Representing Landscapes

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 twenty 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 analogue 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 emphasize the importance of the tradi-
tional 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 suitable
for class use, this is an essential book for visual communication and design studios.

Nadia Amoroso is a faculty member at the University of Guelph, Department of Landscape,

School of Environmental Design and Rural Development. She was the Lawrence Halprin Fellow
at Cornell University and the Garvan Chair Visiting Professor at the University of Arkansas. She
holds a PhD from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, London, and degrees in Landscape
Architecture and Urban Design from the University of Toronto. She specializes in visual commu-
nication in landscape architecture, digital design, data visualization and creative mapping. She also
operates an illustration studio, under her name, focusing on landscape architectural visual com-
munication. She has written a number of articles and books on topics relating to creative mapping,
visual representation, and digital design.
Representing Landscapes
Analogue

Edited by Nadia Amoroso

First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
 2019 selection and editorial matter, Nadia Amoroso; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Nadia Amoroso 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
Names: Amoroso, Nadia, author.
Title: Representing landscapes : analogue / Nadia Amoroso.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018039383| ISBN 9781138485563 (hbk) | ISBN
9781138485570 (pbk) | ISBN 9781351048903 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Landscape architectural drawing.
Classification: LCC SB472.47 .A46 2019 | DDC 712—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018039383

ISBN: 978-1-138-48556-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-48557-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-04890-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Garamond
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents

Notes on contributors vii

Foreword by James Richards, FASLA xii
Acknowledgements xvi

  1 Introduction: Why use the analogue in today’s landscape architectural education? 1

Nadia Amoroso
  2 Drawing on the power of the original 15
Roberto Rovira
  3 Marking time 24
Fiona Harrisson and Marian Macken
  4 The archaeology of the drawing and how to slow ideas down in a design conversation 28
Peter Lundsgaard Hansen
  5 Composing cartographies of complexity 32
Ed Wall
  6 Urban sketching: the practice of sketching and communicating 43
Richard Alomar
  7 The hand graphics experience 50
Ashley Steffens
  8 Practice and permission to take shortcuts 57
Kelly Cederberg
  9 Inside out: illustrating site experience through drawing 63
Maria Debije Counts
10 Intent and craft: making refined drawings 73
Katie Kingery-Page and Alpa Nawre
11 Notational topographies and experiential literacies through constructive drawings 85
Samantha Solano and Alberto de Salvatierra
12 Intermediate-level sketching in architecture and landscape architecture 93
Russell W. Reid
13 Fundamentals for hand developed (re)fined drawings 100
Miran Jung Day
14 Understanding landscape and drawing ideas 110
Elizabeth Mossop
15 Analogue fields 117
Adrian Hawker, Elinor Scarth and Tiago Torres-Campos
vi Contents

16 Land types and models’ forms: the art of represented models in middle-scale
landscape architecture 129
Chen Jieping
17 Modeling ecologies: raw materials and conceptual optics 140
Simon M. Bussiere
18 A kiss over a tweet: operating a snow academy to scale in a cool climate 152
Dietmar Straub
19 Modeling ideas: landscapes as representational systems 162
Zaneta Hong
20 Making parts and pieces 171
Paul Russell

Afterwords: professional practice using the analogue 181

21 A new way to produce landscapes: portal into intuition as method: DoodleTech 183
Allison M. Dailey, Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM)
22 How a sketchbook shapes a practice: OLIN 195
Rebecca Popowsky, OLIN
23 Strokes of inspiration: the hallmark of evocative design – EDSA hand graphics 205
Kona Gray, EDSA Inc
24 The analogue version 214
Shannon Nichol, David Malda and Keith McPeters, Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN)

Bibliography 227
Index 229
Contributors

Richard Alomar is a landscape architect, associate professor of landscape architecture at Rutgers University
and co-founder of New York Urban Sketchers. Alomar uses sketching as an exploratory tool to observe
the environment, record impressions and develop ideas on space, place and design. His research focus is
on the connections between sketching, walking and cognition of place. He holds a BS in agronomy from
the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and an MLA from Louisiana State University.

Simon M. Bussiere is an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Hawai’i
at Mānoa. Bussiere’s studios and seminars focus on exploring ecological patterns and processes as the
key drivers of urban form. He currently teaches courses in urban ecological design and experimental
modes of design representation.

Kelly Cederberg, MLA, is an assistant professor in the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning
at the University of Arizona. She holds an MLA (Master of Landscape Architecture) and BFA in stu-
dio art from the University of Arizona as well as a BA in Communication from Central College.
She currently teaches Design Studio 3, Landscape Analysis and the interdisciplinary design studio for
the graduate program in Landscape Architecture in addition to Intro to Design Thinking (online) for the
Sustainable Built Environments undergraduate program.

Maria Debije Counts is an assistant professor of Landscape Architecture at Clemson University

and previously an assistant professor of Landscape Architecture Urbanism at the Illinois Institute of
Technology, College of Architecture in Chicago, Illinois. She also directs urban landscape research at
Counts Studio. She is currently working on a grant from the Van Alen Institute that explores repre-
sentation techniques in visualizing sensorial aspects of public parks to examine their potential as design
elements for improving well-being for people in cities.

Allison M. Dailey is the co-founder of Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM). She is trained in land-
scape architecture, architecture, and craft art, with over a decade of experience in practice. BAM is
a multidisciplinary design office based in Beijing and New York. Allison co-founded BAM with two
former classmates in the undergraduate architecture department at Cornell University.

Miran Jung Day is an assistant professor of Landscape Architecture at the College of Architecture and
Environmental Design, at Cal Poly. She specializes in design communication, natural system analysis,
program development and GIS.

As a Principal with over twenty-five years of experience, Kona Gray has been involved in many plan-
ning, landscape architectural and urban design projects, ranging from large-scale master planning to
detail site design with emphasis on community planning, hospitality, urban waterfronts, parks, health-
care and campus planning since he joined EDSA in 1997.

Peter Lundsgaard Hansen, Landscape Architect and Educator, Landscape Architecture and Planning,
University of Copenhagen, 2010–present. He teaches several Design Studios, and Theory and Method
courses, and has been responsible for 4th year design studio at the MSc landscape architectural pro-
gram since 2007 and supervisor on bachelor and master degree courses.
viii Contributors

Fiona Harrisson teaches in Landscape Architecture at RMIT University in Melbourne, and has a
background in horticulture, landscape architecture and urban culture. Her teaching and research
explores modes of practice through the one-to-one scale. She is undertaking a practice-based PhD at
RMIT, in which the making of a private garden is an intimate durational practice. Fiona was recently
guest editor for a special issue of Landscape Review: “The Garden as Laboratory.” She also practices as
a design consultant on public projects and private gardens.

Adrian Hawker is a lecturer in architecture at ESALA, the University of Edinburgh, where he is

director of the Master of Architecture programme. With the artist Victoria Clare Bernie, he has been
running studios under the theme of ‘Island Territories’ which have developed urban landscape propos-
als for the cities of Valletta, Klaksvik, Venice, Nicosia and Havana. Adrian is co-director of Metis, an
atelier for art, architecture and urbanism which he founded with Mark Dorrian with the aim of con-
necting teaching, research and practice. Their work focuses on the city and the complex ways in which
it is imagined, inhabited and representationally encoded.

Zaneta Hong is an Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia,

where she teaches courses in materials ecologies and digital practices. She received her MLA from the
Harvard Graduate School of Design and BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of
Design. Zaneta is a Partner and Design Principal of GA Collaborative, a design-oriented non-profit
organization focused on the strategic implementation of culturally specific architecture and landscape;
and Beta-field | Meta-field, a speculative and applied research lab focused on material and procedural
design processes and their implications on culture, technology and the built environment.

Chen Jieping is an associate professor of Architecture School, Southeast University, China. Jieping
was also a visiting scholar at MIT in 2015. Jieping specializes in the design methods and theories of
landscape architecture.

Katie Kingery-Page is associate professor of landscape architecture at Kansas State University and a
licensed landscape architect. Her training is in sculpture and drawing, art theory, ecology, and landscape
architecture. She has worked as a seamstress, photographic printer and landscape laborer—experiences
that give her a strong appreciation for craft. Kingery-Page’s scholarly work explores the value of arts and
humanities knowledge for the practice of landscape architecture. This inquiry is tested through com-
munity-based design, often during service-learning projects with her students. Kingery-Page is a Civic
Engagement Fellow at K-State and recipient of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture
Award for Excellence in Service Learning. She wishes to acknowledge the lasting influence of her draw-
ing mentor, Lorn Clement.

Marian Macken teaches in design and media in the School of Architecture and Planning at the
University of Auckland. She trained in architecture, landscape architecture and visual art, receiving a
PhD, by thesis and creative work, from the University of Sydney. Marian’s research examines histories
and theories of spatial representation; temporal aspects of architecture; and the book form as spatial
practice. Her work has been acquired by various international public collections of artists’ books,
including collections at Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, UK, and Urawa Art Museum,
Japan.

Keith McPeters, RA, a Principal at GGN, merges architecture and landscape architecture with his
interests in art, music and history. In projects such as San Francisco’s India Basin Shoreline Park,
Keith emphasizes connections between a site’s natural and cultural history, produces environmentally
sustainable landscapes, and addresses infrastructure issues within an urban context.
Contributors ix

David Malda, ASLA, LEED AP, is a Principal and key design leader at GGN. His work shows a strong
interest in redefining public spaces to more clearly connect into their urban context as vital spaces for
living, working, and relaxing. In projects such as San Antonio’s Civic Park at Hemisfair, the evolving
potential of the modern American city engages his thinking and is the focus of his design work.

Elizabeth Mossop is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Dean of Design Architecture and
Building at the University of Technology in Sydney and has held leadership positions at Harvard GSD,
the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture at LSU and UNSW. She is a founding principal of
Spackman Mossop + Michaels landscape architects, based in Sydney and New Orleans. Her research
and practice is concerned with landscape’s role in urban revitalization and resilient communities and
cities in the face of climate change.

Alpa Nawre is assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at University of

Florida, and partner at her design practice, Alpa Nawre Design. She is a recipient of the US Council
of Educators in Landscape Architecture Award for Excellence in Design Studio Teaching, the Harvard
Dumbarton Oaks Mellon Fellowship in Urban Landscape Studies, and Landscape Architecture
Foundation’s Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership. She holds a Master’s degree in Urban Design
from Harvard Graduate School of Design, a Master’s in Landscape Architecture from Louisiana State
University, and a Bachelor in Architecture from NIT, Raipur, India.

Shannon Nichol, FASLA, PLA, LEED AP, is a Founding Principal of GGN. Her designs, includ-
ing Millennium Park’s Lurie Garden, Boston’s North End Parks, and San Francisco’s India Basin
Shoreline Park are widely recognized for being deeply embedded in their neighborhoods and natu-
ral contexts. Shannon’s work incorporates complex functions into simple frameworks and refined
landforms.

OLIN creates distinguished landscapes and urban designs worldwide. Our work is predicated upon
social engagement, craft, detail, materiality and timelessness, and our appreciation of the urban envi-
ronment is paramount. We approach each project individually, basing design decisions upon the
underlying expressive power of a particular site in conjunction with specific programmatic require-
ments. In all of our work, we carefully assess the distinguishing spatial characteristics of a site, its con-
nections to surrounding areas, local traditions and history, the natural environment, and social and
cultural conditions.

OLIN has offices in both Philadelphia and Los Angeles and works throughout North America, Europe
and Asia. Our portfolio stretches across myriad scales and typologies, including celebrated places such
as Bryant Park in New York City, the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles, and the grounds of the
Washington Monument in Washington, DC. In each instance, our multidisciplinary design staff cre-
ate environmentally advanced technical projects, promoting greater social engagement and ecology for
every project.

Rebecca Popowsky is a Research Associate at OLIN. Since joining the Studio in 2009, she has
contributed to a wide-range of design, planning, and construction projects at OLIN. Her portfolio
includes Canal Park in Washington, DC, Dilworth Park in Philadelphia, and collaboration with the
Army Corps of Engineers to restore the FEMA floodplain on the Potomac Park Levee on the National
Mall. Currently, Rebecca leads OLIN’s external research initiatives, including work with academic
and scientific institutions and allied professionals. In addition to practice, Rebecca teaches design
studios, representation and field ecology courses at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is the
coordinator of the MLA program’s first semester. Rebecca earned dual master’s degrees in Architecture
x Contributors

and Landscape Architecture from PennDesign and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and Urban
Studies from Yale University.

Russell W. Reid, Academic AIA, ASAI, AIGA, is an Associate Professor of the Practice in the College
of Architecture at Texas A&M University. Prof. Reid teaches in the areas of Design and Graphics at
both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban
Planning, Digital Illustration and New Media in Architecture, and Analogue and Digital Media in
Drawing and Painting in the Department of Visualization Sciences. Prof. Reid’s academic background
is in the area of Architecture where he studied in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe.
Reid worked in Architectural Practice for five years intermixed with Environmental Graphic Design
and Public Art for twenty-three years before returning to academe in 2008.

Jim Richards is an artist, urban designer, landscape architect, author and educator whose work
explores great places and place-making around the globe. He is co-founder of Townscape Inc., an
award-winning urban design consultancy firm. He is often a keynote speaker for conferences and
symposia, and he travels globally to teach design drawing and urban sketching workshops for both
students and professionals. Jim is also a blog correspondent and serves on the international Advisory
Board for Urban Sketchers.

Principal of Studio Roberto Rovira, ASLA, Associate Professor, and former chair of Landscape Architecture
+ Environmental and Urban Design at Florida International University. As a landscape architect with a
design, engineering and fine arts background, his teaching, research and creative work explore the potential
of landscape architecture in public space and the intersection of technology and the natural world. Roberto
has been recognized nationally and internationally for his work as an educator and professional. Most
recently, the Architectural League recognized him as one of eight 2015 Emerging Voices. In 2017, he was
identified by Architect’s Newspaper as 1 of the 5 most exciting design firms in Miami.

Paul Russell is the Director of Landscape Architecture Graduate Programs and Associate Professor at
Clemson University. He has a MLA degree from Louisiana State University. He specializes in com-
munity design, landscape performance and materials investigation.

Alberto de Salvatierra is a multilingual and bicultural polymath, architectural designer and landscape
urbanist. Prior to teaching at the UNLV School of Architecture as Visiting Professor, he taught eco-
logical design at Cornell University, architecture foundations at the Boston Architectural College, and
landscape architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Elinor Scarth is a landscape architect and lecturer at ESALA, the University of Edinburgh, where she
is the program director of the MLA in Landscape architecture. Based in Paris since 2004 Elinor has
been involved in a wide reaching portfolio of landscape design projects. Upon returning to Scotland
in 2015 Elinor established the landscape architecture design collective INLANDSIS in collaboration
with Mar Armengol and Etienne Haller. Conscientious of the processes that form and transform
landscapes, Elinor aspires to develop devices that allow us to observe, understand and question the
landscapes we inhabit; the invitation to physical exploration is fundamental to her work.

Samantha Solano is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Nevada, Las
Vegas (UNLV) School of Architecture and a member of the International Landscape Collaborative
(ILC). Her representation research focuses on advanced analogue and digital media through carto-
graphic explorations and immersive technologies. She studied landscape architecture at both UNLV
and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
Contributors xi

Ashley Steffens is an Associate Professor in the College of Environment and Design at the University
of Georgia. She is the Technology Editor for Landscape Architect and Specifier News, co-author of a
book, Computer Graphics for Landscape Architects, an Introduction. Ashley serves as the Secretary and
Vice President of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) and co-chair of the
Design Education and Pedagogy track for the CELA conferences.

Dietmar Straub is a landscape architect and Stadtplaner and co-founder of Straub Thurmayr Landscape
Architects. He received his Dipl. Ing. Univ. degree from the Technical University of Munich. Dietmar
is an associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Manitoba.

Tiago Torres-Campos is a Portuguese landscape architect and lecturer at ESALA, the University of
Edinburgh. He is the programme director of the MA in Landscape Architecture. Through his PhD
focusing on geopolitical representations of Manhattan, he investigates possibilities of contemporary
territories and landscapes to exist in the face of the Anthropocene. In June 2017, he co-organized the
international symposium Postcards from the Anthropocene and a subsequent book will be published
in 2019. He is the founder of CNTXT Studio, a research-by-design platform focusing on the study of
landscape and its intersections with architecture, art, design and digital media.

