IDEAS | landscape architecture / planning / urban design

The methods used to illustrate our ideas about landscape consist of marks and data that create a network of information that informs us and others about designed works. These methods are premised on a system that displays a final product, one that is polished but also stagnant and unable to be compromised. By contrast, much of the development processes of an actual landscape (i.e., growth, seasonality, singularity, and decay) are not at all prevalent in the visual language that represents the field of landscape architecture.

The introduction of new methods of constructing drawings digitally as well as digitizing analog documents is an exploration that much of the field of landscape architecture is not utilizing let alone exploiting. Landscape documentation has not been fully explored and the complexity that a site already contains or may contain in the future is left unconsidered, without a thought or debate. Layers of time, amorphousness, and potential are each exploratory paths that cannot be documented through built form, but are important aspects of a project that need to be developed and represented.

A representative drawing, one that depicts a single idea, is the predominant form of our visual communication. The integration of a designer’s process and individuality (personal signature) is a missing component that could add fascinating information and personalization into constructed illustrations. The documentation of such processes allows for a project to record ideas that are becoming instead of being, ones that could reveal many facets of an intricate idea. The absence of process in our drawing methods not only dismisses that opportunity but creates a distance between designers and people external to the discipline and further separates the potential for collaboration to strengthen built forms and systems. A construct drawing, on the other hand, one that is built from many forms of media, contains pieces that allow viewers to glimpse the people who built them. The result is much more interesting work that could explain the considerations informing the placement of objects within a landscape system and what influences other forms of design have upon the creation of a space.

These forms of drawing are by no means new and have been practiced for decades using found images, different tools for making marks, and media surfaces. A shift in personal values that places emphasis on the creation and documentation of individual process is what’s required now for the prevalence and use of such drawings. As technologies and various forms of media multiply, the limitations of traditional drawing methods will become obsolete, as will the inability to convey the necessary complexity of landscape systems and the processes used to complete a design. It’s time to start exploring methods used to create and convey ideas that will not presuppose an exclusive relationship between our documented work and our thought processes.

This drawing by Perry Kulper, an architect and associate professor of architecture at the University of Michigan, was created in response to the Central California History Museum competition. Kulper’s new book, Pamphlet Architecture 34: Fathoming the Unfathomable, with Nat Chard, is available through Princeton Architectural Press.

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One Response to “An Evolving Construct: Toward Representative Drawing Methods”

nunger8

I don’t agree, read http://www.thehousethatlarsbuilt.com/2014/04/lessons-learned-your-first-idea-is-not.html
– Nereida
May 6th, 2014 Reply

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Posted by Evan Lee
in Arts and Culture, Landscape Urbanism, Urban Ecologies
on 25 April, 2014

1 comment

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Just fifty miles northwest of the SWA Dallas office, jolts in the earth can be felt that are believed to be a result of fracking. Claims like these are a popular subject in this region where I have lived my entire life. I first became aware of the practice of fracking and its effects in 2008. Many family members and friends in Northwest Louisiana were approached by gas company land men for the leasing of their property’s mineral rights. This generated much buzz about what positives and negatives were to come from the new exploration, but the issues were generally clouded over by the sharp influx of royalties. It wasn’t until I was browsing Google Earth a few years later that I became aware of the negative impact of fracking on our landscapes. I noticed strange, visible patterns of cleared land scattered over vast areas, as shown in the images above. That was when I realized that fracking sites were invading our rural and suburban landscapes with the proliferation of noxious weeds, and with far more dire consequences. They are alien, unsightly, over-scaled, invasive, and plentiful. These images display how swift the process can be over a relatively short period of time and how our landscapes are left in the end.

This explanation of the fracking process and its history ran in “Welcome to Frackville,” by New Mexico landscape architect Kim Sorvig, from the June 2013 issue of Landscape Architecture.

