Representing Landscapes

Analogue

Nadia Amoroso

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138485563
• eBook ISBN: 9781351048880
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

The fourth book in Nadia Amoroso's Representing Landscapes series, this text focuses on traditional methods of visual representation in landscape architectural education. Building on from the previous titles in the series, which look at digital and hybrid techniques, Representing Landscapes: Analogue is a return to the basic foundations of landscape architecture's original medium of visual communication.

Each of the 20 chapters includes contributions from leading professors teaching studio and visual communication courses from landscape architecture programs across the globe, showcasing the best student examples of analog techniques. It demonstrates the process from graphics as a form of research, design development, and analysis, to the final presentation through drawings, models and descriptive captions of the methods, styles and techniques used. It features critical and descriptive essays from expert professors and lecturers in the field, who emphasise the importance of the traditional medium as an intrinsic part of the research, design and presentation process.

Over 220 full colour images explore the range of visual approaches students and practitioners of landscape architecture can implement in their designs. With worked examples in the chapters and downloadable images suitable for class use, this is an essential book for visual communication and design studios.

1 Introduction

Why use the analogue in today’s landscape architectural education?

Nadia Amoroso

In direct response to students’ sometimes overwhelming demands to see representations of various landscapes types and ideas drawn by students from other schools, the Representing Landscapes book series has grown to become an essential part of a landscape architectural student’s resources. Exchanges with a number of my students throughout years of teaching studio and visual communications have led me to compile the global drawings gathered into these books. The students were seeking access to a range of compelling visual examples created by other students, beyond the drawings created by professionals. The aim of this book series was therefore to establish valuable resources for communicating landscapes ideas using the techniques and methods of other landscape architecture students around the globe. This latest book in the Representing Landscape series concludes with the most basic of all drawing methods, the analogue. In this digital era, there seems to be a decline in the use of hand graphics by students in landscape architecture. This book, similar to the other volumes in the series, reflects on the importance of analogue methods and techniques in landscape architecture, by celebrating the works of students from various landscape architectural programs. Over twenty-five landscape architecture professors also provided short critical and/or narrative essays that accompany their students’ drawings. These professors had the opportunity to respond to a general question as part of their short essay: What is the value and role of analogue graphics/modeling in landscape architectural education?

A common trend that you will notice throughout the following chapters is an emphasis on the value of analogue drawings in landscape architecture education. The physical act of holding a pen and touching and marking the paper provides the designer with a direct connection between thinking and crafting. It is an essential part of learning design, and also serves as the foundation for visual communication in the profession. Throughout my career, I have championed digital design and digital communication, but not without the foundational techniques of traditional hand sketching and analogue modeling. To draw and model by hand are critical components of the design process. In landscape architecture, drawing is the means by which we effectively communicate our ideas and visions. It is not only used as a presentation device but as a means to analyze and explore the landscape. In the past fifteen to twenty years, there has been a strong shift towards the use of digital software as a tool for drawing, designing and investigating landscapes, especially in landscape architecture education. The need to learn how to use these software programs and their appropriate applications in landscape architectural design and presentation is critical. However, analogue skills and their appropriate application in the landscape architecture design process and communication are critical to learn as well. Hand graphics is now becoming a lost art in the profession. It is unfortunate that these traditional, more manual methods are losing currency, as analogue methods arguably allow the students to become more engaged with the medium and design. The actual crafting of the model or the physical touch of pen on paper triggers a connection between the mind and the hand.

Peter Trowbridge, a respected educator in landscape architecture and former director of Cornell University’s Landscape Architecture program, states that,

analogue methods of drawing and representation are so important since they engage in a unique hand-eye coordination. It requires the use of a range of human senses, resulting in a more visceral form of seeing and/or remembering, creating more emotive and complex drawings.¹

Many of my colleagues (both junior and senior) can agree that students within their foundation years of study or, similarly, beginner designers, tend to jump too quickly into designing with digital tools. This can be

a problem among students who do not yet have the experience (or patience) to work through and sort alternatives. What suffers in moving too quickly to a design resolution is the intellectual gestation and the iterations required in design—in short, the non-linear and messy process of design.²

Professor Perkins, of the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Guelph, states that,

for thirty-five or so years, digital tools have relentlessly been usurping digit skills (the craft of hand) in design conception and communication. This fundamental and profound shift in what we do and how we do it comes with consequences. It could be argued that digital tools, for all of their benefits take a designer to the end too quickly and do not encourage or force the intellectual gestation and the iterations required to create and communicate the nuance of the non-linear and messy process called design.³

Drawing has been a critical component in visually communicating ideas of built form for hundreds or even thousands of years. The perspective drawing, which is one of the most common drawings used in landscape architecture, dates back to the Renaissance period, and was made known by that famous Florentine architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, and his experimentation with the use of perspective to accurately depict real space. This is seen in Brunelleschi’s drawing of the Church of Santo Spirito in Florence (1434–82), which was undertaken in order to convince his client of the eventual look of the built project. The oldest known perspective from the early Renaissance, done in 1317, is by Giotto and can be found in the Bardi Chapel of Santa Croce in Florence.⁴ The Renaissance helped establish this new way of communicating depth and space as we see it. Today, we tend to use the perspective drawing to convince clients of how a landscape will look in the end and to market designs.