Ed Wall is Academic Leader Landscape at University of Greenwich and Visiting Professor at Politecnico
diMilano (DiAP). He is the director of Project Studio and editor of Testing-Ground Journal. Ed has
written widely, including: a co-authored book with Tim Waterman, Basics Landscape Architecture:
Urban Design (2009); book chapters, Infrastructural form, interstitial spaces and informal acts, in
Infrastructural Urbanism: Addressing the In-Between (2011), Working the realities of landscape in
Educating Architects (2014) and Landscapes of variance: working the gap between design and nature,
in Smart Infrastructure Design: Bridging the Gap Between Nature and Design (2015).
Foreword

I am delighted to learn of Nadia Amoroso’s latest contribution to the canon of important books in
our field that explores the world of analogue representation in landscape architecture. While Amoroso
has showcased the state of the art for digital and hybrid in her previous books in this Representing
Landscapes series, I have spent the same period crisscrossing the globe at the invitation of university
design programs sharing an evolving understanding of the roles of traditional drawing methods in a
digital world. I have had the pleasure of talking and sometimes collaborating with students, academics
and seasoned practitioners from a range of creative disciplines from film and the fine arts to product
design and science and back to architecture. During this time, my focus has been on drawing (hand-
drawing that is), as that has been central to my creative work throughout my career.
This is what I have learned—that to understand place, envision new solutions, and communicate
a thinking process to others, the ability to hand draw is an invaluable and powerful tool, especially in
the early stages of the creative process. In my view, drawing in these early thinking stages should be
thought of less as representation, and more as discovery. Discovery is what we are searching for—a
process of building towards understanding, arriving at the essence of a need, and working through it
to an elegant solution.
Seen in this light, drawing’s purpose is not simply to represent what is known, but through the
interaction of eye, hand and mind, to reach greater understanding and clarity, and to elicit insights into
the unknown. To see drawing as a part of a process of discovery is to understand its value.
Drawing helps us discover place. Freehand, on-location sketching turns up the intensity of travel
and the exploration of fascinating sites. Through drawing, we see places more keenly, and experience them
more deeply. We internalize their lessons. Committing overall forms, physical relationships, proportions,
materials and details into a sketchbook sears them into the memory in a way that a quick photograph
cannot. This kind of drawing has an unmatched role in the development of designers’ observational skills,
experiential knowledge and the collecting of vital mental imagery that, over time, becomes the raw mate-
rial of the designer’s imagination. It is the input that keeps our creativity well filled.
Drawing helps us discover ideas. As I often point out to students and young designers, deeply
observing and capturing “what is” through location sketching becomes a springboard for “what can
be.” In the studio or in moments of quiet, the simple, physical act of using the hands to pull a pencil
across paper or to shape a form with cardboard or clay, can kick start creative thinking, opening a door
to ideas, patterns and new relationships that might otherwise remain just below the surface of our
active thinking. When we get into “the flow,” we can find ourselves working over an idea in an itera-
tive process, drawing one line, then another over it, then another, layer after layer, until the shape or
relationship we are searching for appears. We have physically coaxed it into being. We know it is right
because it has an organic fitness to it. As with solving a mathematical problem, there is a harmony that
we can sense, and a corresponding feeling of exuberance in this moment. We continue to refine, and
the resulting images or objects become both a record of the thinking process and an invaluable aid for
soliciting feedback from others, resulting in further refinements. As we recognize from the sketches
of creative minds from Leonardo da Vinci to Louis Kahn to Lawrence Halprin, it is the process of
discovery made visible.
Drawing helps us discover something of ourselves. It fosters a different way of seeing and think-
ing about the world around us, adding richness to our everyday experience. It is an added dimension
in our internal thought processes, engaging the right side of the brain through a visual and tactile
Foreword xiii

experience to more fully access our creative capacity. It is a way to reintegrate work and play, awaken-
ing a native fascination with line, form, light and shade, and color, and recalling the childlike sense of
wonder that is the foundational mindset of creative work.
Figures 0.1 to 0.4 showcase a few of my sketches along my sketching journey at various places
throughout the world. Sketching has been an incredible means to discover and record my journey. It is
my hope that this book will encourage more interest and engagement in pursuing analogue methods as
a rich part of the reader’s creative process, and provide inspiration for those who are only now embark-
ing on their creative journey. There are discoveries to be made. Pick up a sketchbook, tablet or some
cardboard. Let’s go draw and create.
James Richards, FASLA
xiv Foreword

0.1
Morning in Sarasota. By Jim Richards, landscape architect.

0.2
Rua Augusta, Lsbon. By Jim Richards, landscape architect.
Foreword xv

0.3
Rift Valley, Kenya. By Jim Richards, landscape architect.

0.4
Townscape sketched from imagination. By Jim Richards, landscape architect.
Acknowledgements

Representing Landscapes is book series and online media that covers the important topic of visual
communication landscape architecture education. Each book is a careful curation of students’ works
from international landscape architecture programs. The diagrams and images are supplemented with
critical and narrative essays on the topics of visual representation in the profession—contributed by
studio professors or award winning practitioners—creating a valuable resource of techniques and
methods of communicating concepts for landscape architecture students.
The Representing Landscapes book series has been a rewarding experience that sparked an idea
over ten years ago during the beginning of my career in academia. It stemmed from my first group of
students, and their demands on searching for “ways” and “styles” to depict certain landscape types and
ideas. The series has been such a rewarding experience. I am pleased to expand this trilogy to a fourth
publication on the important topic of analogue visual communication. It seems that we have become
so immersed in digital representation, not only as the final product but as the art of the process, that
we may have left the looseness and freedom of hand-sketching behind. This publication celebrates the
analogue with contributions from over twenty-five contributors across the globe.
This book would not be possible without the contributions from my fellow colleagues on ana-
logue representation. I would like to acknowledge all the professors from international universities
who have made contributions to this publication. I would like to thank them for their time and
dedication in composing their essays and gathering the students’ drawings, to help make this pub-
lication a reality. I would like to express my gratitude to: Roberto Rovira, Fiona Harrisson, Marian
Macken, Peter Lundsgaard Hansen, Ed Wall, Richard Alomar, Ashley Steffens, Kelly Cederberg, Maria
Debije Counts, Katie Kingery-Page, Alpa Nawre, Samantha Solano, Alberto de Salvatierra, Russell
W. Reid, Miran Jung Day, Elizabeth Mossop, Adrian Hawker, Elinor Scarth, Tiago Torres-Campos,
Chen Jieping, Simon Bussiere, Dietmar Straub, Zaneta Hong and Paul Russell. Their academic and
professional expertise on the topic of hand-graphics and analogue modeling design representation as
a means to express landscape ideas has helped craft this publication, and set the need and importance
today for analogue process and production in landscape architectural education; each providing short
critical or narrative essays on the importance of analogue visual communication in landscape architec-
ture. I would also like to thank Martin Holland for providing some BLA1 work from the University
of Guelph, Brendan Stewart and Nathan Perkins for their discussions on visual communication in
landscape architectural education.
I would like to thank all students whose works are showcased and profiled in this publication.
Your work, collectively, will be a valuable resource to other students studying landscape architecture
across the globe.
I would like to offer my special gratitude to Jim Richards for his inspiring Foreword and for
encouraging landscape architectural students to “sketch.” He is an influencer, traveling the world,
armed with his sketchbook and sharing his work through social media and print books. I had the pleas-
ure of chatting with Mr. Richards at the 2017 American Society of Landscape Architects’ Conference,
where he discussed his sketching adventures. Mr. Richards also serves on the international Advisory
Board for Urban Sketchers, advocating for the importance of hand sketching.
I would also like to send special thanks to my professional colleagues, who have concluded this
book by sharing their analogue works from their office. Shannon Nichol, David Malda and Keith
McPeters of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN), Kona Gray of EDSA Inc., Allison M. Dailey, Ballistic
Acknowledgements xvii

Architecture Machine (BAM), Rebecca Popowsky and Laurie Olin of OLIN. These individuals, and
their respective firms, have and are shaping quality landscape architecture across the globe and have
been using analogue drawings and modeling for effective and powerful design communication. I am
very delighted to have professional practices conclude this publication (a first in the series).
I would also like to thank the 2018 CELA (Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture)
committee for seeing the value of these books in landscape architectural education, and awarding this
body of work with the Award for Outstanding Communications.
I would also like to thank Sean Kelly, the Director of the School of Environmental Design and
Rural Development at the University of Guelph, a strong champion of landscape architecture and
forward-thinking design education. Thank you for your support. I would like to thank the OALA
(Ontario Association of Landscape Architects). I would also like to thank my graduate student, Michal
Laszczak, for her assistance, and I wish her the best in her career in landscape architecture.
Thank you to Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group) for their ongoing support, marketing and
for the creative vision regarding this publication and the Representing Landscapes Series. Thank you
to Grace Harrison, Aoife McGrath and their team, in helping to shape this idea and making this visu-
ally rich publication a reality with all four books in the series. Finally, I am grateful to my parents for
their ongoing support and encouragement, to Serena, Siena, Giuliano, Sofia and Isabella; and to my
husband, Haim, for his devotion and patience, which has made this process a positive experience.

Nadia Amoroso, PhD

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 pro-
fessionals. 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 think-
ing 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 digi-
tal 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 land-
scape 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 applica-
tion 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
2 Nadia Amoroso

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 hun-
dreds 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 frame-
work 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.
Introduction 3

The initial 20% to 30% of the line-work trace (or guide) helps to jump-start the student’s draw-
ing 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 fence-
row 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 engag-
ing 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 experi-
mentation, 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 learning scale, understanding tone and value, and, more importantly, iterations of the quick and
messy design progress.
Physically printing out a base map to the correct scale via a photocopier and using scale bars, espe-
cially in foundation courses, can help students grasp various issues of scale, such as properly shrinking
or enlarging a plan drawing to the desired scale. Once a proper scale map base is achieved, we encour-
age the students to draw their ideas onto trace-paper first, before proceeding to digital techniques. The
act of physically drawing and mapping out spaces, via bubble diagrams on trace paper, enables students
to quickly test spatial connections and to lay out test designs without being committed to the first idea
they draw. Figures 1.10a and 1.10b are quick design sketches of a plan and perspective, done using
markers, to communicate space quickly. The sketches have allowed the student to test various spaces
and elements before going through other design iterations and finalization on the computer. Students
should understand the value of hand-graphics as part of the design process and outcome, and they
should utilize this skill beyond classroom projects.
This latest edition in the Representing Landscapes series attempts to celebrate the basic form of
visual communication in landscape architecture, the analogue. The book collects various points of view
on analogue methods and representations in landscape architecture education today from colleagues
around the globe. The book is roughly structured as a progression from loose to medium to refined
graphics, ending with analogue modeling. This publication concludes not with a formal afterward,
but rather with four short chapters by respected firms Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM), OLIN,
4 Nadia Amoroso

EDSA and Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN). Each firm speaks about the importance of analogue
graphics and modeling as part of their design process and final design communication. The goal of
this publication is to offer students useful insights and valuable examples of analogue works that will
encourage students to draw, explore and create via analogue means.

Notes
1 Comment made by Peter Trowbridge, former Director of the Landscape Architecture Department at Cornell
University and a long-time, valued educator in the profession, regarding the importance of hand graphics in
landscape architectural education. March 2018.
2 Perkins, N. “Digits and the Digital: Reflections of the Changing Tools of Design,” Ground Magazine, 2008, 4(fall/
winter): 14.
3 Nathan Perkins, senior landscape architectural academic, who has been teaching for over thirty years, with an
interest in design visualizations.
4 Lange, E. “Visualization in Landscape Architecture and Planning: Where We Have Been, Where We Are Now
and Where We Might Go from Here.” In: I.D. Bishop and E. Lange (Eds.). Visualization in Landscape and
Environmental Planning: Technology and Applications. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis, 2005, p. 1.

5

(continued)
6


(continued)
7
8


1.1–1.5
Drawing the landscape. Hand-sketches using graphite (HB–6B pencils), erasers, and marker and pen-ink on good quality paper, slightly textured. For this
exercise, students selected a site with particular landscape qualities, for example, industrial sites, residual/relic landscapes or farm lands (with open fields),
woodland sites, wetlands, prairie landscapes (meadows) post-industrial sites. The students photographed the site, enlarged the photo, and then overlaid the
photocopied image onto a light table or window. They began to trace the main contours or framework of the image. Once the basic structure or framework of
the drawing was completed, students removed their sheets, and then started to add detail and texture to the drawing, including shade and shadow. Figure 1.1 by
Jingyi Yang. Figure 1.2 by Cara Lozano. Figure 1.3 by Delphia Tsang. Figure 1.4 by Isabelle Hoyle. Figure 1.5 by Sadie Campbell.
9
10

1.6
Fencerow sketch and digital trace. Section elevation of a prototypical fencerow in Ontario gleaned from
literature exploring fencerow characteristics, drawn using fineliner pens and graphite pencils that are blended
using a blending stump. Principal fencerow species include bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa), hawthorn (Crataegus
spp.), and European buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica). A sense of depth in the section elevation is achieved
through using thinner fineliner pens and harder graphite pencils for trees and shrubs that are further away.
Section elevation of a prototypical fencerow in Ontario created in Photoshop as a digital trace of the drawing.
Images of fencerow trees and shrubs were taken in the field and cut out in Adobe Photoshop as separate PNG
files. Each of the PNG files was created into a silhouette shape by lowering the lightness in the hue/saturation
image adjustment settings and then adjusting the lightness of the silhouette. The PNGs show a simplified
representation of a fencerow and a sense of depth is achieved by adding lighter silhouettes in the back. By
Michal Laszczuk. Thesis advisor and committee members: Cecelia Paine, Brendan Stewart, Nadia Amoroso.
 11

(continued)
12 Nadia Amoroso

1.7 and 1.8

Model making. These physical models are completed in the foundation studios, as part of an artist’s courtyard
design. The material palette is kept to a minimum. Students are encouraged not to use more than 3 to 4
materials, and to avoid the ‘train-model’ realistic outcome. Millboard, screws, nails, paper, wax, wire, nuts/
bolts, trace paper, sand paper, bass wood, foam-board, copper or metal wire, wood skewers are some of the
sample materials used. Figure1.7 reflects the courtyard design inspired by artist, Kazimir Malevich. By Cara
Lozano and Trent Fleming. Figure 1.8 reflects the courtyard design inspired by artist Richard Serra. By
Amanda Passero, Daisy Reid, Gavin Arnott.

