Design Tool and representation

The lecture done by city council of Melbourne was about design tool especially computer software in designing landscape.  As McLuhan states "medium is message", the selection of appropriate design tool is critical skill for landscape architect.

I list some key points or useful information that I picked up from the lecture here.

+ It is common to show a design by Before and After picture by photo montage with photoshop/ However, in many case, it manipulate photo by making slightly different situation, and mislead the viewer.  Situation that I mean here maybe  the number of people, light intensity etc.

+Select right representation for based on what you want to show.

--- It is obvious that modeling by 3-D max or Rhino looks better than Sketchup, but takes much more time.  You have to choose right tool, thinking about how much you want to spend time on it, and what do you want to show with it.  

+It is significant to consider audiences for representation of design.  Are they used to look at animation? Do they rather like artistic hand drawing?

+ Design tool does not only determine representation but also affect the product itself in its process.  As I took a look at it in the last blog, these tool dynamically affect and transform design.   If you learn some program, you will easily notice how and why those form are designed in many famous project in current architectural scene, though that looks like almost impossible to draw by hand.

 

Bridge in Dockland   Retrieved from Worldwideweb.

The PET bottle, designed by Ross Lovegrove (1999 - 2002)

   "It is conceptually unique in terms of production delivery and in form to the water concept, demonstrating advances in blow moulding techniques". (http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/pet.html) 

   Most of the modeling software has to fix each dimension, and hard to design in relation to others.  However recently introduced high tech software such as CATIA allows to design form in relationship rather than absolute number. It is innovative concept in design software, since the design never was fixed by itself.  There are some project that this parametric design is applied.  

This introduce recent project of Zaha Hadid which she designed Thames Gateway regeneration corridor to the east of London, based on “parametric” techniques.

http://zahahadidblog.com/movies/2007/06/22/121

"Hadid & Schumacher use advanced computer modelling software to project these four building types over a base map of the Thames Gateway. They have adjusted this model to reflect the area’s current conditions, and used it to speculate on possible forms of future development. They have tested multiple combinations of the different building types, often fusing them to create hybrid structures. The outcome of these experiments is documented in a large-scale image with a range of striking new forms, and an animated sequence which shows the evolution of an intensely urban pattern across the area."   (from the link above)

Considering just a bit, I can think of so many possibilities of parametric modeling even in Landscape architecture.

1. You can test many different form from limited resources.  Usually you design form first and prepare material or resources.  If they are not enough, then you adjust your fixed form by making it smaller or cutting some elements.  However, it allows to work from the amount of material or resources, then test endless number of forms that computer produces randomly in a second.  It allows you to visualize many different possibility that you are going to dig further. 
2. The parameter can be a planning or design code.  you can constraint randomness, depending on your set up.  The computer produce forms within a constraint that you set up.  you may set up the planning code of hight, size of area for each element, amount of water you want to use
3. It allows to effectively and collaborate with other disciplines for a project.   One project requires working with different disciplines such as architect,  engineer, ecologist, planner, engineer, etc.  It often creates the hierarchy in terms of order of the process, which constraint creativity of work.  However, parametric design allows different disciplines working paralelly, since you design the relationship rather than fixing each absolute number. 

The design  tool rapidly develop and enhance our design dynamically, however, most of them are computer which does not require us to use our body.  It is truth that the contemporary design tool alienate our body.  How this affects the design form and products overall.

Land is used to be modified in ways of life for long process by many people, which has created cultural landscape.  However, nowadays it is modified by few people with computer in short time.  We should keep the process that links way of life and landscape in our mind when we follow computer technology.

Qanats, Iran.

The ancient persians may have innovated underground aqua ducts, or qanats, as early as the eighth century, B.C. It is essentially a sloped, underground tunnel, sometimes of great length and depth, that takes advantages of gravity to channels a continuous flow of groundwater from its higher end, usually in or near the mountains, to the lower and drier plains. At lower terminal, the water is apportioned through a network of irrigation channels. The manhole-sized vertical shafts were used to excavate and maintain the channel.

Inca agricultural terraces, c. 15th century

   The Nazca people prevailed along the southern coast, where inadequate water was one of the most serious problems confronting farmers.  The Nazca people devised a system of underground aqueducts perhaps around A.D. 600.  It took advantages of the sloping water table of the Nazca valley to channel water to where it was needed.  Inca fields were terraced, flanked by stone retaining walls, and equipped with stone-lined drainage systems.  Moray's extraordinary terracing-three sets of concentric amphitheater-like cavities and one horseshoe-shaped set-may be adaptations of natural sinkholes in the underlying limestone.  

Map of Tenochititlan

   The Aztecs founded their capital on swampy islands in Lake Texcoco; a network of canals wove through the city to facilitate canoe traffic.  Tenochtitlan impressed the conquistadors, who arrived in 1519 as a city that floated on water.  Alongthe southern edges if the city, farmers built an extensive network of chinampas, composting the rectangular, raised garden plots with the rich silt they dredged from the lake and canals. The floating vegetable beds created in the course of the Aztec's ongoing drainage and land-reclamation projects were composed of woven-grassmats, covered with a layer of lkepbottom mud. Theywere highly productive; one acre could reportedly provide enough food for six to wight people.  If this estimate is correct, it follows that 200,000 mouths would have required tens of thousands of acres of chinampas.  Is it any wonder that cirtually all of Lake Xochimilco became covered with soil-bearing?

Whatever remains of the Aztec capital now lies buried under Mexico City.

(monochrome picture are excepts from "Designing the Earth")