innovation for the Built Environment. Research by
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Design and the Renovation of Practice. Ed. U. Hensel, M. U. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012, pp. 5–14.
Lootsma, B. “Synthetic Regionalization: The Dutch Landscape Toward a Second Modernity.” In: Recovering
Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture. Ed. Corner, J. New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
1999.
Miller, G. “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.”
Psychological Review, 1956; 63(2): 81–97.
Nielsen, J. “How Users Read on the Web.” Nielsen Norman Group, 1997. http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-
read-on-the-web/ (accessed 22 February 2014).
Price, C. Diagram Mapping Programme and Community for Inter-Action Centre, London, England. Montreal: Cedric
Price Fonds Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture / Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1977, DR1995:0252:621.
Rieder, K. “Modeling, Physical and Virtual.” In: Trieb, M. (ed.) Representing Landscape Architecture. London:
Routledge, 2007.
Sasaki, H. “Thoughts on Education in Landscape Architecture: Some Comments on Today’s Methodologies and
Purpose.” Landscape Architecture 1950; 40, no. 4: 158–160.
Sennett, R. The Craftsman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
Smithson, R. Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings. Ed. Flam, J. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Sopwith, T. A Treatise on Isometrical Drawings, as Applicable to Geological and Mining Plans, Picturesque
Delineations of Ornamental Grounds, Perspective Views and Working Plans of Buildings and Machinery, and to
General Purposes of Civil Engineering. London: J. Weale, 1838.
Whitehead, A. N. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. New York, The Free Press, 1978.
Woodbury, R. Elements of Parametric Design. London: Routledge, 2010.

www.ebook777.com
Index Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Adelaide 75, 76, 79
aerial perspective 5, 58, 59, 83–97, 171; greyfield sites 240; presentation plans 72, 79; rendering 180–189
agency 30
algorithms 215, 271
Alternative Creek, Arroyo 102, 255–270
ambiguity 129–130
Amoroso, Nadia 3–6
analogue modeling 215
analogue representations 83, 84, 85
analytic sections 150–151
analytical data 207
analytical diagrams 4, 31
Anderson, Jonathon R. 5, 129–135
animation 49, 52, 54, 181, 228, 229
ArcGIS: diagrams 60, 64, 65, 68; greyfield sites 242, 247, 250, 254
Architectural Association (AA) 193, 194
architecture 144
ArcMap 7, 24, 119, 120
ArcScene 120
Arroyo, Puerto Rico 255–270
assemblages 193, 216
associative design 215, 219, 221, 223, 224
authorship 30
AutoCAD 13; aerial perspective 86–89, 91, 93–94, 96–97; axonometric drawings 16, 119, 121–125; diagrams 60,
62–64, 68; exploded map diagram 8; generative diagrams 10; greyfield sites 240, 242, 247, 249–250, 254;
Landschaftslinien 139, 140, 142; line-work 58; perspective drawings 163, 164; presentation plans 74–77, 81–82;
Riverdale Park 7; section-elevations 18; site plans 14, 25; 3D models 157; tree generation 24; vertical-plane
typologies 130
autonomous land construction 203
axonometrics 5, 16, 117–126, 271; chunking 109–116; exploded 58, 99, 103, 111n7, 117, 118, 122–125; greyfield sites
240
Babbage, Charles 214
Bald Eagle Ridge 117, 121
Bateson, Gregory 215
Bathymetry 230
beauty 168
Bertin, Jacques 29
Bing 180, 184
Blackwood Library and Community Garden, Adelaide 75
blank space see white space
blending 20, 175
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Blow, Jonathan 182n6
Boone, Kofi 58–68, 239–254
Botton, Alain de 137
Buffalo Eastside 67–68
buildings 84, 144, 157; axonometric drawings 123; diagrams 58; greyfield sites 247; Landschaftslinien 141; presentation
plans 73
Burlando, Paolo 227
C4D 228n2
Calgary 11, 13, 16
Candlestick Park project 215
Cantrell, Bradley 203–213
canvas 72
Carlisle, S. 129
cartography 83, 170