1.9
Analogue: plaster maquettes as a three dimensional modeling technique. The creation of a plaster model
is an effective method of inquiry that highlights the relationship between volume and negative space. Using
inexpensive and easily accessible materials, first year Bachelor of Landscape Architecture students were asked to
create a model of an imaginary landscape that was both iconic and dynamic. The exercise provides a valuable
lesson about craft, as the plaster reveals any imperfections present within the mold from which the model
emerges. Images of models, from left to right, Nic Brosseau, Chris Ossowski, Sarah Closs. Class project and
photographs by Martin J. Holland.
 13

1.10a, 1.10b
Artist courtyard design sketch (plan and perspective). Quick loose sketches both in plan and perspective
view to test an artist courtyard design, using black felt-tip marker. By Justin Luth.
 14

1.11
Sketch for competition. The sketch is from a student design of a community park. In the perspective drawing, the student used various line weights to highlight
the three different paths at the entrance of the park and the green infrastructure. Here the student used hand-sketching beyond classroom projects. By Ziyi Zhang.
2 Drawing on the power of the original
Roberto Rovira

To draw is to reaffirm. Through the act of marking, we confirm the physical. Marking, in the most
rudimentary sense, is perhaps the simplest form of making, tracing ideas, and giving them form and
place by choosing to conform to the limits of a surface. By extension, to draw is to understand and
enter into a dialogue with space and time by bridging the self through the evidence of a mark.
In an original work and through original drawings such as the ones shared here, we become
aware of limitations. When the medium is paper, we encounter edges that may be deckled or straight,
thinning out at the perimeter or straight and sharp when cut with industrial precision. There is some-
times evidence of a minute grid that marks the back of paper when water and pulp are pressed against
a mold, revealing the phenomenon of transformation from wet to dry that produces a surface with
grain, orientation, and texture as byproducts of the method of paper production.
Most of my students who have lamented about the expense for purchasing good quality paper,
tend to come around when they see that their investment inevitably elevates the final outcome. Although
it’s also true that better paper doesn’t always make for better drawings, if nothing else, a quality sheet
of drawing paper is a reminder of scarcity, an attribute associated with the power of an original work, a
one-and-only product that is an inherently unrepeatable record of a process. In drawing, that scarcity
elevates the act by making us come to terms with the limits of two-dimensional media. Unlike the
infinite space of a digital canvas, analogue drawing gives us pause and, to a certain extent, intimidates.
Though planning is still required in both digital and analogue drawing processes, the physical dimen-
sions of the latter magnify the significance of the choices we make. There is no clean “undo” without
some vestige. The original tugs at our existential fear of failure, pushes us to strategize how to minimize
errors, reminds us of our shortcomings, and sometimes keeps us from drawing the first line. In its most
enlightened sense, however, an original analogue drawing teaches us to embrace mistakes and disap-
pointment as parts of an unfolding and imperfect process that may still reward us in the end.
In his essay “Nature and Architecture,” Philip Ursprung speaks of representation and nature as
engaging in a mutually complementary process of invention:

The fact that nature can be represented, that it can be reflected through an image, a text or a
semiotic system – or, more precisely that it is unthinkable without representation – also contains
the option that it can be modified and manipulated.1

In other words, the power of the original drawing, especially when it comes to depicting the natu-
ral world, stems from it as a means of affirmation as much as one of creation. We affirm our place
within the natural world by recording its qualities (texture, light, relationships), while at the same
16 Roberto Rovira

time creating an impression of it through the process of drawing. Our drawings project our abilities to
depict the natural world as much as they charge it with new interpretations and observations.
The work of the students illustrated here ranges in scale, media, and resolution. Imprecise char-
coal, pencil, and watercolor media may miss the crisp and measurable qualities of a scaled CAD
drawing, but they inevitably capture insights in ways that CAD never will. The drawings are creating
impressions as much as they are affirming a moment in place and time in the subtropical context of
Miami, Florida, where light, shelter, and a lush natural world are charged with powerful connota-
tions, ranging from leisure and bounty, to the less inviting threats of storms and the irrepressibility
of flora and fauna.
The extents of these drawings are finite, and we lack in our ability to inspect the originals and
therefore miss those other attributes that give them depth and the haptic response of a textured paper
surface. In the examples shown here, charcoal, pencil, marker, and pen, nevertheless help make some-
thing remarkable out of nothing, in the same way that a potter might create infinite forms out of clay.
Vitruvius reminds us that architectural design is based on knowledge and skill and that the
interplay between thinking and doing is essential.2 As much a vehicle for conveying ideas as it is for
implementing them, drawing gives us a medium with which to effectively do both and in the process
confirm our place in time as we watch a drawing unfold. We draw. We imagine. We create. We project
ourselves into the world, as we interpret it.
The continuity that exists between drawing and subject builds awareness and memory. It
empowers us to conceive alternatives and imagine possibilities that often benefit from their impreci-
sion. Dozens of lines that together create one mark speak about time, accretion, and variability, all of
which together help convey an idea that still falls short of giving us finality and precision, although
sometimes for the better. Within that ambiguity lies the ineffable magic of the drawing and the
power of the original—that profound act of making that situates us in the world and gives us the best
approximation of ourselves and our thoughts as we grapple to understand them.

Notes
1 Abalos, I. and Mateo, J.L. “Nature and Architecture.” In: P. Ursprung (Ed.) Natural Metaphor: An Anthology of
Essays on Architecture and Nature. ETH, 2007, p. 11.
2 Steenbergen, C. “The Drawing as Instrument.” In: Composing Landscapes: Analysis, Typology and Experiments for
Design. London: Springer, 2009, p. 23.
 17

2.1
Contrast reality. Compressed charcoal, pencil, and eraser on bristol. Techniques such as blending, smudging,
and eraser marks were used to capture the contrast of light in the space and the detail and feeling of wetness
during the rainy months. By Ludovico Ferro. Faculty: TJ Marston.
18

2.2
Greenhouse conservatory. Pencil, compressed charcoal, pen, and eraser on bristol. Techniques such as smudging
and blending, shading, and detail pen work were combined to capture the heavy yet delicate feel of the space.
By Ashley Maine. Faculty: TJ Marston.
 19

2.3
Immersive landscape. Compressed charcoal and kneaded eraser on 35 individual sheets of bristol. The technique
of breaking the image into a grid of multiple images allowed one to draw the organic nature of the tree as
abstract forms—utilizing the creative right brain and its ability to see shapes precisely. Only when the pieces
are put together does one perceive the whole. Charcoal as a medium allowed for easy blending between the
individual sheets and revealed the contrast between light and dark on the tangled surface of the tree. By
Anielka Arguello. Faculty TJ Marston.
20 Roberto Rovira

2.4
School of Architecture (SOA) FIU-Elevation. Watercolor mixed media. Watercolor wash and pen convey the
lines and bright color variations of this iconic Bernard Tschumi building in Miami. By Mikhaile Solomon.
Faculty: Roberto Rovira.

2.5
SOA passage. Watercolor mixed media. Watercolor wash conveys the bright color and gray juxtaposition
typical of this iconic Bernard Tschumi building in Miami. By Bruno Sanabria. Faculty: Roberto Rovira.
Drawing on the power of the original 21

2.6
Business School-Cantilever. Compressed charcoal, pencil, and eraser on blotting paper. Techniques such as
blending, smudging, and erasing to reveal highlights captured the contrast of light and texture with a cloudy
sky beyond this angular campus building. By Bruno Sanabria. Faculty: Roberto Rovira.

2.7
Waterfront elevation. Marker on trace paper. Concept sketches/ideas for mixed-use site on the Miami River.
By Jana Read. Faculty: Roberto Rovira.
22 Roberto Rovira

2.8
Waterfront concept. Marker on trace paper. Concept sketches/ideas for mixed-use site on the Miami River
that would include terracing, walkways, open recreational space, and plenty of vegetation. By Jana Read.
Faculty: Roberto Rovira.

2.9
Waterfront concept—vegetation. Marker on trace paper. Concept sketches/ideas for mixed-use site on the
Miami River. By Jana Read. Faculty: Roberto Rovira.


2.10
Light and texture. Compressed charcoal, pencil, and eraser on bristol. Various techniques such as layering mark making, blending, and eraser marks were used to
23

capture the dynamic nature of light finding its way through the densely vegetated trellis walkway. By Katherine Jarosz. Faculty: TJ Marston.
3 Marking time
Fiona Harrisson and Marian Macken

These drawings reflect on ongoing collaborative teaching and research practices concerned with tem-
poral engagement with the world, through the practice of drawing. This, in part, is due to a scepticism
of the rising importance of the singular photographic image—the ‘hero’ shot—which renders land-
scape as an inanimate thing, separated from its context within time. Through drawing, the process of
observation that the students undertake alludes to Edmund Husserl’s term of a ‘thickened present,’
which refers to a spatial, durational quality in which past events are retained as traces in the present.1
Husserl’s phenomenology of temporality describes our perception being not only in the present, but
also in the past and future. These temporalities do not necessarily proceed along a flat line; instead, as
Detlef Mertins writes, ‘the spirits of all times intermingle.’2 The student work explores different con-
structions of time through careful observation and drawing of a phenomenon. The work demonstrates
the role of drawing in learning about the philosophical implications of representation. It is premised
on a belief that representations of the world actively construct the way we understand landscape and
then go on to design in the world.
Drawing within design studio is predominantly concerned with space, yet to be materialized.
Drawing is defined as the pre-eminent methodology for the generation of a proposal: drawings are
produced remote from the site and assist in ‘getting to’ the design, and to picture an imagined
intention.3 These drawings initially take the form of sketch or conceptual drawings that develop into
scaled orthographic projections. This leads to a predominance of one form of drawing, producing and,
therefore, thinking within design education, whereby the subject-matter exists after the drawing, not
before it; that is, drawing is primarily conceived as generative.
These drawings explore a different realm of drawing: drawing as a record of experience and
documentation of the existing, or post factum documentation. Design begins with how we look at
the world, which is an aspect of the design process often overlooked in design education. The realm
of post factum documentation has been seen to exist separately from the design process. Drawings
whose primary function is not necessarily to project a design forwards may be relegated to being seen
as historical or analytical. Instead, these works cast post factum documentation as a field of enquiry. In
particular, they explore the documentation of phenomena as a relational drawing practice. A precedent
for this work was an ongoing observational practice undertaken by the teacher/author, which utilizes
drawing as a vehicle for looking at a particular phenomenon through time. In this work – a series of
30 drawings, one drawn each day for a period of one month – the drawings become a residue of the
act of looking. The practice of drawing while observing requires a particular kind of attendance to the
phenomenon: one that strongly occurs within time and that responds to continuously variable physi-
cal qualities. Juhani Paallasma writes that the hand-drawn line ‘can express hesitation and assurance,
Marking time 25

judgement and passion, boredom and excitement, affection and repulsion . . . The line traced by the
hand is a spatial one: it is placed in a distinct perceptual or imagined space.’4 These lines also have
time embedded within them. The drawing practice becomes then a performative way of knowing and
enquiring about the world.
During a series of courses at RMIT University and the University of Auckland, students explored
drawing as a performative practice. They were set up to develop how we see through constructing tem-
poral modes of observation. Explorations of phenomena occurred through the act of drawing which
was informed by different understandings of time. The students undertook various documentation
tasks of observed phenomena. In order to address the task of drawing constantly changing phenom-
ena and environments, the students needed to develop a temporal logic and strategy for their series
of drawings. For example, one student designed a drawing strategy structured to capture patterns of
movement across a space, using a window as the frame to record these as they unfolded. Figure 3.2
shows one drawing, of a set of ten, created over a two hour time frame, in the same place at the water’s
edge. At the commencement of each drawing, the same amount of Indian ink was splashed at the top
of A3-sized watercolour sheets of paper. The paper was then held at knee-height, perpendicular to the
water, for six minutes. The ink then mixed with the water, leaving traces of its fluidity; across her series
of drawings, the receding tide is recorded.
Another student undertook hourly drawings: he added charcoal powder to foam pads, and placed
them outside for one hour across the course of a day from 8am to 5pm. The charcoal residue records
the changing weather conditions from cloudy to rainy to windy and was transferred to paper (Figure
3.3). The series of drawings was done over five days, with each component drawing taking about eight
minutes to complete. The drawings range across scale and record different uses and occupations of the
space, implying flux and movement.
As the drawings are performative, the design of the strategy for the durational performance is as
important as the drawing itself. The temporal strategy was developed in relation to the phenomenon:
that is, considered reasoning for the beginning and end of the period of observation, the intervals
between the drawings, and the duration within each drawing. Rather than the drawings recording a
past time, the notion of the duration of experiential time—and an expanded present—is embedded
in the act of drawing.
These experimental methods explored ways to make time integral to design: both its percep-
tion and realization within the field of landscape architecture. As occurs with teaching, the students
interpreted the brief and developed modes of registering their temporal observations different from
the precedent. The student works are traces—with time imbedded in the paper itself—rather than
representations of things. In all of the drawings, time is integral to both the thinking and the making
of the work. As time is central, not peripheral, to design it must also be admitted to students’ learn-
ing and to their practice, in order to highlight that the spaces we inhabit and design are in continuous
transformation.

Notes
1 Kern, S. The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983, p. 83.
2 Mertins, D. “The Shells of Architectural Thought.” In: K.M. Hays (Ed.). Hejduk’s Chronotope. New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 1996, p. 24.
3 In reference to this, see: Evans, R. “Translations from Drawing to Building.” In: Translations from Drawing to
Building and Other Essays. London: Architectural Association, 1997 (pp. 153–193); and Pérez Gómez, A. and
Pelletier, L. Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.
4 Pallasmaa, J. The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture. Chichester: John Wiley, 2009,
p. 100.
26

3.1
Drawing movement, 2017. Series of 22 drawings; graphite and charcoal on A2-sized transparent butter
paper. A frame of space was established between two buildings on a university campus; paper was taped onto a
window looking onto the space. The drawings ‘trace’ the movement of people, vehicles and vegetation within
the spatial frame. Each drawing is eight minutes in duration, with the series undertaken over 20 afternoons. By
Mishori Dunraj.
Marking time 27

3.2
Drawing the tide, 2017. Series of ten drawings, undertaken over two hours; Indian ink on watercolour paper.
At the beginning of each drawing, the same amount of Indian ink is applied to the top of each page. The page
is then held perpendicular to water, at knee-height, for six minutes. By Amelia Reese.

3.3
Drawing the weather, 2017. Series of ten drawings, undertaken each hour on one day; charcoal powder on
paper. Charcoal powder is applied to foam pads; these are then left outside for one hour, then transferred to
paper, recording the changing weather conditions. By Jingtian Li.
4 The archaeology of the drawing
and how to slow ideas down in
a design conversation
Peter Lundsgaard Hansen

It started as drawing exercises a decade ago. Today “Design Conversation” is a studio method performed
under a powerful vertical projector in a curated room we call thick space. However, it is still drawing and
we still use pencil and paper.

Enter
Ideas fuel and drive creative work in landscape architecture education. However, ideas are never
enough. In higher design education, what matters is how ideas are achieved, how they are transformed
from language into concepts, strategies and to physical form. Defining such a specialized process war-
rants a unique direction in which architectural ideas are developed beyond imagination and metaphor.
Therefore, in developing our studio course,1 we continuously encourage that the idea must expand and
sediment itself in the drawing to achieve direction.
Ideas are shared fast. In the studio, we experience the force of contingency and the improbable
combinations of events when ideas are exchanged between fellow designers. However, the result can be
messy when ideas are lost in translation or they fall into the category of good intentions. The design
process suffers if the exchange has no direction and no medium that supports observation and inquiry.
Therefore, we try to slow down the exchange of ideas at certain intervals in order to achieve the desired
expansion. Analogue drawing techniques and simple models play central roles in this process and they
are both slow and fast at the same time.
In the studio, a signature activity is to connect what we say and what we do in order to expand
ideas towards a physical form in models and drawings. According to South African artist William
Kentridge, ideas require rehearsal and repeated activities before the final shot – a process of making
and looking.2 The method we have developed is a performed conversation we call Design Conversation.
Technically, we connect spoken language to the making and looking with a vertical projector. The con-
versation is part activity, part workspace and part product, and it always leaves a physical imprint in
a new drawing, an altered workspace, and the next conversation. We call the environment thick space
and define it as proximity to each other, books, drawings, moving pictures, artefacts and collected
materials. As a consequence, we can piece together and direct our ideas better because the physical
narrative of motive and opportunity is always in the drawing. The exercise follows this process.

Thick space
The projector is turned on and the vertically oriented beam lights up the drawing table. A blank sheet
of A1 paper is rolled out on the table. A roll of transparent tracing paper is on the floor. The height
The archaeology of the drawing 29

of the table is set to 73 cm and selected pencils are thick – but not too thick. Some choose charcoal
and graphite. Others prefer to use pastel and ink. Black works well under the bright light. The studio
library is close to the drawing table. A couple of reference books are already open. Two or three boxes
containing simple model material are on the edge of the table. We are seated face-to-face. One studio
professor is present at the table. The rest of the class is working in groups in the periphery of the room.

Slower
We are ready to slow down the exchange of ideas. We connect the laptop and project the selected
image down on the paper. Projector On.

Expansion
We create friction when we fix the idea to the medium of the drawing. The conversation may seem
hectic, but in reality we do time-consuming activities such as drawing a section, making notations on
top of an image, opening a reference book to learn from similar drawings with similar ideas, collaging
parts directly into our own drawing or building simple models into the image. The aim is to solidify
the idea just enough for it to sediment itself in a trusted physical place – the drawing – a room for new
observations, inquiry and uncertainty.
The drawing is now the medium through which we are connected to the idea. It is a fragile
situation. We make hand drawings to perform, repeat and rehearse in order to construct the physi-
cal grammar needed to transform vocalized language into drawings that can perform the idea. It is
often iconic landscape typologies that we find in our language. Through these repeated activities and
actions the idea can expand beyond the metaphor. We draw structures of the landscape typologies: the
entrance (what kind? primary or secondary? context? how many?); a path (where to? how wide? the
material? soft or hard?); and a forest (scale? what kind? how do you establish it? do we have a reference?
Draw the dots). We continue to a thicket, a clearing, a row of trees, buildings etc. We draw every word
we can and then we write a new word. Although the conversation works as a forward movement, the
mediation between computer and hand drawings – the hybrid nature of pencil and projected image –
allows us to turn back, rewind, zoom in and examine. We continue with the making and unmaking of
the image. We look at it again. We draw and withdraw.

Quiet
The conversation has changed the workspace in less than half an hour. The drawing has changed and
so have we. It is quiet now. We have worked to the point where what we say no longer changes the
drawing and the drawing no longer changes the conversation. It is time to document the image and
turn off the projector. It is the time that we stop. Projector Off.