Even as far back as the Renaissance, artists and architects practiced patience as they sought to visualize their ideas or the lay of a particular landscape. Practicing and having patience are highly important when drawing. To jump-start a student’s hand graphics ability, especially among first-year students, one useful exercise involves photographing landscapes with strong horizon lines and defined vertical elements. Some examples can include a forest and field situation, open meadows with strongly defined hedgerows (fencerows), or a pathway aligned with an allée of trees. The students are asked to enlarge the image to approximately 11” × 17”, then secure the photocopied enlarged image onto a light table or window. Subsequently, the student overlays a sheet of good quality, slightly textured bond paper. Using charcoal or graphite (HB or 2B), the student begins to trace the main contours or framework structure of the image; this should be about 20% to 30% of the drafted line-work. Lastly, the student removes the sheet of paper and begins to add more line-work, detail, tone, shade and shadow, using HB–6B graphite pencil or pen and ink.

The initial 20% to 30% of the line-work trace (or guide) helps to jump-start the student’s drawing and, as such, helps to boost the student’s confidence to complete the drawing. This technique helps with the building of graphic skills. See Figures 1.1 to 1.5 for sample drawings created by first-year students with little or no drawing experience. This kind of exercise not only helps build the student’s confidence in drawing, but it also encourages them to see something new in the photograph, through the hand-drawing process. Figure 1.6 depicts fencerows in visual studies and typology through section-elevation in hand graphics, distilled through digital tracing and layering. Drawing was one of the main means used by this student to conduct in-depth visual research and to develop discoveries about fencerow typologies for the southern Ontario region, as part of a master’s research project.

In the first-year studios, we not only encourage hand graphics, as 3D modeling is also critical and not merely a presentational tool, but a quick and dirty way to sketch models in order to make progress with designs. Physical final presentational models, when done well, tend to produce a more engaging dialogue between the reviewer and the student during final crits. Reviewers tend to pick up and analyze physical models, leading to a more in-depth discussion of the design. With regards to model building, we discourage the “train model” look, and encourage a limited palette of materials that work well together. The focus is more on the spatial qualities rather than the details. Some materials include millboard, balsa wood, screws, nails, foam core board, wax, copper or other metal wire (top unraveled to form tree canopies), sand paper (for textured ground cover), toothpicks or skewers. Simple, clean craftsmanship and proper use of scale are the key factors in communicating one’s ideas. Figures 1.7 and 1.8 showcase physical models completed in the foundation studios, as part of a courtyard artist’s design, using limited materials and solid craftsmanship techniques. As part of their analogue experimentation, prior to crafting models for designs, students explore solids and voids, and forms via plaster models. The act of thinking about a form, and then its inverse or negative space, in order to build a mold for the final outcome, can be a challenge. These plaster maquettes (Figure 1.9) are a valuable and inexpensive way to engage in three-dimensional modelling techniques and spatial exploration.

Hand graphics should not become a lost skill, but rather this skill should be enhanced and embraced as the platform medium used to explore and communicate, before jumping into the use of digital techniques. The problem in many foundation courses arises when students begin to design right away using digital software. This process can hinder the development of other foundational skills, such as learni...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword By James Richards, Fasla
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Why Use the Analogue in Today’s Landscape Architectural Education?
• 2 Drawing on the Power of the Original
• 3 Marking Time
• 4 The Archaeology of the Drawing and How to Slow Ideas Down in a Design Conversation
• 5 Composing Cartographies of Complexity
• 6 Urban Sketching: The Practice of Sketching and Communicating
• 7 The Hand Graphics Experience
• 8 Practice and Permission to Take Shortcuts
• 9 Inside Out: Illustrating Site Experience Through Drawing
• 10 Intent and Craft: Making Refined Drawings
• 11 Notational Topographies and Experiential Literacies Through Constructive Drawings
• 12 Intermediate-Level Sketching in Architecture and Landscape Architecture
• 13 Fundamentals for Hand Developed (Re)Fined Drawings
• 14 Understanding Landscape and Drawing Ideas
• 15 Analogue Fields
• 16 Land Types and Models’ Forms: The Art of Represented Models in Middle-Scale Landscape Architecture
• 17 Modeling Ecologies: Raw Materials and Conceptual Optics
• 18 A Kiss Over a Tweet: Operating a Snow Academy to Scale in a Cool Climate
• 19 Modeling Ideas: Landscapes as Representational Systems
• 20 Making Parts and Pieces
• Afterwords: Professional Practice Using the Analogue
• Bibliography
• Index