“A couple of million oil and gas wells have been drilled in the United States since the 1950s; there are about 825,000 of them currently producing, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But conventional reservoirs are becoming rarer, pumped out, capped, or abandoned. Conventional production has peaked, and demand keeps rising. To survive, the petroleum industry is betting heavily on “unconventional” reservoirs, shales and sands from which oil or gas can’t just be pumped. Imagine sponges soaked in petroleum, then hardened. Tar sands are boiled to release crude oil. Shales must be “fracked” (hydraulically fractured) by pumping huge volumes of water and chemicals under extreme pressure to crack bedrock so its riches flow. There was even one attempt to nuke petroleum loose, with radioactive results. Unconventional reserves, many believe, will dwarf conventional ones. The International Energy Agency predicted in 2009 that U.S. shale gas may be triple the nation’s conventional total. In some played-out conventional fields, fracking old wells may release half again their former production. Fracking is profitable, enough to perpetuate our fossil-fuel addiction, enough to deny fracking’s documented risks.”

Fracking sites are all about function. There is definitely no formal consideration, and not much regard for anything else. They tend to be large, cleared portions of land roughly two acres in size, simple in form and mostly consisting of a giant gravel yard with a few storage tanks and other machinery. Hosting hundreds and even thousands of trucks for supply, the layout is based on the necessity for these vehicles to deliver water and drilling equipment. The sites are typically configured in a dense, grid-like pattern and there may easily be hundreds within a few square miles of a producing area.

While it’s obvious that this practice is cosmetically problematic, the environmental and ecological issues that accompany any destruction of native landscapes also leap to mind. I don’t believe these “fracked” landscapes have to be the way they are. As landscape architects who regularly discern genuine values in land and water, and who deal with aesthetics, the environment, and other sciences on a daily basis, this reality presents an opportunity for us to contribute potential solutions and to be heard as professionals.

What kind of ideas can we generate to make these fracking sites less of an impact on our landscapes? Can we work with engineers to improve the functionality of them through planning and design while preserving the necessary function and flexibility? Can we work with them to provide solutions for reducing the overall site footprint? Can we create a best practice strategy to mitigate the damages from the process (perhaps beginning with a simple tree-centered plan to make up for a portion of the lost trees on an older fracked site)? Is it possible to hide these sites? Or, are there landscape restoration plans that we can develop? We could even take it as far as meeting with and encouraging energy companies to engage in more considered strategies.

I believe that we can offer strong ideas for protecting, improving, and restoring these abused landscapes and I hope to do so with further research and creative design solutions. I invite others to join this discussion now.

Check out Sorvig’s entire article about his personal experience with fracking here: http://landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/2013/06/27/welcome-to-frackville/

Those unfamiliar with the Houston office’s innovative Keystone proposal can find it in the most recent IDEAS journal: http://www.swagroup.com/ideas/swa-ideas-journal

Images are courtesy of Jonathan Tauzin (top), the U.S. Geological Survey (left, middle), and USDA Farm Service Agency (right).

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3 Responses to “Fracking: Can Landscape Architects Be Part of the Solution?”

Susan Dalton Ginter

This is sure a hot topic here in Santa Barbara, California. Many people are out there with petitions to stop this process of fracking, or to at least put it on the ballot for citizens to vote on. Thanks for writing your article about it from the perspective of a landscape architect. Well done Hank!
April 29th, 2014 Reply
Pam Dalton

Hank: This is a key issue that needs to be addressed. You have stated the issue extremely well and outlined the specific concerns in a clear concise way. Kudos for inviting more conversation from others. I’m reassured that someone with your mind is addressing this issue. Keep at it! Pam
April 24th, 2014 Reply
Jeremy

Nice post, Henry. The aerial images are very telling. I think the biggest challenge to working with oil and gas company engineers to address the issue will be convincing them that there actually is an issue in the first place. Their strategy always seems to be deny, deny, deny any problems. Also, what level of repair or restoration is required by the permits these companies get to build drill sites? Are they already required to return the sites to a pre-drilling state? Is it going to turn out like the debate happening now in the Gulf, with drilling companies being sued for never filling the thousands of miles of canals they dredged? Will it be too late?
April 23rd, 2014 Reply