Faster
Only a distilled path from the conversation can be seen now, visible by the strokes across the white
sheet and the scattered notes. It is not so much a question of beauty – it is an archive of dedicated
layers of the idea. We have taken a direction. We are ready to accelerate again. We are ready for the
computers and a little distance.

Exit
Even though design is both a personal and a complex shared enterprise, the collective activity of hand
drawing techniques has the advantage of being both intuitive and fast. We delay ideas within the
30 Peter Lundsgaard Hansen

confinement of a Design Conversation and it is in this time vacuum we relate to the outside world in
the drawing. The drawing is both here and there and it helps us pin the words closer to the ideas of
the outside world. It encourages us to pronounce, to make and to look better. It is this combination of
slow and fast that constitutes a place for collective design – where language is made.
The drawing in the Design Conversation is both a specialized and performed activity and a unique
space. As an activity it requires the movement of the hand or the cutting of a knife while we talk.
Regarding the drawing as a unique space, Kentridge says if [only] the talking could be like drawing,
taking us from what we know to an image, a site, an insight we did not know we knew. Making a space
for uncertainty.3 We turn talking into drawing. It helps us to slow down and to direct our ideas in a
safe place for inquiry. Ideas can then expand beyond imagination and metaphor – and change is made
manifest.

Notes
1 Landscape Studio is a MSc degree course in landscape design and planning at The University of Copenhagen.
(landscapestudio17.tumblr.com)
2 Kentridge, W. “Six Drawing Lessons.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014, pp. 106–108.
3 Kentridge, W. “Six Drawing Lessons.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014, pp. 20–22.
 31

4.1a–d
Projector Process. These images showcase the projector drawings and design process to produce work in the
design studio.
5 Composing cartographies of
complexity
Ed Wall

Landscapes are messy. They are ill-fitting, contradictory, dirty and used. Landscapes don’t look, smell,
taste or feel how they are frequently represented in idealised landscape drawings. Instead, the visceral
dimensions of landscapes that are the focus of issues such as human rights, environmental changes and
urban development, expose, threaten and terrify as well as comfort, empower and inspire. And as we
work with landscapes as designers we must employ a range of methods to research them, inventive
approaches to analyse what we find and a range of tools to develop proposals and represent designs.
This chapter discusses a specific drawing that, in the Advanced Landscape Studio at University of
Greenwich, we term a ‘base drawing’ (See Figure 5.1a). The base drawing is a composite layered draw-
ing, usually composed as a single-scaled plan or sectional elevation, which brings into close proximity
contrasting landscape information. The aim of creating a base drawing is to recognise site-specific rela-
tions and issues that can be worked with as proposals. The base drawing is, therefore, a foundational
composition that we can develop during the design process, and that enables us to navigate from col-
lecting and organising data, recognising issues and developing proposals (See Figures 5.1b and 5.1c).
To make base drawings, we iteratively draw and redraw what we find during fieldwork and desk
studies. Conventional architectural and geographical drawings of plans and maps are redrawn, rescaled
and layered in order to analyse relations across different data sets. This enables us to further understand
the site. Written narratives and photographic studies are also spatialised through being reinterpreted in
drawings; thus the important information that they contain can be overlaid with reworked maps, plans
and aerial photographs. The drawing, ordering, sifting, arranging, overlapping, rescaling and editing
required in creating the drawing is an analytical process that allows us to establish, and communicate,
what we argue is uniquely important about the landscape we are studying.
The base drawing brings together contrasting local and regional scales, intersects long histories
with fleeting events and brings into close proximity spatial, ecological and political information (See
Figure 5.2a). Through the drawings, global issues of colonisation and climate are brought to bear on
local-scale landscape conditions. Historic maps and visualised accounts of daily lives in these land-
scapes are bound together in a single drawing. And information of planned urban developments is
layered with projections of flooding frequencies and intensities (See Figures 5.2b and 5.2c).
As official narratives presented in maps are combined with personal stories learned from unstruc-
tured conversations, unique site knowledge is aggregated. As a greater number of layers and fragments
are added to the base drawing, a sorting, prioritising and editing process intensifies. With the aim of
developing a base from which to develop proposals, parts of the base drawing are highlighted and
others recede into the background. However, as the base drawings begins to emphasise the significant
Composing cartographies of complexity 33

issues of the landscape studied, and as spaces and conditions suggest future proposals, the complexity
of the sites reveals the potential of closely studying landscapes.
Hand drawing is a useful tool in these iterations. Editing, sketching and drafting by hand pro-
vide an immediate marking of information and a direct relationship between the designer and the
composition. Hand drawing is, however, not the only tool – as overlays and drawn elements are
scanned, manipulated as raster images, traced on tablets, and ‘vectorised’ through digital drawings.
Digital models are imposed onto hand-drawn maps to articulate the heights and shadows of land-
forms. Photographs are incorporated into the base drawing but are then sketched over in pencil and
pen (See Figure 5.3a).
The working and reworking of the base drawing through contrasting media and across prolonged
periods of time begins to represent the multifaceted landscapes that are being investigated. The draw-
ings represent the difference between formalities of government planning and unplanned spaces or
activities in contrasting graphic modes. Like the landscapes themselves, the varying media employed
communicate different conditions. Personal local histories are often represented through pencil draw-
ing and loosely defined migratory zones are illustrated in layers of transparent washes of watercolour.
Correspondingly, measured elements of contemporary architecturally constructed landscapes are often
modelled digitally (See Figures 5.3b and 5.3c).
The base drawing, while ideally it is never finished through being added to and edited during the
design process, should reveal issues, relationships and priorities of the designer. It should also be exqui-
sitely drawn, composed and considered. While each mark that is made corresponds to actions in the
site, traces of the designer’s actions embody residues, mistakes and inaccuracies. Such drawings, while
they can incorporate the precision of geo-referenced digital maps, their layered and collaged qualities
reveal the incompleteness of landscapes while providing designers with essential tools to engage with
their complexities.
 34

5.1a
Base drawing showing urban development of Docklands as new colonisations. By Cesare Cardia.
 35

5.1b
Sketch fragments of English colonial histories. By Cesare Cardia, University of Greenwich, London.
36

5.1c
Layer showing the historical arrangement of streets and buildings on Isle of Dogs. By Cesare Cardia.

37

5.2a
Base drawing showing dimensions and conditions of water in London’s Docklands. By Liz Stark.
38

5.2b
Sectional sketches through docks. By Liz Stark.
 39

5.2c
Sectional exploration of Canary Wharf development at Docklands. By Liz Stark.
 40

5.3a
Base drawing showing Thames boat building histories. By Mais Kalthoum.
 41

5.3b
Layer showing the tidal Thames. By Mais Kalthoum.
42

5.3c
Layer showing historic shipyards and boats constructed on the Isle of Dogs. By Mais Kalthoum.
6 Urban sketching
The practice of sketching and
communicating
Richard Alomar

Much of the debate regarding the value of analogue versus digital representation has progressed in the
last two decades from antagonism to integration, when the disappearance of sketching as a skill was
feared; where sketching and drawing are one of many representational tools to express ideas, forms and
relationships in spatial and psychological terms. Much can be argued on the topic, but what is relevant
to this discussion is the value of educational content and explicit methods that integrate sketching and
drawing in the analysis and design of landscapes, and how instructors can develop practical drawing
exercises where students and practitioners learn to sketch quickly and comprehensibly with confi-
dence, purpose and creativity. For the purpose of this discussion, the terms drawing and sketching are
used interchangeably and defined as “the action of recording ideas and observations with marks, lines
and words.”

A brief summary of sketching in landscape architecture

Sketching and drawing classes had been relegated to studio drawing and diagraming when digital pho-
tography, video, and two and three dimensional graphic programs became more popular and acces-
sible. Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture by Brad Cantrell and Wes Michaels replaced Drawing
the Landscape by Chip Sullivan as the visual and representation text for landscape architects; a shift
reflected across design disciplines as the speed and standardization available through digital formats
made communication and collaboration among disciplines possible.
Sketching and its relevance to academic practice and pedagogy was revisited in Caroline Lavoie’s
Sketching the Landscape: Exploring a Sense of Place followed by “Exploratory Physiocartographies of
Place and Time,” a sketch crawl and panel discussion at the 2013 Annual Council of Educators in
Landscape Architecture (CELA) meeting in Austin, Texas. Between 2005 and 2017 there have been
a series of lectures and activities that formally discussed the practice and theory of sketching; rang-
ing from the Urban Sketchers first International Symposium in Portland, Oregon to the history and
theory of drawing and architecture in the “Is Drawing Dead?” Symposium at the Yale School of
Architecture to the publication of James Richards’ Freehand Drawing and Discovery: Urban Sketching
and Concept Drawing for Designers.
Since the 2013 CELA meeting, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has organ-
ized five sketch events (Sketch Walks) for their annual meetings in Boston, Denver, Chicago, New
Orleans and Los Angeles. The Sketch Out/Loud public awareness event for the celebration of World
Wide Landscape Architecture Month has been a part of ASLA Chapters across the country since 2015.
Several Landscape Architecture programs have reintegrated sketching and sketch walks as part of their
design studios.
44 Richard Alomar

In the current period of integration many of the seminal books on landscape drawing have been
updated and reissued, such as Sullivan’s “Drawing the Landscape,” and Crowe and Lassau’s “Visual
Notes for Architects and Designers,” and the growth and popularity of sketching can be seen in the
proliferation of similar books on field sketching, urban sketching and landscape drawing.

The practice of sketching

Sketching for students is a form of design notation and communication. The act of sketching is a
way in which ideas develop into forms and spaces and eventually built space. A hindrance in teaching
sketching and drawing as a tool in design is a student misconception that drawing is an “Art” best left
to a certain class of person, whose talents and sensibilities are unquestionable. Most students stopped
drawing early in their school careers, when they compared their drawings to the “class artist” and
found their work lacking. Another equally misconceived notion, that drawings are only used as a step
in the preparation of a rendering, needs to be addressed.

Sketching for no reason

The first step in establishing a practice of sketching is to dispel the idea that a drawing needs to
have a particular end; you can draw for the sake of drawing, for the gratification of feeling a pen
glide over paper or the amazement of seeing shapes you had not imagined appear from random
marks and lines. This initial phase of practice emphasizes action over output, quantity over quality.
Sketching with context
Sketch exercises are framed within a context or purpose, after a practice of drawing is established.
For example, sketches that frame views, express color, rely on perspective or are scaled and meas-
ured can help to connect intuitive doodles and diagrams to more representational forms of drawing.
Urban sketching: seeing and recording the landscape
The spaces we help design are outside, so it’s important to establish a drawing practice of engaged
observations to be able to see, analyze and document the landscape, complement other forms
of recording (photos and videos) and develop designs based on those observations. The Urban
Sketcher movement provides a structure and a practice that can help engage students in drawing,
education and community. The group’s mission of promoting on-location sketching as a form
of engaged education has built a global community of sketchers. Its 8-point manifesto outlines
principles that help guide sketchers to a practice of on-location drawing that is expressive and
individualistic within an accepting and non-judgmental community.
The Urban Sketcher approach can be used in the studio for documenting the landscape in flexi-
ble ways that enhance understanding through active observation. Some specific examples include
sketch walks through a city to highlight spaces and landmarks, “On Site Design” where students
generate quick perspective drawings of potential site designs. These practices can complement
other studio exercises.

Urban sketching: Newark, New Jersey

The primary purpose of this discussion was to demonstrate how sketching could be used in the
studio and in the field to help students develop a practice of drawing that helps in the development
of landscape designs. Design studios can use urban sketching as part of the site survey and analysis
process and engage students in multi modal forms of observation and documentation (photo, video
and sketching).
Urban sketching 45

Figures 6.1 to 6.7 are examples of urban sketching in Newark for a community design studio.
The students visited Newark for a three-day walking survey through the city. They mapped, photo-
graphed, videotaped, wrote and sketched to document their thoughts and impressions. Later in the
studio, the students were tasked to review all the material and select two or three areas that were vivid
in their mind and that had been photographed or sketched. They then sketched the area, adding more
structure and color to their original on-location sketch.
It was interesting to see what students found as distinctive about the walk and their choice of rep-
resentation. Figures 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 show distinctive landmarks or specific areas that may be obvious
to some, but not so to others. In drawing quickly on-site, students may be attracted to draw something
that resonates personally, or is the easiest thing to draw. Figure 6.4 shows a collage of distinctive parts
of the city, with Newark Broad Street station flanked by trees from Branch Brook Park. Figures 6.5,
6.6 and 6.7 show the neighborhood quality of Newark, which is often lost in the larger discussion on
urban planning and design.
46 Richard Alomar

6.1
Newark
View of Penn Station. Ink and marker on bond paper. By Alexis Lo.

6.2
Newark
View of community garden (winter). Ink and watercolor on cold press watercolor paper. By Jason Cincotta.
Urban sketching 47

6.3
Newark
View of bodega fruit stand. Ink and watercolor on cold press watercolor paper. By Jason Cincotta.

6.4
Newark
Collage of Broad Street Station and Branch Brook Park. Pencil and watercolor on bond paper. By Tina Mao.
48

6.5
Newark
View of Newark streets. Color pencil on bond paper photocopy of ink drawing. By Emily Otterbine.
Urban sketching 49

6.6
Newark
View of Newark streets. Color pencil on bond paper photocopy of ink drawing. By Emily Otterbine.

6.7
Newark
View of Newark streets. Color pencil on bond paper photocopy of ink drawing. By Emily Otterbine.
7 The hand graphics experience
Ashley Steffens

Beginning
The hand graphics class I teach begins with the development of lines. It’s a tactile unique expression
based on individual experiences. Highly variable, the line has the ability to communicate a beginning,
a middle and an end whether tight, loose or anything in between. Understanding how to draw the line
and what it means in regards to communication is the foundation for the beginning design student in
developing traditional hand graphics.
Starting with the formal line used for drafting and lettering, the hardest part of drafting is using
standardized tools and methods such as squaring the paper to the table, securing it with drafting tape,
drawing on a mat, using a T-square and a triangle, using different types of paper, pens and pencils.
Beginner lines are mere byproducts of holding on to all of these tools and keeping the pencil or pen
connected to a secure piece of paper. After some basic lines, the class focuses on the small deliberate
lines used for developing standard block lettering. These short lines are easier to control while holding
all the tools. This includes lettering and early line work.
The next step is focused on developing the longer line, learning about line types and widths and
using scaled lengths. However, drawing a longer line can be challenging. Different line widths can
represent different items on a drawing, so a line needs to remain the same width as the lead grinds
down on the paper. Many professionals have adopted a slight twisting motion of the pencil so the
lead is constantly on the edge. A line also needs to have a defined start and stop that emphasizes the
beginning and end of that particular line segment. Emphasis at the beginning and end of a longer line
can be created by scrubbing the pencil back and forth a few times when you start and end the line.
The scrubbing should make the line ends slightly darker since it is receiving more lead, not necessarily
thicker. It’s a lot to think about for such a simple thing, but understanding these mechanics will help
develop skills for free hand drafting, drawing and even sketching.
A short but detailed exercise allows students to get more comfortable with using tools, under-
standing the importance of sheet layout, and learning about graphic standards for communication.
Starting and stopping a measured line in the brick paving exercise, identifying graduated line widths,
and practicing the various line types that allow designers and contractors to communicate graphically,
allow the students some practice before applying these skills to construction details. This includes hav-
ing a materials sheet or materials palette.
The next step is putting it all together into construction details which are excellent practical
exercises for applying all of the introductory skills. While most construction details are generated by
computer, hand generated construction details allow the student to examine whether the line rep-
resents space that is inclusive or exclusive, dominant or recessive, illustrative or formal, allowing for
precision and a hierarchy of line width and type, based on professional standards.
The hand graphics experience 51

Middle
As we start moving the line away from the formality of tools, the student experience begins to play a
larger role in the communication of the graphic and students start to self-evaluate their lines. “This one
is too shaky,” “This one is really good,” “This line is really bad,” “This one is not consistent,” at which
point I usually respond, “Well, that all depends.” The graphics class evolves to a looser interpretation
of the line much less dependent on tools but still having certain criteria for appropriate communica-
tion. These lines begin to represent spaces, active and passive circulation, textures of plant materials,
patterns for emphasizing edges of spaces, shading and detail. These include developing a concept
symbols palette.
Having introduced hatch patterns and line widths related to construction details, some of these
strokes can be applied to plan symbols and enhanced with markers and colored pencils. Based on a
circle, the line width, color and texture will imply a variety of plant materials; evergreen, deciduous,
trees, shrubs and ground cover. A specific hierarchy allows the viewer to see through the vertical layers
of plant materials.
Illustrative plan view symbols are separated by textural differences, straight lines, loops, smooth,
spikey, drafted, and freehand. The class decides on names of textures as I demonstrate drawing them.
Names help describe the textures in a fun way, such as “Frantic Squirrel,” which describes a line that
twists and turns as it moves around the circle. In general, when using textures for illustrative landscape
graphics, less texture is used for trees and more texture is applied to plant materials as they get closer
to the ground. Likewise, line widths are thicker for trees and get thinner as more texture is applied to
smaller shrubs and ground cover.
The final graphic rule for illustrative plan graphics applies to color. Generally, lighter colors are
used to render trees and darker colors are applied to plant materials closer to the ground. A deviation
to this is that most evergreens are rendered with a mid to dark green. Starting with a light green marker
which is usually considered a base, most plant materials are quickly dusted with it allowing this green
to visually connect the plan consistently across the page. White space is left in the upper right or left of
most plant materials to imply sunlight. Random dots are clustered outside of plant textures to imply
movement of leaves, dust and bugs. Reapplying the same color green on plant materials will allow for
buildup which creates a slightly darker hue of the base color. Using 3 or 4 greens is all that is needed
for most any plan.
Colored pencils are used to diversify the greens often referring to specific characteristics of a
plant. Orange pencil can be used for plants that have orange fall color. Pink can be used for plants
with pink blossoms. The stroke used for colored pencil is called flavoring. Starting with a fat chiseled
lead, flavoring is a pulling stroke across the symbols. At a 45 degree angle, it starts at the top left of the
symbol with a light soft stroke. As the pencil moves across the symbol, more pressure is applied to the
pencil and it gets darker as it moves toward the lower right of the symbol. This also helps to give it a
sense of shadow.