Castro, Eva 4, 38–46
ceramics 204
Cerruzi, Paul 214
Chelmsford 81
chemical transfers 170, 173, 177
Ching, Francis 3
chunking 109–116
Ciliwung River, Jakarta 49, 227–238
civil engineering 144
closure 84
cloud effects 72, 78, 82
CO2 data 11
collage 31, 99, 174, 177; aerial rendering 189; perspective drawings 158, 162; presentation plans 76
Colón waterfront, Panama 100–102
color: aerial rendering 181, 182; datascaping 35, 36; diagrams 58; digital models 157; greyfield sites 240;
Landschaftslinien 143; park design 15; photoshopping 5–6; presentation plans 71, 72–73, 75; selective use of 14;
vegetative color palettes 18
computation 214, 215, 216, 222; see also digital models
computed axial tomography (CAT) 5, 137
computer numerical control (CNC) 6, 48, 216, 223
computer-assisted design (CAD) 214; aerial perspective 88; Landschaftslinien 141; mapping 48; presentation plans 72,
74–75, 77, 79; site plans 100, 102, 103
construction 216; see also fabrication
container images 167, 171
Corner, James 4, 5, 10, 30, 31, 109
Crabtree Creek 60, 240, 243–247
cross-sections 136–143
cultural heritage 136
cyclical diagrams 33–34

www.ebook777.com
darkening layers 72
data collection 47, 48 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
data metrics 166–179
DataAppealTM 6n5, 11, 12
datascaping 4, 11, 12, 29–37, 92
Debije Counts, Maria 5, 117–126, 157–165
Debord, Guy 167
Deleuze, Gilles 167, 168n4
dérive 167
desaturation 182
design literacy 71
Devereaux Meadows Eco Park 62, 242
diagrams 4, 29, 31, 33–34, 58–68, 271
digital models 6, 22, 129–130, 203, 214–224, 239, 271; associative design 215; data metrics 169; digital lighting studies
158; land formations 194; perspective drawings 157, 160–165; sections 144; tectonic grounds 193, 194, 195; see also
3D models
Don Valley, Toronto 20, 23
drawing types 3, 4, 6
drawings, suite of 71
drones 47, 50, 83, 227–228, 231
duplication 98, 99
Easter Island 175
Eisenman, Peter 109
elevations 5, 129, 145; see also section-elevations
emotions 59, 166, 167
entropic processes 203
“epigenetic landscape” 40
exaggeration 72–73
experiential perspectives 157, 159, 165, 177
exploded diagrams 8, 58, 99, 103, 111n7, 117, 118, 122–125
eye-level perspective 240–241
fabrication 6, 23, 203–213, 215, 216, 271; automated 214; tectonic grounds 193, 194, 195; see also digital models
Fairmount Park 114
Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich 47, 227, 228, 231, 234, 236
fields 224
filtering 15, 99, 182
finishing techniques 181, 182
Finsbury Square, London 77, 80
Flamingo nXt 15, 22
Fletcher, David 180–189
flood simulations 227–228, 234
Florida International University 98–99, 255
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
fonts 58, 239
form 118, 215
form-finding models 215
4D models 181, 182
frames 84
Fricker, Pia 48
Fry, Ben 48
Fultineer, Scheri 145n2
Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) 227, 228, 230, 231, 234
Gaussian Blur 19
generative design 215, 271
generative diagrams 4, 10
geo sections 149
geodesign 4–5, 47, 49
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) 5, 6n5; aerial perspective 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95; axonometric drawings 117, 120;
Ciliwung River case study 227; datascaping 29; greyfield sites 239; mapping 48, 52, 53
geology 30, 73, 144, 149, 152, 175
GHowl 50, 56, 57
Girot, Christophe 47, 227–238
Google Earth 11, 90, 92, 97; aerial rendering 180, 183, 185–189; exploded map diagram 8; greyfield sites 241
Google maps 75
Grasshopper 6; aerial perspective 92, 95, 183–189; axonometric drawings 5, 110; Ciliwung River case study 228,
229–230; datascaping 31; digital models 219, 222; mapping 52, 53, 56, 57
greyfield sites 239–254
Guelph River Park, Canada 15, 18
Halprin, Lawrence 30
hand drawing 3, 72, 186; Landschaftslinien 143; presentation plans 75, 76, 81
Hansen, Andrea 4, 29–37
Hargreaves Associates 215
Hartness, Andrew 144–154, 166–179
Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) 30, 31, 215, 216