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Posted by Henry Dalton
in Landscape Infrastructure, Restoration
on 21 April, 2014

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A recent study by Americans for the Arts reported that each year the government provides four billion dollars to nonprofit arts organizations. In return, the arts industry generates nearly 30 billion dollars in revenue. Undoubtedly, cities are recognizing that public art is a driving force in the economy. Although it’s difficult to isolate the monetary… Read more »

Posted by Shannon Scovell and Jean-Pierre Casillas
in Arts and Culture, Community, Landscape Urbanism, Performance Planning
on 11 April, 2014

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There is one day in particular that I remember clearly from my third year as an undergrad student studying landscape architecture. The department’s career fair saw most of the fourth-year students parading around in ill-fitting suits armed with resumes and portfolios, accessories aimed to secure a future in the profession. In the short time it took me to walk up an adjacent set of stairs to my studio I felt a mixture of things. The pragmatic aspects of this transition were obvious and I recognized the formalities of the dance. But there was also something that separated this department’s fair from those taking place in other parts of the university. It was the portfolio and its role as a summary of creative abilities and exploratory processes. The students were handing their precious babies off to prospective employers, officially thrusting themselves into a purgatorial space that would ultimately be defined by acceptance and rejection.

I wondered about the strength of the content in those portfolios, and what I would need to accomplish over the course of my final year to match (and hopefully surpass) what was being circulated downstairs. Mostly, I wanted to see the parts of the fair that couldn’t be taken in from the staircase: the dialogues, and specifically whether the firm representatives were using the same terms our professors did, or some new, alien vernacular. I knew that my idealistic romp through experimental studios would soon come to an end, and I would need to find a professional home where I could start to assimilate consequence-laden realities into my design thinking. There were the standard anxieties of simply finding employment, but I worried less about that than finding a firm that still retained at least a remnant of the idealism I had adopted in school.

The work that we produce as students (and often as professionals) emanates from within, and is therefore personal. When done well, it is also evocative. The collaborative process transforms these endeavors into even fuller iterations in the context of a studio project. But it is the documentation of one’s own ideas and processes along the way that a firm needs to properly assess a potential hire. Obviously, the types and needs of hiring firms run the gamut, so tailoring one’s self-promotion is important. When I finally reconfigured my early attempts at composing a portfolio into its then final format, I attempted what I now believe was an overly comprehensive account of too much work: too many images, too much text. It was well constructed, but if someone handed it to me I probably wouldn’t have read it. So I stripped the document down to its essence, retaining some of what I had originally selected, but mostly culling from places I hadn’t considered before: digital doodling I had done when taking a break from studio assignments and cover-page imagery for writing assignments in unrelated classes, things that summed up elaborate ideas in one isolated shot on a screen (or printed page). It ended up as a booklet of singular images and minimal text, typically just titles and years. I had a strong opinion about everything I included and therefore could speak at any length and with genuine passion about my work. And that was what I placed my confidence in–minimal, evocative imagery and the ability to proficiently discuss it.

Ironically, I did not attend the Career Fair when it came around again because I had landed a job prior to graduation. I presented my portfolio when interviewed, but the dialogue was focused on graphic competency more than anything else. I took the offer, and stayed at the job for the six months immediately following graduation. In December of last year, however, I received an unexpected request to come interview with another firm. My choice to accept this second offer was facilitated by many factors, but most decidedly by the interviewing principal’s reception of my portfolio, as well as our discussion about its content.

I acknowledge that there are many more perspectives on this scholastic/professional transition. And sometimes I’m a bit hesitant when asked for advice in these circumstances because I don’t think mine is a universally applicable approach. All I know for certain is that I am now gainfully employed by a company that operates at a scale and velocity that excites me. It would appear that my instincts in editing my portfolio ultimately landed me where I belong. I am now surrounded by people who are so talented in so many ways that it confirms for me what I hoped I would find on “the other side.”