End
The course ends with the development of a variety of orthographic views such as section-elevation,
axon and perspective. Using similar textures, line widths and rendering techniques, the students
are introduced to the mechanics of developing each. However, these graphics illustrate the design
and outcome of the space. The designer has artistic license to choose elements to include or exclude
so the client has a better understanding of scale, proportion, and proximity of items in the newly
designed space.
Similar to illustrative plan view graphics, a few graphic rules help with readability. More texture
and thicker lines bring items closer to the viewer. Likewise, more vivid colors have a tendency to move
elements forward. By this time, the class has a fairly good handle on using tools as well as a variety of
52 Ashley Steffens

materials. The biggest challenge is getting the students to loosen up, and allow flecks of marker to float
around, dust splashes of colored pencil around and allow blossoms to flow outside of plant textures.
Described as leaves, dust and bugs, the technique of adding items outside the lines is difficult for many
students to overcome.
In the end, it is important to take breaks, have fun and practice. There are plenty of inspirational
and professional resources available, and to find examples that you like to use for your drawings.
Thinking carefully about the mediums, communication level (detailed or illustrative) and techniques
is an important factor in the visual communication of your designs. For those of you who choose to
work on computer, try not to limit your abilities by what you know how to do digitally only, add-
ing a touch of hand graphics after printing can really set you apart from your colleagues and result in
dynamic and artistic projects.
 53

7.1
Construction details. This represents the final sheet of three construction details which students must draft
to scale. Skills include drafting, lettering and sheet layout. The original construction details were provided but
were sketchy and not to scale. By Anna Leigh Turner.
54 Ashley Steffens

7.2 and 7.3

Concept plan and practice . This hand drawing is a finalized concept plan of a house that was provided to
them. Students developed their own symbols to reflect the plan. By Elias Payne.
The hand graphics experience 55

7.4 and 7.5

Plan in pen and color marker. Final plans of the house done in pen only, and then color rendered with
marker. By Anna Leigh Turner.
56

7.6
Section elevation. Reflects section elevation done during class as well as the steps taken toward developing a
final section elevation through the rear of the yard. Section elevations were generated from the house plan. By
Braden Meadows.
8 Practice and permission to take
shortcuts
Kelly Cederberg

Drawing is a practical skill. It is almost troubling how little importance seems to be placed on learning
to draw in many design schools today. Some may argue that visual representation in our profession has
shifted to digital media but to compare the two is comparing two vastly different techniques that have
very different roles in design. Since each has different uses, each should play an equal role in design
education. In landscape architectural practice, most designers would agree that hand drawing is an
effective and relatively quick way of exploring ideas and communicating ideas to others, especially in
the early stages of design. As an educator, one of the greatest hurdles in teaching students to hand draw
is the student’s lack of confidence in drawing and their desire to be perfect. They do not want to draw
if it is not going to be good and often rely too heavily on digital rendering because they think it looks
better. The key to teaching students how to draw lies in building their confidence. First, by showing
them they can improve through practice, by learning simple drawing tricks and by giving them per-
mission to take shortcuts. Mike Lin reveals several helpful drawing tricks in his book, Drawing and
Designing with Confidence: A Step-by-Step Guide (1993) that often improve student drawings imme-
diately. The sketches at the end of this chapter are from students at The University of Arizona over
eight weeks of practicing, learning drawing tricks and using shortcuts to improve their hand drawing.
Anyone can learn to draw. Not everyone believes this to be true. However, it is true that most
people learning to draw will make bad drawings, at least for a while. Like any other skill, to get
better, you must practice. To get past this phase of making bad drawings takes determination and
perseverance.1 Drawing from life is one of the best ways to practice regularly. Keeping a sketchbook
and sketching scenes from your life on a daily basis can help to establish drawing as a regular habit.
Generally, a sketchbook is also something that belongs to you and no one else gets to see what is inside.
Therefore, it is a safe environment, where sketching can take place and be free of outside judgment.
The other benefit of using a sketchbook lies in the fact that you can always look back and see how
you are improving. Regular drawing practice will lead to better drawing skills and can help to build
confidence in drawing.
Drawing from life in a sketchbook has perks other than just providing an opportunity to practice
regularly. Drawing in a sketchbook teaches observation and demands an attention to detail that one
cannot attain through digital rendering. Sketching is also often used as a way of visually taking notes
for designers.2 By studying a site long enough to make several sketches, the designer is forced to focus
all of their senses on the qualities of that site revealing things that may have otherwise gotten missed.3
As mentioned previously, hand drawing in the early stages of design is beneficial for getting ideas
out of your head and onto paper. Creativity researchers Treffinger, Schoonover and Selby (2012) noted
that their experience shows our first ideas are often not our best. Being able to sketch quick iterations
58 Kelly Cederberg

of design ideas is an essential skill to help attain good design. Starting on a computer with design ideas
and never touching a pen or pencil can be limiting, if not time consuming. Most designers agree to
the usefulness of sketching in the early stages of design, however, I would argue hand drawing should
be taken a step further in the design process and be included in conceptual and preliminary design
graphics. The true potential of hand drawing is the fact that it is open to interpretation and therefore
lends itself to discussion and exchange.4 Photo-realistic perspectives in the working stages of design can
limit the viewer’s imagination and convince the client to make decisions.5 If the client sees a ‘finished’
product, much like a photo-realistic digital rendering, they are more likely to think that the design is
no longer open to changes or adjustment.
Another advantage of using hand graphics for conceptual and preliminary design graphics has to
do with simplicity. Many clients, especially those with limited knowledge or experience with landscape
architecture, can only focus on so much information presented to them. Since drawings are selective in
what they contain, they allow designers to focus their attention on certain aspects of the design while
leaving other details undecided. It is easy to get distracted by elements not pertinent to the design in
photo-realistic digital graphics. Hand drawings allow for an opportunity to solicit more pointed feed-
back from the client and allow them a chance to fill in the blanks when it comes to the details of the
design.6 Presenting to clients can also be less complicated since the drawings will emphasize the most
significant elements and not convey decisions that may or may not be important at that stage of the
process.7 For example, material selections may have to be made prematurely in order to make a photo-
realistic digital rendering.
Finally, hand drawings often take less time than photo-realistic digital graphics. Because much of
the detail does not have to be decided or rendered, a hand drawing can be quicker, especially if simple
tricks and short cuts are utilized. It is ok to trace things when needed. Often tracing the perspective
lines from a site photograph can lend a quick base for building a perspective drawing. Another short
cut that can be used for quick perspectives involves using Sketch Up as a base. Spending about ten
minutes developing the basic lines and shapes in SketchUp, then printing the 2D exported image, and
then using it as a base to trace over new lines. This process can provide a good base drawing in much
less time than trying to draw it without help or doing a digital rendering. It is also useful for when you
need to draw objects that could be intimidating, complex or time consuming. For example, drawing
a playground feature can be complicated, especially in the early stages of design. Rather than take the
time to design the details of a playground and figure out how to draw it from scratch, find a photo-
graph or SketchUp component that resembles the size and configuration, resize it, print it and trace
it. There is still freedom to choose to draw only parts of it or to change parts of it as you trace, but it
saves time, and it cuts down on the anxiety of having to draw something complex. It also often gives
students the confidence to finish a decent hand drawing quickly.
Hand drawing maintains an important role in landscape architectural design and practice and
students who are able to produce quality drawings are likely to be assets to their firms. Anyone can
gain the skills to produce good hand drawings with practice, learning some tricks and not being afraid
to take shortcuts.

Notes
1 Hutchison, E. Drawing for Landscape Architecture: Sketch to Screen to Site. London: Thames & Hudson, 2011, p. 11.
2 Balmori, D. Drawing and Reinventing Landscape. New York, NY: John Wiley, 2014, p. 49.
3 Op. cit, p.16.
4 Corner, J. “Representation and Landscape: Drawing and Making in the Landscape Medium.” Word & Image: A
Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 1992, 8(3): 255.
5 Amoroso, N. Representing Landscapes: Digital. New York, NY: Routledge, 2015, p. 6.
6 Hutchison, E. Drawing for Landscape Architecture: Sketch to Screen to Site. London: Thames & Hudson, 2011, p. 119.
7 Ibid., p. 199.
Practice and permission to take shortcuts 59

8.1
Old Main Planter. Part of the Old Main Series. This series includes a 5 minute warm up sketch with a
20 minute drawing after. Sharpie and red liquid pen on 500 series paper. By Aaron Johnson.

8.2
Women’s Plaza Series. For this exercise the student went to the same point (location) to create one drawing
each week for about 1 hour. This student experimented with different media, pencil, pen, charcoal, watercolor,
laying out the basic lines in red pencil, etc. The student sat in a slightly different spot for each drawing, which
is evident in the compositions. By Nichole Casebeer.
60 Kelly Cederberg

8.3
University of Arizona Mall. Pencil on sketchbook paper, using various tone, shading and line weights.
30 minute sketch. By Nichole Casebeer.

8.4
Las Hermanitas Market area. Sketch using black fine-marker pen and Chartpak colored markers on trace paper.
30 minute sketch, using SketchUp as a base for tracing the final drawing (one hour total). By Jonathan Choi.
Practice and permission to take shortcuts 61

8.5
Nogales Children’s Museum pool area. Sketch using pen, colored pencils, Chartpak marker on trace paper.
SketchUp was used as a base for tracing basic lines (45 minute total). By Jennifer Moscato.

8.6
Freedom Park Wetland area. Sketch using pen and Chartpak marker on trace paper. Freehand drawing,
referred to site photo as reference (1.5 hour total). By David Sanabria.
62

8.7
Nogales Learning Center interpretive area. Sketch using pen and marker on trace paper, which was
developed from site photograph (45 minute total). By Nichole Casebeer.
9 Inside out
Illustrating site experience through
drawing
Maria Debije Counts

While new technologies in visualization and design communication are increasingly helpful in generating
new ways for investigating landscapes digitally, as human beings, we perceive the world through our senses.
Sensory-based landscape stimuli affect the primary ways in which humans interact with their environments.
Through analogue representation, emotions can be expressed, phenomena can be explored, and human and
non-human living things can be better understood. By working in analogue, the designer is a participant of
the process of the design thereby directly informing its manifestation. Therefore, despite advances in digital
landscape architecture representation, analogue investigations remain an important aspect of the education
of any future landscape architect who aspires to improve the design experience of constructed landscapes for
people, should we seek to design spaces that can be defined by how we relate to them if we understand that
“all landscapes are a continuum of movement and experience” (Van Valkenburgh, 2018). The selected stu-
dent works in this chapter offer several different methods for employing analogue representational techniques
as tools for exploring the complex dynamic relationships that exist between humans and the environment
through the making process. Examples include recent works from first-year graduate landscape architecture
design studios at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and the City College of New York, in New
York City, organized around illustrating that how analogue landscape architecture representation methods in
the design studio setting impact what is made in how we make discoveries in the classroom.
Analyzing site as a place of interaction – social and ecological – exposes the variability and stresses
the importance of process-related aspects inherent to any landscape designed for people. With assignments
entailing a time-based approach to analogue sketching, the sensatory qualities of the living medium transpire
across the page. As the students touch the paper or plane, for example, they can explore the way that light
moves across a site throughout the day (Figure 9.1) or environmental acoustics and their sources (Figure 9.2)
at a given moment over a specific duration are given a chance of being recorded as material ripe for study and
manipulation. With time as a factor, students sketch with rigor and their perceptions of the physical outdoors
are oftentimes what they draw first. Due to the pressure and the ‘on-the-fly’ nature of sketches conducted
‘en plein air’, students draw what they notice rather than what they remember. Opportunities for revealing
something about what the site does rather than how it looks are fostered; while this approach to site sketch-
ing and observation through drawing shifts the priority of sketching from being about a mastery of drawing
convention and articulation of architectural forms, to focus more on depicting how the site is activated or
informs human experience and in how the site can be understood through sketching in this way. This also
includes recording its physical attributes, which are still a key component. Performative aspects of site are
often revealed and enhance the students’ depth of knowledge about how the site serves its visitors, which in
turn challenge the student to address key issues that elicit emotive qualities in their designs.
Even at the early stages of site reconnaissance, it is important for students to make a personal connec-
tion to what they are exploring so that they can find meaning within them and begin to navigate the complex
process of having a positive impact on them. A hands-on iterative approach to analogue drawing exercises
can help to foster these connections and make a shift from representing a site as a series of features into an
64 Maria Debije Counts

investigation of phenomena and human connections impacted by physical space. One exercise of this nature
asks students to use hand-torn black and white paper strips and apply them physically to the page (Figure 9.3).
Students are personally engaged with the representation of landscape through this additive process. Although
making revisions is possible, unlike the computer where a student can delete or undo, anything changed in
this case will leave a trace behind. This assignment emphasizes craft and the importance of iteration with
incremental improvements over time. It helps students to understand that they are not expected to contrive a
design with one action – and that is OK – and that there is not always a linear solution to design problems in
landscape architecture. To further enhance an awareness of these important lessons, a series of drawing layers
are built from the 2D abstract collage (Figure 9.4). Light, tone and gradient are translated into line and used
to generate grading plans. Through this process, students are given a chance to begin to see and work with
line as having three-dimensional implications. A series of micro-decisions throughout this process beginning
with the collage and ending with a physical model (Figure 9.5 and Figure 9.6) acknowledge how personal
involvement and touch affect the overall outcome of the physical form. In addition, students are more fully
aware of how marks on a page denote two- and three-dimensional qualities and of the fact that the way in
which design is generated impacts what is ultimately generated. This is especially important to remember as
students are introduced to new technologies capable of rendering projects with inherent biases.
Developing an in-depth understanding of an existing site often involves historic timelines of events and
important figures, photographic inventories, and found drawings such as maps and plans. While these forms
of query into existing sites have their merits, surveying a site through an analogue layered approach provides
a level of scrutiny that may present not only a more profound understanding of how a site has come to be,
but how it can be an informant of what is possible for it to evolve into. For example, students exploring site
history and physiographic expression in section through tone, mark, scale, and depth (Figure 9.7), emphasize
and reveal site adaptation, mutation and change over time. These are all important site characteristics that
are not evident from an analysis of the surface or written narrative alone. This approach encourages students
to not only study landscape more comprehensively, but also to advance illustrative drawing techniques in
acknowledging that living things contribute to how things change physicality. Another type of analogue
representation in the classroom is through a cinematic approach how sites unfold as a sequence of experiential
registrations. For example, one such assignment deals with creating stop-motion flipbooks. These challenge
students to visualize the unique moments within a larger process and incorporate playback as an important
element of communication. Registering change or performance over time in this way reveals that sites, like
humans, are not static things. Conditions such as air pollution dissipating across a site (Figure 9.8), or a
closer look into the history of building mass and the manipulation of figure ground in the city (Figure 9.9)
are illustrated as a sequence, not as something fixed. This type of course activity shifts student inquiries from
object to action, from form to progression, and from a finished thing to something happening. The same can
happen for illustrations of proposed sites. For example, a series of perspective images overlaid with projected
soundscapes (Figure 9.10) reveals more about the site than its dimensions. This enlivens the landscape in ways
that encourage students to consider elements beyond traditional materials in their design proposals to design
for a more immersive experience.
It is impossible to cover everything there is to know about analogue representation in one course.
However, with a specific lens focused on non-static aspects of landscapes and how they reveal themselves
over time, students not only advance their representational skills, but are also encouraged to have a level of
inquiry that hopefully inspires them to think through problems using drawings, rather than just represent
them in understanding that as the analogy to the space itself, analogue representation is itself an expression
of ourselves. Inspiring students to draw beyond the physicality of space to what they experience can advance
landscape architectural education in pointing towards representation as the design, not just of the design. This
can also point towards representation to encompass a broader range of voices more reflective of the diversity
in which we relate to the environment and in the expressiveness of them. Communicating individual and
collective perceptions is of the utmost concern for anyone wishing to depict or design in a way that addresses
the complexity of landscapes today, in particular urban public spaces. Perhaps above all, encouraging students
to make discoveries that involve delving into what is hidden about a site can help to underscore that people
and landscapes are dynamic and impact how we relate to our environments and each other in powerful and
positive ways.
 65

9.1
Charcoal sketches. Perspective sketches in charcoal illustrating initial site observations from multiple
elevations. Sketches were timed, each roughly 15 minutes total with an emphasis on recording buildings and
landscape using hard and soft marks of varying pressure to achieve a range of darks to lights to move the eye
across the page. By Yichen Qian.
66 Maria Debije Counts

9.2
Mechanical and biological sound representations in plan and section. Plan and section overlays of park
space generated using stippling and stylized with color; varying distribution of color and mark making based
on total site volume. Section diagrams (top and bottom right) emulate the adjacent plan (left) concept, while
highlighting the differences between exclusively mechanical vs. exclusively biological sounds resulting in
inverse reflections. Drawings done on trace paper with black pen and colored pencils. By Valerie Clarke.