Hejduk, John 109
Holl, Steven 109
Hollis, Douglas 215
horizons 84, 85, 97
HTO Park, Toronto 32
Hurkxkens, Ilmar 48
hybrid 3D 181–182
Hybrid Drawing 144–145, 166
hydrology: Arroyo case study 255–270; associative design 215; axonometric drawings 120, 123; Ciliwung River case
study 227–238; digital models 219; Landschaftslinien 137, 141; mapping 51; presentation plans 73; site plans 99; see
also water
hyper-indexes 38, 43

www.ebook777.com
icons 32, 58
ideas 167 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Illustrator: aerial perspective 95, 181; axonometric drawings 5, 112–116, 119–125; datascaping 31; diagrams 58, 59,
60–68; fonts 58; generative diagrams 10; greyfield sites 240–241, 242, 247, 249–250, 254; icons 58;
Landschaftslinien 143; line-work 58; “opportunities and constraints” diagram 9; presentation plans 75; Riverdale Park
7; section-elevations 17; site plans 14, 25, 100, 101; tree generation 24; vertical-plane typologies 130, 131, 132–134
InDesign: axonometric drawings 120; diagrams 59, 60, 62–64, 68; greyfield sites 242, 247, 249–250, 254;
Landschaftslinien 142; site plans 103; tree generation 24
indexicality 38, 39, 43, 44, 45
industrial development 255
infographic sections 150–151
infographics 169
interval cutting 152
intuitive diagrams 59
irrigation 255
isometric drawing see axonometrics
Jakarta 49, 227–238
James Corner Field Operations 109
Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) 180, 181, 183
Kuler 58
Kullman, Karl 5, 83–97
labels 72
land formations 193, 194, 195
landform modeling 157, 161, 163, 203, 221
landscape chunks 109–116
Landscape Morphologies Lab 203
Landscape Visualization and Modelling Laboratory (LVML) 47, 49, 228
Landschaftslinien 136–143
Latour, Bruno 38, 167
Laubwerk 228n2
layers: aerial perspective 98, 99, 181, 182; axonometric drawings 117–118, 122; digital tools 130, 271; Landschaftslinien
143; layer masks 19, 20, 99
Le Corbusier 30, 109
Le Nôtre, André 144
Lee, Wilson 123, 124
Lens Blur 19
light 5–6, 15, 177; aerial perspective 84–85; digital lighting studies 158; perspective drawings 162, 163; presentation
plans 72, 73, 78
Lin, Mike 3
line weight 58, 73, 88
“lines of flight” 39
line-work: aerial perspective 83–84, 87, 88, 89, 93, 94, 97; diagrams 58; perspective drawings 164; presentation plans
72, 76; vertical-plane typologies 135; visualization 175
Linth plain 51, 52, 55
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
London 77, 78, 80
Lootsma, Bart 29
Louisiana State University Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture 203, 204
Lumion 240–241, 254
Mack Architects 215
MacLean, Alex 31
Madrid 116
Mah, David 214–224
Maldives 14
Maldon Promenade Park 74, 82
Manitoba 137, 139, 140
manuals of landscape design 144
mapping 4–5, 29, 38, 47–57, 83, 84, 271
maps 29, 31, 38
Marcinkoski, Christopher 5, 109–116
Material Agency project 204
materiality: aerial perspective 180, 181–182; axonometric drawings 112, 113, 114, 118, 126; Landschaftslinien 143;
perspective drawings 158, 160, 162; sandbox model 215; site plans 99, 100; tectonic grounds 193
Maxwell 102
Maya 102, 110
McHarg, Ian 5
Media and Site Technologies Lab 203
Medieval age 144
metrics 166–179
Miami 174
Microsoft Kinect 203
Mission Valley 64, 240–241, 252–254
modes of production 39
montage 58, 59, 169
multiple-narrative sections 153–154
Munkel, Jörg 48
narrative 154, 167, 168, 181, 239, 241
National University of Singapore (NUS) 227, 228
New Orleans 21
“night view” 72, 79
North Carolina State University 239
NYC High Line project 10
object-oriented programming (OOP) 215
“occupiable” spaces 157, 160
Olmsted, Frederick Law 98
“opportunities and constraints” diagram 9
“optical consistency” 38

www.ebook777.com
Ortega, Daniel H. 5, 129–135
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
orthographic sections 144, 146
Otto, Frei 215
overlays 15, 25; aerial rendering 181, 182, 183, 184; data metrics 169, 171, 172; datascaping 35; vertical-plane
typologies 132, 134, 135
Owens Lake 203