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2 Responses to “Holding onto Your Instincts in the Student-to-Professional Transition”

Siesta Key Architects

I enjoyed your story. It showed a lot of insight on your part to look ahead and see that your portfolio would be the ticket you needed to find the career you love.
April 15th, 2014 Reply
cobra

nice piece george. the only thing more real than the “real world” are your dreams and integrity. you’ve got plenty of both.
April 5th, 2014 Reply

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Posted by George Kutnar
in Arts and Culture, Community
on 4 April, 2014

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Last year the San Francisco Office was excited to offer pro-bono design and documentation services to a halfway-house nonprofit residential treatment center. The plan was to solicit material donations and have a volunteer construction day to build therapy gardens for the facility. We collaborated with the organization’s directors and staff to make a survey, conduct soil… Read more »

Unfortunately, the nonprofit didn’t own the property, something our design team was unaware of. When the landlord was shown our plans, they flatly refused any improvements. They no longer wanted the halfway-house as a tenant and had no interest in the grounds being improved for residents. Thus, a couple hundred volunteer hours abruptly culminated in a complete lack of action.

As the informal project manager for this effort, I felt both disappointed and guilty for wasting my team’s time. I should have thought to ask if the organization we were working for owned the facility. Based on the confidence the program director had about the grounds, it never occurred to me that this would be an issue. A hard lesson learned.

Reflecting on this experience, I remembered a document developed by DesignConnect, a volunteer community design organization at Cornell University. Each semester, cities and towns in Upstate New York apply for student teams to study local issues and produce vision documents. Over a number of projects, DesignConnect has gained institutional experience as to what volunteer opportunities are likely to be most productive for the communities and the student teams, and has developed questions to evaluate them. Ask yourself the following three key questions before committing to a pro-bono service so you can avoid traps like the one we encountered in our experience:

Who are you working for, and what is their interest in and capacity for the project?

The “client,” whether a nonprofit organization, community advocate, city agency, or individual, should be clearly identified before dedicating time to a project. As a design firm, many of our pro-bono efforts focus on making physical interventions in the world, although sometimes we are also educators and advocates. For those projects that require physical interventions, it’s vital to have a client who will take ownership of the project and maintain or operate it after the volunteer effort is over. Some clients will request volunteer services for projects they are not particularly passionate about or dedicated to because the services are free. A simple strategy to filter out opportunistic pro-bono clients is to request a nominal fee. In addition to passion, can your client handle their part of the project? With volunteer efforts, your commitment can sometimes extend into developing the social capital behind a program, whether you’re ready for that role or not.

Who are the decision makers for the project?

This was the key question that I should have investigated for the halfway house. Sometimes your client will say they are the only decision maker. You should push them for more information. Who has to provide approvals for the project? Is it a school district, neighborhood group? Who has jurisdiction over the land in question, and who are the owners? Once you determine the decision makers, then you can better understand the scope of your commitment. Engaging all the decision makers at the beginning of the project is important to avoid being blindsided later in the process.

Who will use the project, and why do they merit volunteer work?

As landscape architects and planners, much of our effort is already in the realm of social impact design. But there are many reasons to volunteer: a particular progressive issue that we typically don’t get to work on, a human need in an unfunded situation, an interesting design challenge. There is also strategic volunteerism, where we do pro-bono work for a client or project we are interested in developing a professional relationship with. It is important to identify why you and your team are committing to this project, and who will benefit from the work.

At SWA, our volunteer work is just as valuable as our paid work, and we want to make the most impact with our dedicated time. There are opportunities in pro-bono work for deeply fulfilling work that benefits society, and I encourage everyone to participate in SWA’s commitment to the 1% program. Asking these questions should help other teams avoid pitfalls and be more effective in their volunteer efforts.