9.3
The presence of light. This collage represents the diverse attributes of a specific site, characterized by the
presence of a constructed object (housing unit), a green implied boundary (row of trees), a semi-private garden
and a luminous sky using paper cut-outs ranging from white to black. Together, these elements create a playful
display of lights and shadows that enhance the atmosphere of the place. The composition attempts to evidence
the direct relationships between these attributes, constructed vs. natural, light vs. shadow and tangible vs.
intangible. By Alexis Arias Betancourt.
 67

9.4
Topographical translations. This assignment explores topography through tone, line and materiality.
Juxtapositions of lights and darks in black and whites communicate a nuanced expression of the accumulation
and disintegration of sedimentary process-driven terrain. First in the series (top left) is a collage of black
and white images, in which tonal differences are translated to elevational changes using contour lines in the
second image (top right), and re-translated in the third image (bottom left). The last image (bottom right)
is an interpretation of the elevation information using short strokes of varied pressure with the side of a soft
graphite pencil on paper. By Anna Speidel.
68 Maria Debije Counts

9.5
From outline to form. The corresponding drawings and model started with a line drawing (left) studying how
a malleable surface can flow across a site. The pencil outline drawing (left) studying composition is refined in
the pen drawing (middle) and amplified with topographical range using specific slope ratios. The drawing series
is then modeled in 3d by hand in cardboard (right) to test how a contour line becomes spatial. By Howard
Zhang.

9.6
Ribbon study. The corresponding drawings and model started with a line drawing (left) studying how
a malleable surface can flow across a site. A pencil drawing (middle) provides an opportunity to explore
surface texture and depth. The work is expanded into three-dimensional form in plasticine clay (right) as a
3D representation of the drawing, sculpturally edited to expand and test alternative design considerations of
height, proportion, and how the composition comes together with harmony. By Sung Park.
 69

9.7
Markmaking in section. These section drawings blend marks, shading, hatching and stippling. The drawings
were influenced by the dynamic forces found below grade to show pushing, pulling, fracturing, blending and
other earth formations. Drawings are done in pencil using a variety of thicknesses ranging from 2H to 8B to
express the grain of textures with variations in size, shade, length and rigidity. By Negar Maleki (top), Uziel
Crescenzi (top and bottom middle) and Valerie Clarke (bottom).
70

9.8
Pollution increasing. This progression represents how pollution from automobiles along a popular pedestrian
college campus sidewalk increases over time. While the piece is a single image, each stage of the collection
of the space is recorded at regular intervals and reproduced in booklet form into an interactive flip book for
viewers to engage in the process. The drawing is made using a stippling effect with varying pencil line weights
on paper. By Dhara Oza.
 71

9.9
Cityscape. The process of Chicago’s growth and development from a natural landscape to cultural epicenter
is suggested through this sequence of 15 drawings made in micron pen on paper. Rather than drawing an
individual building or one specific landscape to record, both are abstracted to instead explore how the city
evolved over time. By Tao Xu.
72

9.10
Sensorial pockets flip book. This drawing series is achieved by tracing rendered perspective screen shot images
from a 3D Rhino model with pencil. Each image is then added to using acrylic paint to represent how sounds
change throughout the proposed spaces and across time within each designed area. The final product, finely
bounded with ribbon, creates a physical flipbook of all images. By Valerie Clarke.
10 Intent and craft
Making refined drawings
Katie Kingery-Page and Alpa Nawre

Creating analogue presentation drawings makes the designer conscious of the visual communication’s
intent and craft. This experience is critical to the early designer, for whom the deliberate act of drawing
is a skill to be practiced to express ideas in tangible form that can be received by an audience.1,2 We
begin teaching analogue drawing in landscape architecture by asking questions on intent and craft,
underlining that the process of creating drawings is a vehicle not just for communicating design ideas
but also for design exploration.

What is the drawing’s intent? Is the drawing symbolic, naturalistic or fantastical?

The intent of a drawing should guide content and craft. We use a three part framework to distinguish
symbolic, naturalistic, and fantastical drawings.3 Though many drawings used in landscape architec-
ture can be sifted through this framework, some ways of drawing can blend or blur these categories.4
The framework is useful for early design students, but not intended as a binding limit.

Symbolic drawings: plans, diagrams, and sometimes sections

The intent of a symbolic drawing is to clearly represent space, spatial relationships, and concepts. All
orthographic drawings are symbolic, as they represent space as it is, but not as we can naturally perceive
or experience it. Measured orthographic drawings are a precise, but not perceptual, way of represent-
ing real conditions. Diagrams use symbols extensively to communicate and visually explain complex or
related ideas. While the vocabulary of orthographic drawings is fairly standard and detailed, develop-
ing appropriate diagrams allows beginning designers to focus on the most important design concepts,
strategies and information to be communicated about the project.

Naturalistic drawings: perspectives and illustrative section-elevations

The intent of a naturalistic drawing is to reveal proposed qualities of place as a person might experience
through the senses. These drawings rely on the familiarity of our everyday perception of the world.
Perspective views, close up texture studies, and even some illustrative section-elevations give us more
accurate impressions and insights into the proposed design. Although sections are primarily symbolic
drawings, if rendered in great elevational detail, they evoke our everyday understanding of how ele-
ments in a view layer to create reality. These drawings can often make a better starting point for design
exploration for the beginning designer than symbolic drawings because they can more easily capture
what a designer envisions.
74 Katie Kingery-Page and Alpa Nawre

Fantasy drawings: dramatic perspectives intended to provoke imagination

The intent of fantasy drawings is to evoke the strange and open the imagination of viewers. Usually
these drawings rely on some realistic perceptual cues to situate the viewer, but also include distorted,
stylized or unexpected elements. This may be the most challenging kind of drawing for the beginning
designer to craft, but is worthwhile as a creative exercise. Not only do these drawings inspire the audi-
ence and open up conversations or possibilities previously unimagined, they are also beneficial for the
designer to explore the arguments, values, and goals embedded in any design. Beginning designers often
struggle to clearly articulate goals and central arguments of design which can be creatively captured
through such drawings.

How is the drawing crafted?

Fine art works (from renaissance masters to contemporary drawing) give students inspiring levels of
craft to emulate and provide examples for discussing formal qualities of a drawing: “artists critically
engage their medium, rather than employ it as a neutral tool.”5 Thus, vocabulary for drawing craft
is drawn from fine art.6 In studio with our beginning students, we study the formal qualities of art-
works. Regardless of drawing media, we ask students to focus on qualities of value, line, shape, and
proportion.

Attention to value (light and dark)

Whether working on monochrome or full color, attention to value development in a drawing is what
creates volume and life. We ask students to begin with the qualities of the paper. If it is a light paper,
it becomes the lightest value that gives the drawing breath. The student can then exploit the potential
of the drawing medium to develop a rich range of value gradation. To develop craft, we ask students
to strive for great value contrast and emphasize form through edge contrast.

Attention to line and shape

Line encloses space, creates edges, and defines shape and form. Shapes occur when line disappears and
a field of value defines boundaries. Students should strive for line quality that is crisp and confident.
In keeping with design conventions, line weights should be used in a hierarchy (fine to heavy) to
imply spatial conditions. Shapes create negative and positive, figure and ground, and are the basis of
composition in a drawing.

Proportion
Proportion is created by the arrangement of shapes in a drawing. Attention to proportion develops
from perceiving shape, which grows through drawing from sight, or observation. Beginning stu-
dents can benefit from practice of using a rectangular view frame to estimate proportions of what
they see—effectively simplifying what they see to basic relationships of size, shape, and position.
We often warm up through a series of quick proportion and value thumbnails (drawn small to aid
in simplification) before attempting a more detailed drawing. Accurate proportion is essential in
naturalistic landscape drawings.
The intent of a drawing and its craft are inseparably connected. If a quick sketch is “the real
time transcription of unconsciously accumulated energy,”7 then a carefully delineated presentation
drawing is its intellectual sister: the initial energy has been tested by intent and developed through
craft. Intent and craft cannot be separated, as the intellectual considerations that come into play when
examining and refining a drawing’s intent are influenced by its craft. Similarly, the craft of a drawing
Intent and craft 75

influences how well a drawing communicates its central argument. And for the beginning designer, the
simultaneous learning of the intent and craft of a drawing enriches the learning process. Iterations and
redrawing for each aspect further push the student’s cognitive understanding of design communication
as a whole. The process of learning drawing craft and developing intention for drawings are mutually
symbiotic and go hand-in-hand, the combined experience becoming more meaningful than individual
learning of either.

Notes
1 Dee, C. To Design Landscape: Art, Utility, and Nature. New York, NY: Routledge, 2012.
2 Grubbs, C. “Drawing Life, Drawing Ideas.” In: M. Treib (Ed.). Drawing/Thinking, Confronting an Electronic Age.
New York, NY: Taylor & Francis, 2008, pp. 100–111.
3 Kingery-Page, K. and Hahn, H. “The Aesthetics of Digital Representation: Realism, Abstraction and Kitsch.”
Journal of Landscape Architecture, 2012, 7(2): 68–75.
4 For example, see the serial drawings of Ponsi, A. San Francisco: A Map of Perceptions. Charlottesville, VA: University
of Virginia Press, 2014.
5 Dee, C. “Plus and Minus: Critical drawing for landscape architecture.” In: M. Treib (Ed.). Drawing/Thinking,
Confronting an Electronic Age. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis, 2008, pp. 60–71.
6 Sullivan, C. Drawing the Landscape. New York, NY: Wiley, 1997.
7 Belardi, P. Why Architects Still Draw. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014, p. 27.
76

10.1
Studies of interaction of hue and value in colored pencils over an ink wireframe. By Aaron Church, Taylor
Hiltjen, and Maggie Brennan, Kansas State University.


10.2
Hand drawn program analysis diagram in ink and markers. By Emily Phan, University of Florida.
77
78

10.3
Hand drawn concept diagram in ink. By Emily Phan, University of Florida.


10.4
Plan and site sections in ink and marker. By Emily Phan, University of Florida.
79
 80

10.5
Plan in ink, marker and colored pencils. By Haley Weinberg, Kansas State University.
 81

10.6
Plan in ink, marker and colored pencils. By Tim McDonnell, Kansas State University.
82 Katie Kingery-Page and Alpa Nawre

10.7
Plan, section, and naturalistic perspective using graphite and ink with various line weights. By August Titus, Kansas
State University.

10.8
Plan hybrid drawing of vector line work, raster shading and ink. By Mackenzie Yeager, Kansas State University.
 83

10.9
Naturalistic perspective using markers and colored pencils. By Grace Mader, Kansas State University.
84

10.10
Thumbnail perspective sketch on site, used to see value and proportion and to quickly capture the quality of
the space. By Rudy Prins, Kansas State University.
11 Notational topographies and
experiential literacies through
constructive drawings
Samantha Solano and Alberto de Salvatierra

Con·struc·tive: adj. Helping to improve; promoting further development or advancement.1

Landscape architectural drawing—a textual medium which is secondary to the actual landscape—can never be
simply and alone a case of reflection and analysis; it is more fundamentally an eidetic and generative activity,
one where the drawing acts as a producing agent or ideational catalyst.2

When we draw landscape, we create meaning. Every aspect of that process then becomes a part of its expres-
sive narrative—from the initial conceit or idea, the methods used to create it, the intention of its final output,
and the multitude of readings and operations it ultimately engenders. We have seen many novel manifesta-
tions of drawing and imaging landscapes that communicate a distinct awareness of limits while introducing
optimistic provocations of potential. Yet, even though in the making of landscape we have witnessed “a
renewed interest in the instrumentality of design—its enabling function,”3 our representations have remained
stylistically focused on the synthesized output—reducing its function to offer only one meaning. Therefore, are
we limiting the interpreted possibilities by focusing on the result represented? If so, is there a way to draw
landscape in an open medium that is descriptive but not entirely defined? And, can the process be the result?
In considering this, what is needed is a reclamation of constructive representations—the “generative” draw-
ings or “producing agents” that are usually left as background narratives prior to the final expression.
In its simplest form, the constructive drawing is a notation—“a coded matrix upon which to design narra-
tives of time and space, enabling one to orchestrate the simultaneity of spatial, temporal and tactile experience.”4
Lawrence Halprin describes notations as scores—which are “process oriented, rather than simply result-ori-
ented,” and are “symbolizations of processes which extend over time.”5 As notations, constructive drawings have
the ability to describe and create meaning, yet they “cannot, nor should they necessarily try to, portray or depict
experience; their function is simply to identify the parts which constitute it.”6 These “parts” can then transform
into a set of nondescript rules, a toolkit of sorts, that become operations, instructions, and speculations that are
iterative, dynamic, and expressive. The constructive drawing therefore is open-ended and indeterminate, nei-
ther revealing the final result nor a singular meaning. In landscape representation, this allows for a new literacy
that is both notational and experiential. Where notations express “moments in time—a crystallization of com-
plex dynamics expressed in graphic gesture,”7 experiences are revealed through individual undefined readings.
Overall, by focusing on the constructive drawing as not only a part of the design process but as the
design itself, this indeterminacy suggests that representations can operate beyond conventional descrip-
tions of space—leaving the final design open to interpretation. Much of the reason for this re-evaluation
of the constructive drawing derives from an overall sameness or misunderstanding of landscape that is often
derived from more traditional notions (and representations) of landscape architecture in places where the
discipline is still young (such as in Nevada). Most reduce its meaning and representations to standard
graphics that describe only one aspect of the landscape (e.g. tree symbols to notate trees), leaving little
for interpretation. Possibly, this can be attributed to the reliance on various digital tools that most often
86 Samantha Solano and Alberto de Salvatierra

self-solve rather than allow for expressive iteration—especially if one is a novice designer. Therefore, in
the design foundation studio at the UNLV School of Architecture, we excised all digital technology and
challenged students to become familiar in their own analogue explorations—instigating a found literacy
through experiencing and drawing site. As such, students were tasked to see landscape as active surface: as
“the functioning matrix of connective tissue that organizes not only objects and spaces but also the dynamic
processes and events that move through them.”8 Moreover, they were to invent a language—a notation—to
describe landscape and its phenomena: time, materiality, occupation, atmosphere, etc. Examples of nota-
tional drawings or representations of typical landscape plans were purposely withheld so that students were
free to devise their individual expression of what they experienced. Through these personal readings, novel
systems were developed and no two were the same, even if they were describing the same phenomenon.
Many described elements of surface materiality, movement of people or cast shadows. However, there were
also some explorations into the speculative aspects of site—the subsurface conditions (roots and water),
and the migration of ephemera (insects, pollen, and sound). The resulting notational gestures served as
the basis for future performative operations in the construction of a new topography—almost as if they
were construction drawings. Each notation signified different procedures such as cut, fill, bore, extrude, and
scrape. Therefore, the notation was the design that could signify multiple readings and experiences.
Ultimately, at the core of this notational thinking and these constructive drawings, analog methods
of production allowed for an unconstrained exploration of ideas. Through the direct use of graphite and
paper, workflows were developed intuitively—allowing for quick and iterative hybrid processes of nota-
tion that described not only sites, but experiences. The scalar feedback between pencil and paper was also
immediate—the size, thickness and tone of a stroke could all be controlled and executed simultaneously
without the usual tempering and editing required when translating drawings from CAD software (such
as Rhinoceros 3D) to “finishing” software (such as Illustrator). Moreover, the motor memory engaged
in direct drawing (and the sketching that informed these drawings), are skills in currently short supply
as recent graduates increasingly give away their agency of production to digital tools and machines. And,
as an introductory process, the constructive drawing immersed new designers into an unbridled arena of
risk taking: students were encouraged to challenge their preconceived notions of landscape and its expe-
riences, and formulate their own narratives through bold imaginations—therefore equipping them with
an iterative literacy on how to think, analyze, and experience landscape and its constructive drawings.