palettes 58, 72–73, 239
paper 72
parallel projection 109
patch-collage technique 158
paths 84, 93, 94, 110, 157, 160, 179
Pennsylvania 121, 122, 163
Pennsylvania State University 117, 157
people: aerial rendering 181; greyfield sites 240; Landschaftslinien 141; perspective drawings 162; presentation plans
72, 77
perception 83–84, 167
perspective 5–6, 20–22, 25, 157–165, 271; diagrams 58; eye-level 240–241; greyfield sites 240; sections 145; site plans
99; visualization 167, 173
Pevzner, N. 129
Philadelphia 112, 113, 115
photographs 36–37, 39–40, 98
Photoshop 12, 13, 177, 179; aerial perspective 86–87, 89, 91–94, 95, 96–97, 180–181, 182, 183–189; axonometric
drawings 5, 16, 112–115, 122–126; blending 175; cartography 170; data metrics 169, 171; diagrams 58, 60–68; digital
lighting studies 158; exploded map diagram 8; finishing techniques 182; greyfield sites 239–241, 242, 247, 249–250,
254; icons 58; Landschaftslinien 139–143; layer masks 19; “opportunities and constraints” diagram 9; perspective
drawings 5, 21, 22, 160–165, 173; presentation plans 75–79, 81–82; rendering 15, 72; section-elevations 17, 18; site
plans 25, 100, 101, 102, 103; sketched data 178; superimposing 20; tree generation 24; “vanishing point perspective”
20; vertical-plane typologies 130, 131–132, 134–135
photoshopping 5–6
plan schematics 71, 72; see also presentation plans
point cloud models 227–228, 230
pollution 255, 261
PORT A+U 109
post-modern designers 109
post-processing 95, 130
precision 83–84, 98, 99, 271
presentation plans 5, 71–82
Price, Cedric 30
process datascapes 30, 32
process sections 150–151
Processing 48, 54, 55, 56
programmatic range 158
programming 48, 214, 215
proximity 167
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
Puerto Rico 99, 102, 103, 255–270
qualitative-quantitative datascapes 31
radiographic sections 148
Ramírez, José Alfredo 193–202
realism 38, 100
Regamey, Adrienne Grêt 47, 227
regeneration 99, 241
Reid, Grant 3
Rekitte, Jörg 227
relationality 39, 43
relationships 167
Renaissance 136, 144
rendering: aerial perspective 90, 97, 180–189; axonometric drawings 16, 112, 113, 114, 115; digital lighting studies 158;
digital models 157; park design 15; perspective 157; presentation plans 72, 78, 81, 82; site plans 99
repetition 58, 59, 99
Rhino 12, 15; aerial perspective 90, 92, 95, 96–97, 181, 183–189; axonometric drawings 5, 110, 112–116, 119, 125, 126;
Ciliwung River case study 228, 229–230; data overlays 171, 172; datascaping 31; digital models 22, 219; line-work
175; mapping 50, 51–53, 56–57; perspective drawings 160–162, 164–165; presentation plans 72, 75; sketched data
178; vertical-plane typologies 130, 131–133
Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) 144, 166
Rietveld, Gerrit 109
riparian landscapes 194, 240
River Torrens 79
Riverdale Park, Toronto 7, 11
Rocky Branch Creek 240
Rovira, Roberto 5, 98–105, 255–270, 271–272
Ruberto, Federico 4, 38–46
“rules” 271
SAGAgis 51
sandbox model 215
Sanjuán, Clara Olóriz 193–202
Sasaki, Hideo 30
satellite imagery 83, 180
scalability 98
scale 71, 84, 99, 117, 157
schematics 71, 72
seasonal change 73, 158, 162, 171
section-elevations 17, 18, 58; Landschaftslinien 136, 142; vertical-plane typologies 129–135
sections 5, 144–154, 271; Landschaftslinien 136–143
sedimentation 203, 208–209
“semiotic consistency” 39
Sennett, Richard 216
sensibility 157

www.ebook777.com
sensors 11, 48, 50, 56, 57, 223
serial vision 59 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
shade 5–6, 158
Shaderlight 78
shadow 5–6, 54; aerial perspective 84–85, 87, 93, 96, 181, 182, 185, 187; axonometric drawings 112, 114; presentation
plans 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78
signs 38, 40
simulation 49, 203, 216, 223; flood simulations 227–228, 234; generative design 215
site plans 7, 14, 25, 91, 98–105, 257
Situationists 167
sizing 71
sketch testing 71
sketched data 178
SketchUp 12, 13, 19; aerial perspective 181, 182, 185–189; axonometrics 5, 16; diagrams 60, 63, 66, 68; exploded map