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One Response to “Social Impact Design Practice: Key Questions to Ask Before Volunteering”

Jon's products

It’s remarkable to pay a visit this site and reading the views of all
friends concerning this piece of writing, while I am also keen of getting familiarity.
August 5th, 2014 Reply

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Posted by Chris Hardy
in Social Impact
on 5 March, 2014

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SWA leads an option studio at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Fall Semester 2013 “Essayons!” meaning “Let us try” in French, was the motto first used by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1775. The motto has since evolved to “Building Strong,” reflecting its mission to “strengthen the nation’s security,… Read more »

SWA leads an option studio at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Fall Semester 2013

“Essayons!” meaning “Let us try” in French, was the motto first used by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1775. The motto has since evolved to “Building Strong,” reflecting its mission to “strengthen the nation’s security, energize the economy, and reduce risks from disasters.” The notion of “Building Soft” presents a new paradigm, arguing that the parameters presented by the Corps could be achieved through a more integrated approach, one which takes into consideration the social, economic, and ecological priorities playing an equal part in the conception and reconstruction of our infrastructural systems.

“Building Soft” was the focus of an immersive Harvard Design Studio led by SWA principals Ying-Yu Hung and Gerdo Aquino. Students were challenged to envision the Los Angeles River playing a pivotal role in transforming the City of Los Angeles, where ecological systems are synchronous with development, infrastructure, and popular culture. As an extension of their recently published book, Landscape Infrastructure: case studies by SWA, Hung and Aquino positioned the studio as an ongoing investigation into the potential of existing and new infrastructure as polyfunctional systems supported by ecological, social, and cultural phenomena. Fourteen disparate sites inextricably linked to the L.A. River infrastructures—flood control channels, power lines, freeways, and rails—were identified by the City of Los Angeles as areas ripe for exploration and research. Through a series of fieldtrips, workshops, and lectures in Los Angeles, students sought opportunities to redefine new open-space typologies, including river-specific recreation venues, habitats for avian and aquatic species, air pollution filtration machines, development scenarios, and infrastructure as spectacle.

Local public agencies and nonprofit groups were also invited to participate in the studio, providing the students with substantial background data and statistics, community input, and historical points of view. In addition, the preferred “Alternative 20,” outlined in the recent Army Corps’ “Los Angeles River Ecosystem Restoration Integrated Feasibility Report,” suggested projects to be undertaken, which provided the students with further proof that the path towards transforming the LA River is close at hand. Estimated to cost in excess of $800 million, “Alternative 20” will provide the City of Los Angeles with the most comprehensive approach toward habitat restoration and will fulfill the city’s need for open space.

To further deepen the students understanding of the river’s potential, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority provided the students with lectures and a rare opportunity to kayak the river and experience its more natural section (soft bottom), known as the Glendale Narrows.

As a repository of creative ideas, the studio environment calls for speculation, risk taking, and challenge against conventional thinking. As a result, the river’s potential is revealed through the lens of those who are unencumbered and devoid of pre-conceptions. Considering that none of the 14 students was from the L.A. area, the range of design proposals was incredibly thoughtful and visionary. Some of the ideas proposed included a migrating bird habitat and a gigantic smog vacuum looming over one of the major highway interchanges—the variety and depth of their explorations complemented the scale and the complexity of the issues at hand for a city of nearly nine million people spanning 500 square miles. The final week culminated with a day-long review of the student work, followed by a mini-symposium where invited guests, faculty, and students shared their collective thoughts on design, ecology, and the latent optimism that surrounds the future of the river and the diverse communities it will undoubtedly serve.

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Posted by GerdoAquino and Ying-YuHung
in Landscape Infrastructure, News
on 31 January, 2014

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An Evolving Construct: Toward Representative Drawing Methods

One Response to “An Evolving Construct: Toward Representative Drawing Methods”

nunger8

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Fracking: Can Landscape Architects Be Part of the Solution?

3 Responses to “Fracking: Can Landscape Architects Be Part of the Solution?”

Susan Dalton Ginter

Pam Dalton

Jeremy

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Art For Public Spaces: Why Do Cities Need Public Art?

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Holding onto Your Instincts in the Student-to-Professional Transition

2 Responses to “Holding onto Your Instincts in the Student-to-Professional Transition”

Siesta Key Architects

cobra

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Building Soft: A new (landscape) infrastructure for Los Angeles

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