Acknowledgement
We would like to acknowledge both Assistant Professor Joshua Vermillion (with whom we co-taught
the stu­dio that produced the work herein) and Assistant Professor Phillip Zawarus for their contribu-
tions to the student work and studio pedagogy that supported this chapter.

Notes
1 Dictionary.com. “Constructive”. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 April 2018. www.dictionary.com/browse/constructive.
2 Corner, J. “Representation and Landscape: Drawing and Making in the Landscape Medium.” Word & Image: A
Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 1992, 8(3): 243.
3 Wall, A. “Programming the Urban Surface.” In: J. Corner (Ed.). Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary
Landscape Architecture. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999, p. 233.
4 Corner, J. “Representation and Landscape: Drawing and Making in the Landscape Medium.” Word & Image: A
Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 1992, 8(3): 257.
5 Halprin, L. “The RSVP Cycles.” In: S. Swaffield (Ed.). Theory in Landscape Architecture: A Reader. Philadelphia,
PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, p. 43.
6 Corner, J. “Representation and Landscape: Drawing and Making in the Landscape Medium.” Word & Image: A
Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 1992, 8(3): 257.
7 Bowring, J. and Swaffield, S. “Diagrams in Landscape Architecture.” In: M. Garcia (Ed.). The Diagrams of
Architecture: AD Reader. Chichester: John Wiley, 2010, p. 143.
8 Wall, A. “Programming the Urban Surface.” In: J. Corner (Ed.). Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary
Landscape Architecture. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999, p. 233.
Notational topographies 87

11.1
This drawing illustrates the duality of cast shadows of trees during the day and at night from the various street
lights. Using hardline graphics and shading techniques the plan was drafted with various graphite tools on
2-ply Bristol paper, vellum finish. By Yaquelin Lizaola.

11.2
In this expression of site, the notations invented are describing materiality, permeability, and shade. The
textures were created using innovative tools such as a cheese grater and it was drafted with various graphite
tools on 2-ply Bristol paper, vellum finish. By Jorge Medina.
88 Samantha Solano and Alberto de Salvatierra

11.3
This notational drawing is suggestive of the site’s wind patterns, their respective directionality and surface
impacts due to velocity. Careful attention was given to using shading techniques that were created with various
graphite tools on 2-ply Bristol paper, vellum finish. By Jhanna Rae Bordamonte Montimor.

11.4
This representation describes gradients and movements across the site. The notations were free-hand expressed
and drawn with various graphite tools on 2-ply Bristol paper, vellum finish. By Jesse Nava.
Notational topographies 89

11.5
This drawing is depicting the differences of the site’s surface materials. The plan was drafted with various
graphite tools on 2-ply Bristol paper, vellum finish. By Cameron Yetta.

11.6
In this created topography the notations originally depicted the colonizing elements of ants. The plan
and section were drafted with various graphite tools on 2-ply Bristol paper, vellum finish. By Jairo
Fajardo-Arroyave.
90 Samantha Solano and Alberto de Salvatierra

11.7
This illustration portrays varying notational extractions represented through elevation, texture, and varying
degrees of darkness. The use of shading and minimal linework revealed a rich expression where
the plan and section were drawn with various graphite tools on 2-ply Bristol paper, vellum finish.
By Katherine Gonzales.

11.8
In this new topography, the site was imagined from various levels of human speed. The resulting plan and
section were drafted with various graphite tools on 2-ply Bristol paper, vellum finish. By Diane Arista.
Notational topographies 91

11.9
The notational drawing that inspired this designed topography can be seen through the various cut and fill
operations as well as the surfaces that are bored or scraped. The plan and section were drafted with various graphite
tools on 2-ply Bristol paper, vellum finish. By Jorge Medina.

11.10
In this drawing the new site created was interpreted from the sites varying wind patterns. The plan and section
were drafted with various graphite tools on 2-ply Bristol paper, vellum finish. By Jhanna Rae Bordamonte
Montimor.
92

11.11
This drawing illustrates the traces derived from the notational wind patterns experienced throughout the
original site. The plan and section were drafted with various graphite tools on 2-ply Bristol paper, vellum
finish. By Jhanna Rae Bordamonte Montimor.
12 Intermediate-level sketching in
architecture and landscape
architecture
Russell W. Reid

Seeing the world in black & white

One purpose for a refined, intermediate-level sketch is to further understand the form, scale, and
relationship of the subject within its environment. At this level, it is important to know and under-
stand perspective sketching (∗Journaling) and the application of tone, i.e., Shade and Shadows, and
how that works in creating a sense of volume. Tone is crucial in describing the perception of mass
and depth. There are many techniques used for ‘shading’ a rendering, typically, my personal style is
to use hatching or a cross-hatching application. The inked hatch line and cross-hatched line is the
style of rendering seen in the example of work in this chapter. Another style that’s very effective in
field sketching is the Ink Wash. With this approach, I use a water-soluble felt-tip pen to sketch out
the subject then go back in with a small, wet brush over areas of the ink sketch. The water will dilute
and spread the ink much like a watercolor painting. I prefer using a black or a dark blue pen for cre-
ating an ink wash, as the tone will be a dilution of the same color. As mentioned in the reference to
watercolor, the wash is a subtractive method of application with a high-level of transparency, which
means you can build up the shading to make it darker; remember to wait for each level of application
to dry before adding the next.
Intermediate-level sketching is commonly used in field sketching and Journaling. When I was a
freshman undergraduate design student I was introduced to the idea of keeping a ‘sketch journal.’ The
purpose of the sketch journal, I was told, was to jot down my ideas in both written and sketch form.
My first sketch journal was an 8” × 10” hardbound book with blank white pages. I quickly downsized
to an A7 size hardbound book, which is half the size, 5” × 8”, and much easier to handle. It was not
until my first study abroad experience that I realized the importance of journaling. I developed the
habit of drawing everything I saw – sometimes in great detail but most times in just partial detail.
The important thing was that I wanted to study and analyze every subtle detail of what I was seeing,
and experiencing. Intermediate sketching and journaling is not about ‘how to draw’ – as drawing is
the by-product in this sense. The objective of intermediate sketching is to visually analyze a subject,
dissect that visual information into its parts, then filter the information through a process of layering
while reassembling the analyses through the medium of drawing. In this way, intermediate sketching
is about seeing and comprehending all of the parts of what we are seeing, and how to describe that
information through drawing – drawing then, is the deliverable. Refining our interpretive abilities in
seeing and developing our comprehension of light frequency is achieved only through experience. As
with anything, the more experience one has, the better one gets in doing it. The subsequent result of
the experience then, is a greater level of confidence, thus, a higher level of enjoyment, a result not only
94 Russell W. Reid

of experience but also of understanding. In this sense, drawing demystifies the world around us. Since
my first sketch journal and my first study abroad experience, I have traveled the world many times and
have created literally thousands of sketches in dozens of sketch journals (the better journals being very
worn and battered).
Looking and seeing are two different things. I would speculate that many people just look around
at their environment with not much more than a casual observation. Merriam Webster defines ‘look-
ing’ as, “to ascertain by the use of one’s eyes; to exercise the power of vision upon; to search for.” In
other words, to look at something means to gaze your eyes upon or acknowledge its presence. It is
considered as a passive action. ‘Seeing’ is defined as, “to perceive by the eye; to perceive or detect as if
by sights.” It is a more active action. In order to see, not only does one look at the object but he/she also
understands it, perceives it and studies it. Perception means recognizing or relating what the eye sees
with prior knowledge of the object. This means to see is not only just acknowledging it, but also under-
standing it and paying attention to it. It also means to look past just the obvious and actually take the
time to thoroughly comprehend it. This is most common for many kinds of artists and art critics. To
understand drawing requires time & patience and for a person to be open-minded and perceptive to
everything the observational study might be trying to show them. One of my favorite quotes from a
Fortune Cookie is, “See what is before your eyes, and all will be revealed to you.”

The key to drawing is experience

I often equate the importance of the experience of drawing to that of learning how to ride a bicycle.
In my example, I state that I can show you a bicycle. I can then describe every part of that bicycle to
you. I can tell you the complete history of the bicycle perhaps with great acumen; I can even demon-
strate how to ride a bicycle by getting on it and riding circles around you while describing the laws
of motion, balance, and physics! But at the end of the day, did I teach you how to ride a bicycle? No.
Drawing is a verb. It is only by doing that we can come to understand the ‘how to’ part. So,
you fall down, that’s part of learning how to ride a bike. You get back on and keep riding until you
learn to balance and develop your pace. As in riding a bicycle, drawing, with experience, will become
intuitive. With intuition comes a greater focus and higher level of understanding of the subject you
are studying. It seems ironic that as a professor of drawing I can’t teach you how to draw, but I can
teach you how to see by providing opportunities for you to gain intuitive understanding. The drawing
itself then is the byproduct of experience and each new drawing is a little victory toward the whole
‘knowing how to’ part.
Intermediate-level sketching 95

12.1
Tree planter box sketch using pen and ink, various scribbles and hatch lines techniques. By Danning Liu.

12.2
Entry staircase with planter along the railing sketch using pen and ink. Danning Liu.
96 Russell W. Reid

12.3
Shade trees along the sidewalk sketch using pen and ink. By Danning Liu.

12.4
Arched entry to student housing sketch using pen and ink. By Danning Liu.
 97

12.5
Sketch of plan of a water fountain and planters using pen and ink. By Danning Liu.
98

12.6
Circular tree planter box along the sidewalk sketch using pen and ink. By Danning Liu.
 99

12.7
Stairway sketch using pen and ink. By Danning Liu.
13 Fundamentals for hand developed
(re)fined drawings
Miran Jung Day

A hand-drawn landscape architectural illustration is an abstracted expression of designer’s intent and

one of the most effective ways to communicate designers’ ideas with other collaborators and clients
in any setting. Jim Leggitt (2010) stated that hand developed drawings capture “character, personal-
ity, imperfection, and an authentic, one-of-a-kind quality,” which designers always want to express in
their drawings.1 Landscape architects value creative and authentic ideas and try to convey character
and uniqueness of the design ideas into reality. Leggitt (2010) argued that hand generated drawings
could easily communicate the values: originality and character with reviewers.2
Furthermore, it is the most adaptable communication medium in various circumstances, as it
rarely requires any tools or preparation to start. Yet, it clearly delivers the message so that designers
and reviewers seldom have misunderstanding of project ideas compared to verbal discussions. EDSA
(2010) described hand drawing as “easily accessible and understood in any language.”3 Thus, it is
most commonly used in the brainstorming process, design workshops, and charrette settings, which
are critical stages in developing a project’s big idea. Because of their advantages, hand graphic skills in
landscape architecture are still considered as critical skills to have in practice.
However, many students consider that it is not easy to learn, and especially difficult to draw master
plans, sections, and design perspectives. Roehr and Beall (2012) stated that sketching, a popular hand
generated drawing process, is “difficult to learn” and “difficult to teach” although they agreed that it is a
way of embracing multiple aspects of design process.4 One of the reasons it is difficult to learn and teach is
because students’ expectation of their own hand drawings is so high that they cannot see themselves reach-
ing the point of generating a good quality drawing. It is also because instructors, who already have a high
level of hand graphic skills, try to teach students, who have little hand graphic skills, expecting high qual-
ity drawings in a short time. What students really need is to adopt a step by step process towards learning
the fundamentals of hand drawing, to see themselves improving through the process by experiencing and
correcting their mistakes, and to gain fundamental skills for developing high quality drawings.
Teaching in the Landscape Architecture undergraduate program at California Polytechnic
State University San Luis Obispo, I personally have seen many students who desire to draw high
quality plans, sections, and perspectives, yet were not able to advance from field sketching and
design diagrams to refined hand drawings. This is because an important process has been forgot-
ten between field sketching and (re)fined drawing, which is ‘refinement of design ideas.’ Field
sketching and design diagrams are the initial process of generating design ideas while (re)fined
drawings are representations of a design concept, which is developed from the refined design
ideas. Drawing without organized design ideas (refinement process) means telling a story without
a plot. I always tell them to refine the design ideas and use them as a base for the concept before
starting a (re)fined drawing.
Hand developed (re)fined drawings 101

Once the concept is set and ready for a site plan, section, or perspective, start the drawing
with design graphic fundamentals: proper measurement of the concept, good line quality, space mak-
ing, and then practice. Figures 13.1, 13.2, and 13.3 illustrate the process of the students refining
design ideas to plans with standardized measurements of roads, paths, proposed programs on
site with pencils, adding materials with proper sizes and textures and entourages to visualize the
designed spaces, and rendering the plans using markers and colored pencils to capture design
characteristics of the areas.
Proper measurement. Unlike other types of drawings such as diagrams, field sketches, final illus-
trative drawings need to have proper measurements of design. Drawing a master plan or section with
proper measurements is one of the most difficult parts of drawing high quality (re)fined drawings
because it requires basic knowledge of standard measurements in the landscape architecture industry.
It is a tedious and long process and, because of that, students are easily inclined to give up before their
skills are developed. The purpose of drawing refined plans or sections is to deliver a designer’s intended
message. Delivery of accurate information with proper measurements is critical in illustration. By
drawing an illustration with proper measurements, reviewers will not only understand the functional-
ity of design such as circulation and use of spaces, but also comprehend proportions, compositions,
and character of designed space.
Line quality. Line weights, line definition based on design intent, and line consistency. Drawing
lines with various line weights and consistency is a fundamental skill for drawing successful fined
drawings. Depending on importance and level of details, lines on a drawing should have a proper
hierarchy of thickness. It is important to determine line weights to be used for a drawing before the
drawing is started: fine (0.01–0.1mm pen thickness), medium (0.4–0.5mm pen thickness, and thick
(0.8mm–1.0mm pen thickness), and bold (1.5mm–2.0mm pen thickness). It is important to have
the noticeable gaps between line weights to be clearly visible of design intent. In addition to the line
weight, it is important to draw lines with consistency. Drawings with proper line weights and consist-
ency tend to be perceived as clear and well-organized. Many of the drawings included in this chapter
demonstrate the line quality with hierarchy-different line weights based on importance of design ele-
ments and consistency of lines and dots on hatching and stippling.
Space making. Details of landscape materials, entourages, and site furnishings. Students at Cal
Poly SLO are always encouraged to practice drawing details of soft and hard-scape materials, and effec-
tively use them as part of space making. Many students are surprisingly not aware of how important
it is to consider materials with textures, sizes, colors, etc. before beginning plan and section drawings.
They play a significant role in creating the character of space and offer information of how new created
space would feel. In addition, entourages such as cars, people, and site furnishings could bring the
drawings to life. Drawings with landscape materials and effective use of cars, people, or site furnishings
on a plan, section, and perspective can help guide the reader towards understanding the space.
Practice: similar to any other skills, hand graphics requires constant practice to improve the skills
once the fundamental drawing process is understood. Students at Cal Poly SLO are encouraged to
start with red or blue pencil to figure out measurements and add programs, landscape materials, and
entourages. This process is a great way to see the development of their ideas, and convert them to a real
design. It is also a great way to practice and test various media. The students are also encouraged to use
3D computer programs such as SketchUp, especially for perspective drawings. Many students spend so
much time and effort figuring out viewpoints of their perspectives rather than actual development of
their design in perspectives. By using a quick SketchUp model, the students frame their design scenes
with a proper viewpoint for their perspectives. Another advantage of a 3D model framework is that it
is an easy way to examine various viewpoints before drawing a scene.
With the fundamentals and technologies available, students are well situated and capable of
developing good quality drawings. Keep in mind a good quality illustration is clearly delivering its
intended message.
102 Miran Jung Day

Notes
1 Leggitt, J. Drawing Shortcuts. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2010.
2 Ibid.
3 EDSA. EDSA Graphics. Ft. Lauderdale, FL: EDSA, 2010.
4 Roehr, D. and Beall, M. “Envisioning Landscapes.” In: N. Amoroso (Ed.). Representing Landscapes: A Visual
Collection of Landscape Architectural Drawings. New York, NY: Routledge, 2012, p. 166.
Hand developed (re)fined drawings 103

13.1
Site plan drawing process shown. The drawings show refinement process of a design concept being prepared
for a site plan. On the right is the initial blue line process with correct measurements and materials (soft-scape
and hard-scape). On the left is the inking process considering line hierarchy based on design importance and
character. By Tyler Ellison.