diagram 8; greyfield sites 240, 247, 249–250, 254; perspective drawings 21, 163; presentation plans 72, 77–78;
sketched data 178; 2D images 182n4; “vanishing point perspective” 20; vertical-plane typologies 130
Smithson, Robert 98
software 5, 182, 214, 271; landscape chunks 110; open source 49, 57; rendering 180; see also AutoCAD; Illustrator;
InDesign; Photoshop; Rhino; SketchUp; V-Ray
Soho Square, London 78
soil 73, 120, 124, 204, 221
Southwest Raleigh 65–66, 240, 250–251
space 39, 83
space-time datascapes 30, 33
spatial sequencing 157
spatialization of data 166, 167
spatio-phenomenal approach 166–167
“stacked site plans” 99
STOSS 109
StrATA project 204
Straub, Dietmar 136–143
sun 73, 84–85, 97, 158
superimposing 20, 21
Synchronous Horizons 47, 50
synthesis 30
tectonic grounds 193–202
territory 193, 194, 195
text 58, 72, 135
textures 14, 175; aerial perspective 87, 94, 95, 181–182; axonometric drawings 112, 113, 114, 115; datascaping 35;
greyfield sites 240; Landschaftslinien 143; park design 15; perspective drawings 158, 162; photoshopping 5–6;
presentation plans 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 82; site plans 99, 100; vertical-plane typologies 132, 135
3D models 5, 11, 12, 216, 271; aerial perspective 92, 96, 97, 180, 181–182; canal system 199; Ciliwung River case study
228, 230; digital lighting studies 158; experimental 197; perspective drawings 157, 159, 160–165; post-processing
130; presentation plans 72; site plans 102; topography 198; water 196, 202; see also digital models
 Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
3D scanning 137, 203, 205
three-dimensional representation 39, 71
3DS Max 5, 169, 172, 185, 187–188
time: digital lighting studies 158; landscape chunks 110; light changes 85; perspective drawings 163; sections 151;
space-time datascapes 30, 33; spatio-temporal interfaces 39–40; territorial formations 195
topography 42, 179, 217; aerial rendering 182; Arroyo case study 262; axonometric drawings 110, 117, 119, 121; data
overlays 171; dérive 167; diagrams 58; exploded map diagram 8; fabricated model 23; interval cutting 152;
Landschaftslinien 140; mapping 51; presentation plans 73; re-description of 198
Toronto 7, 11, 20, 23, 24, 32, 152
tourism 137
transparency 148, 182
trees 24, 78, 139, 157, 181; see also vegetation
Turing, Alan 214
Turing Test 145
2D images 71, 72, 180, 181, 182, 182n4
2.5D technique 181
UC Berkeley 83
Unity game engine 182n1
University of Nevada, Las Vegas 129
University of Southern California 203
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) 47, 50, 180, 227–228, 229
urban landscapes 49
urbanism 193
US Army Corp of Engineers 215
“vanishing point perspective” 20
vectors 130, 132, 169, 179
Vectorworks 139
vegetation: aerial rendering 181–182; associative design 215; axonometric drawings 115, 121, 122, 124; digital models
218, 219; Landschaftslinien 140, 141; perspective drawings 158; presentation plans 73; see also trees
Venturi, Robert 109
venustas 167
vertical-plane typologies 5, 129–135
virtual reality 182
vision 83–84
visual narrative 239, 241
visualization 29, 85, 166–179, 239; aerial perspective 83; axonometric drawings 118; mapping 47, 49; sections 144, 145
VisualSFM 230
Vitruvius 144, 167
V-Ray 12, 13; aerial perspective 90, 97; axonometric drawings 16, 112, 113, 114; Ciliwung River case study 228n2;
perspective drawings 21, 161, 163; “vanishing point perspective” 20
water 196, 201, 202, 217, 218; Arroyo case study 255–270; Ciliwung River case study 227–238; greyfield sites 240,
244; sedimentation 203, 208–209; see also hydrology
watercolor 3, 11; aerial perspective 89, 96; Landschaftslinien 141; presentation plans 76, 78
web-based mapping 83

www.ebook777.com
West 8 109
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com
white space 58, 59, 84, 91, 93, 95, 96, 240
Winnipeg 137
Woodbury, R. 129
Zeunert, Joshua 71–82
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com

www.ebook777.com