In the past five to ten years, the increased use of computational/parametric tools within the design professions has been at the forefront of conversations among academics and professionals. Although most commonly used in architecture for the design and fabrication of complex forms, these tools, in combination with new technologies, have the potential to fundamentally transform the way landscape architects develop projects from start to finish.
Computational design tools can generally be applied to professional practice in three broad categories: Design/Fabrication; Simulation; and Mapping/Environmental Modeling.
The first is the most typical application, in which digital tools are used to generate designs for various structures and components in the landscape. These are then rationalized to generate construction and/or shop drawings to facilitate fabrication (i.e., the paneling and unrolling of a curved steel planter wall). The last two categories, however, hold the most potential for landscape architects. Multiple parametric software and plug-ins allow for rapid, precise testing of various site conditions and constraints such as water flow/flood events—issues that are increasingly important to have an accurate understanding of early in the design development process. Perhaps most interesting is the emergence of 3-D terrestrial scanning as an informative tool for mapping and modeling existing conditions.
At the start of every new project, landscape architects rely on a set of base files to introduce us to the site and to kickstart the analysis/design process. The quality, accuracy, and legibility of these base files varies drastically by project type and location and can often be a serious headache to deal with. Even when an accurate survey is provided, it is a 2-D file whose usefulness is limited when it comes to visualizing design options. For instance, a competition may not have an up-to-date survey available to download and we are forced to make an educated guess regarding site characteristics such as topography and hydrology.
This was the case for a recent competition in China that the LA office worked on. Although we received a number of base files, none had any topographic data, and information in one file would conflict with what was meant to be the same information in another. In our quest for accurate site data, we took this as an opportunity to explore the use of publicly available information from other sources. Using the software Grasshopper (a graphical algorithm editor for Rhino 3-D modeling) as an intermediary, we obtained information on roads, highways, water bodies, rail lines, and building footprints from OpenStreetMap. We were also able to generate an accurate 3-D model of the regional terrain using material from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), operated by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CalTech. SRTM employs shuttle radar technology to create high-resolution digital elevation models for regions around the world.
The data proved to be very useful to our design process as we were able to identify constraints and opportunities more quickly and accurately. As Christophe Girot, the Chair of Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich, alluded to in a recent lecture at Harvard’s GSD, the future “survey” for large-scale landscape projects may be in three dimensions rather than two. This is an exciting time for the advancement of our understanding of the complexity of landscapes!
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