13.2
Rendered site plan. Markers and colored pencils were used to express design character. In addition to
the colors, drawing contexts and contour lines; entourages (people, cars, etc.) help the concept be more
understandable. By Tyler Ellison.
104 Miran Jung Day

13.3
Master plan drawing process drawn. Top right corner: initial design diagram and rough concept was refined
to a site plan using correct/standardized measurements. Middle right: based on the correct measurements,
vegetation, topo lines, texture, etc. were added to express character of the space. Bottom: markers and colored
pencils were used to quickly express various environmental conditions on the master plan. By Emilio Uranga.

13.4
Site plan. It is important to draw lines with consistency and neatness when crafting a large-scale plan. The plan
also shows clear hierarchy of line weights based on design concept. The boundary edge dash lines represent the
property line. By David Jamesson.
Hand developed (re)fined drawings 105

13.5
Section-elevation, Top: the section-elevation was drawn with proper measurements and design elements using
a colored pencil. Bottom: the drawing was inked using various line weights and added colors on the back of
the trace paper. By Wenji Tan.

13.6
Section-elevation. Adding quick colors using markers and colored pencils could richly develop the drawing and
express the mood of space. By Amy Sublet.
 106

13.7
Top: section-elevation drawing using ink. It is important to keep consistent line quality drawing a section-elevation. Bottom: colored section-elevation. Design
elements and details are added to express design character while coloring. By Tyler Ellison.
 107

(continued)
108 Miran Jung Day

13.8A and 13.8 B

Perspective drawing development of a quick SketchUp model with a selected viewpoint (Figure 13.8A) and
then used as a base to draw a perspective (Figure 13.8B). By Breanne Alton.

13.9
Perspective drawing. A blue pencil was used to develop a perspective and refine it with pens. By Tyler Ellison.
 109

13.10
Rendered perspective drawing. Colored markers are used on the back of an inked perspective drawing on trace.
By Tyler Ellison.
14 Understanding landscape and
drawing ideas
Elizabeth Mossop

An exploration of analogue drawing in contemporary landscape architecture forces us to think about

the disciplinary context. As designers, we are concerned with visual matters and visual information.
Historically drawing has dominated our modes of communicating about this visual material, but with
new technologies changing the nature of our disciplines especially around the visual, the role and
nature of drawing has also changed. It remains central to both education and practice in landscape
architecture, but what we value in drawing is very different from what it was 20 years ago.
The common idea that visual intelligence is separate from other forms of intelligence and somehow
lesser than higher order conceptual thinking seems a false distinction, and one that contributes to the
deep-seated idea in our culture that the visual, aesthetic and sensory aspects of things are somehow of less
significance than their other characteristics. This seems to me one of the fundamental problems of how
we value places and objects in the world and something that continues to stymie the design disciplines.
It also seems to lead to the fallacious conclusion that design is some kind of magical process through
which great architecture or design is conjured from sketches and scribbles. Kathryn Moore’s brilliant
essay on the role of drawing in design suggests a pragmatic view that all thinking is both interpretive and
metaphorical and that whatever we are doing, whether it is reading a book or looking at a drawing, we
are using the same thinking processes. These processes are particular to each individual, based on our
experience, knowledge of the subject, and familiarity with the medium. In this mode of thinking draw-
ing becomes a means of exploring and working out ideas.1
While it may or may not be a separate form of intelligence, visual thinking is real and is
exemplified by doodling and exploratory and speculative drawings and diagrams. In design pro-
cesses the use of conceptual drawings and diagrams is an essential part of problem solving. These
visual techniques are part of a range of tools that we can use to explore design problems. At differ-
ent stages of the process, the nature of the drawings changes; from conceptual diagrams or sketches
in the early stages of a project, to studies that test scale or materials as designs are resolved. Equally,
verbal exploration of issues through description and narrative, or the analysis of site and social data
can all contribute to our ability to think creatively. Being more articulate about the visually based
processes that we use, and being able to clearly describe their utility and value are important in
dispelling the misconceptions around visual and aesthetic value.
We have traditionally been taught to draw in the service of representing what we see or imagine,
and the drawing has been valued for how accurately it conveys the appearance of the scene or object.
In the practice of landscape architecture, analogue drawings are now rarely used to represent the form
of a finished landscape. That can be done more effectively through digital means; three-dimensional
models, photo-realistic renderings, and virtual reality all provide more sophisticated representations
Understanding landscape and drawing 111

of landscapes than can easily be drawn by hand. As the need to draw physical reality has receded, the
conception of what is good drawing is moving away from ideas of craft and skill and this forces us to
evaluate drawings for their purpose and intention.
In this context, analogue drawing has become more explicitly a tool for creative and analytical
thinking and for communicating about ideas. That said, the process of learning to represent land-
scapes – the examination of material quality, the concentration on the shapes and texture of plants, a
focus on how light and shadow works with form – all contribute to an understanding of landscapes
and their manipulation. The idea that the close landscape observation required by drawing leads to a
better understanding of landscapes is a familiar theme of landscape pedagogy. We believe that drawing
can be used to strengthen visual skills and landscape understanding. The nature of drawing by hand,
in which every mark is the result of a physical choice, is intrinsically curated or shaped by the drawer.
This process of editing and abstraction can inform the drawer about the subject and about possibilities
for its future.
In our foundation programs we use drawing processes as a medium for understanding landscape
more deeply and through a range of analytical tools. The project examples used here are from a first
year class in Landscape Communication taught by lecturer Louisa King in Spring of 2017 at the UTS
School of Architecture.
Students collect site data and visual imagery through photography and drawing on site. The
process of methodical recording of sites forces time spent on site, as well as immediate site experience
and different image-making techniques force people to look at the site in different ways. For example,
a transect exercise where students take a plan view photograph every step, drives a particular examina-
tion of the ground conditions and a specific experience of the place.
After constructing a “Hockney-esque”2 photo montage from these images of the ground, stu-
dents then translate the transect images into drawings constructed from line-work and hatching. The
intention of this process is to train them to look deeply and with focus at a landscape while making
the transposition, which illustrates the process of selection and abstraction inherent in the drawing.
The exercise also presents a secondary value, apart from as a heuristic tool for landscape com-
munication. As the drawing production is time-consuming, it presents a vehicle for students to
communicate and bond through the exercise of drawing (especially successful for first year students).
The drawing is intended to take many hours and provide a space for conversation between group
members where values and idea about landscape can be discussed and debated through drawing.
Working in studio in later years, iterative drawings are used as an intrinsic part of the critical
conversation between supervisor and student. The example used here is from an undergraduate thesis
studio taught by Professor Penny Allen in spring 2017 and the project is by Josh Gower. The series of
drawings, generated over the course of the semester, moves from whiteboard sessions, to a set of draw-
ings that map out the final presentation, to the final presentation images. In the early drawings black
indicates what is there and red indicates what could be there.
After a lengthy research phase, and extensive discussions about the project issues, the whiteboard
conversation is used to draw out the students thinking. The project has a complex site in Brewarrina,
and complex issues involving an indigenous community. The student is tentative and scared to commit
to a design strategy. The whiteboard is an excellent tool because it is low stakes and no risk. According to
the student, “it clarifies, but I also suspect you [the supervisor] are getting me to draw things you know
are there but I can’t quite see yet.” The process of drawing makes visual a shared vision of the approach.
Following reflection on the whiteboard conversations the student comes back with the storyboard
which includes eight drawings that correspond with potential presentation panels. The storyboard
shows “I finally realize where I am going with this project.” It articulates the idea from an earlier
conversation in Brewarrina where Josh was told “it’s not about doing anything big . . . it’s more about
readying the ground.”
112 Elizabeth Mossop

Each of the eight images shows strategies at different scales for readying the ground:

1 Listening: establishing the larger context of the Murray Darling Basin and the data and mechanics
of water extraction.
2 Tracks: mapping the water and food economy over time from research into nineteenth century
indigenous agriculture.
3 Truth of the land: mapping red and black soil and locations of where billabongs and lakes would
have been based on soil and geomorphology.
4 Landscape painting: technique developed by the student using satellite imagery to transpose
(through Photoshop painting) similar undeveloped landscape systems onto existing satellite
imagery in Brewarrina to understand land pre-settlement.
5 Readying the ground: using Lidar data to determine where land will flood and therefore where
new ecologies and agricultures might develop.
6 Significant sites: landscape painting at a smaller scale to look for significant sites.
7 Bringing back canopy: refers to potential for water storage as a long-term management strategy for
river and the process over time.
8 Storing and releasing water: transfers process from context in seven to plan.

When you look at the final project drawings, you are able to see how this process has informed the
design proposition.
Our aim is for landscape architects in training to be confident in drawing in whatever way is
going to be most effective in exploring and communicating ideas, rather than being focused on earlier
ideas of what comprises good drawing. With the ubiquitous availability of information, and the move
away from educating people to achieve mastery of specific knowledge domains, we are seeing a much
greater emphasis on the flexible thinking skills facilitated by this approach. So the role of visual and
drawing techniques in creative problem-solving and the understanding and development of these tech-
niques becomes more significant. The potential is there for these modes of working to become much
more influential beyond the design professions.

Notes
1 Moore, K. “Between the Lines: The Role of Drawing in Design.” In: TRACEY: drawing and visualization research.
Loughborough: Loughborough University, n.d., www.academia.edu/29685586/Between_the_lines_The_role_
of_drawing_in_design.pdf.
2 Referring to the photographic collages of iconic British artist David Hockney, also known for his bright vibrant
paintings, inspired by the pop-art movement.
Understanding landscape and drawing 113

14.1
Students create a photographic site transect and then translate the images into lifework and hatching. Transect
by Hugo Haskard, Rudrakhya Midya.

14.2
Students create a photographic site transect and then translate the images into lifework and hatching. Transect
by Yalun Zhang, Zirao Chen, Weixua Yin and Meixu Liu.
 114

14.3
Students create a photographic site transect and then translate the images into lifework and hatching. Transect by Hanyi Zhang, Zixuan Jin, and Zhan Zhang

14.4
Elizabeth Mossop

The transect exploration drives an experience of the site and an examination of very specific landscape conditions.
Exploration by Matthew Walker.
 115

14.5
The whiteboard storyboard drawing exercise articulates each key idea as a drawing. Storyboard by
Josh Gowers.
116 Elizabeth Mossop

14.6
Landscape “painting” of textures over drone imagery conveys an idea of the potential future healthy landscapes.
Landscape Painting by Josh Gowers

14.7
This sectional perspective image translates the earlier diagram into a realistic landscape. Readying Ground by
Josh Gowers.
15 Analogue fields
Adrian Hawker, Elinor Scarth and
Tiago Torres-Campos

Landscape architectural practices that avoid, sometimes even reject, deliberately and actively, prede-
fined boundaries that may inform a site, are left with landscape as possibility, potential, and specula-
tion. But sometimes these exciting conditions also bring about indeterminacy or ambiguity.
Landscapes without boundaries may escape conventional representations of apparent precision,
such as cartographies and aerial photographs, and require sophisticated design methodologies capable
of detaching themselves from binary choices of right or wrong, to progressively approach degrees of
appropriateness. These design methodologies achieve desirable clarity and coherency when they also
benefit from distinct fieldwork activities that potentiate direct engagement with the landscape. As a
complement to other investigative exercises, these activities can make use of techniques and tools that
contribute to more immersive encounters with and in the landscape. Equally, they reinforce design
ideas by facilitating the exploration of, and experimentation with, spatial and temporal specificities
such as change, materiality, atmosphere, or performativity.
Initial ‘on the ground’ fieldwork evolves into a studio based process of representation where mul-
tiple sets of concerns are at play. Understanding this process as the development of another kind of
fieldwork with the representational matter itself as a form of field allows us to delay the distinction
between that which is analytical and that which is proposed. Inventive modes of representation animate
the ground forming a series of dynamic operations where multiple combinations work across a range
of appropriate scales that are capable of structuring and empowering the landscape. They reinforce its
identity, strengthen its metabolisms, and eventually add value systems of stewardship, protection, and
care. Their necessary dynamism contributes decisively to their complexity, in the same way that it would
be difficult for us to imagine a painting challenging its own canvas and the frame that supports it.
Stan Allen, in his essay, Field Conditions (1999) defines the term ‘field’ as follows:

To generalize, a field condition could be any formal or spatial matrix capable of unifying diverse
elements while respecting the identity of each. Field configurations are loosely bound aggregates
characterized by porosity and local interconnectivity. Overall shape and extent are highly fluid
and less important than the internal relationship of parts, which determine the behaviour of the
field. Field conditions are bottom-up phenomena, defined not by overarching geometrical sche-
mas but by intricate local connections. Interval, repetition, and seriality are key concepts. Form
matters, but not so much the form of things as the form between things.1

Spatial propositions tend to emerge within a process of negotiation, strategy, and opportunism. They
draw from a field of influences that oscillate between concerns with varying degrees of intuition, strategic
118 Adrian Hawker et al.

thought and wit – the agility of the analogue rather than determinism of the digital. Landscapes that
cannot be forcefully circumscribed within clearly demarcated sites escape readings that try to convey
them as linear organizations with beginning, middle, and end. Instead they require focused ways of
looking – or lenses – that complement and conceptualize our direct encounters into possible ways in to
the landscape. Ways in do not necessarily presuppose entrances, gateways, or thresholds; instead they
formulate sensibility, attitude, and criticality.
While open, these ‘ways of looking’ are highly structured, framed, calibrated, and influenced
by moments within the land itself. So, like Deleuze and Guattari’s observation on the map, they are
“entirely orientated towards an experimentation in contact with the real.”2 They develop a certain
intellectual and poetic ‘thickness’ that does not reveal its meaning too quickly. They engage us in an
evolving dialogue rather than merely illustrating their findings. They offer a procedural process rather
than a closed diagram. Often such works require us to describe them in performative terms: ‘it’s a
game’; ‘it’s a machine’; ‘it’s a map or chart’; ‘it’s a drawing device’; ‘it’s an optical device’; ‘it’s a counter-
balance’; ‘it’s a set of tools’; ‘it’s a cabinet’; etc.
The word ‘field’ has numerous meanings and associations. At its most basic notion, it is a word
to describe the cultivated skin of the planet. It is fertile, yet its productivity is best achieved through a
constant process of working – tilling, furrowing, rotating, aerating, and compacting. This is a process
that yields what is intended – the crop or harvest – but also can disinter the unexpected, an archaeol-
ogy of finds or, indeed, a forgotten corpse.
Field refers to the thick substance of the ground, not just its surface. It has a mineral wealth, it
is the description of the quarry, the source of this wealth – oilfield, coalfield. Similarly, it refers to the
nature of a particular environment, a natural characteristic such as a snowfield.
The surface of a field is where gameplay takes place. The playing field is structured, orientated
and measured yet within this structure seemingly infinite variations of the game unfold. The field is
calibrated – but the play is open. We are not committed to predetermined results – we are constantly
engaged in acting out a variety of possibilities.
For science, the term field describes the region of space in which one object exerts force on
another. When reading a drawing as a field we do not necessarily need to make concrete the represen-
tation’s lines and forms. Instead, we are invited to see each of these marks as a prompt or a body that
exerts an influence over a particular space or territory. It is this influence that helps inform an attitude
and position that registers landscape. Sometimes we may judge it to be appropriate that an element,
or series of elements, suggested by a field operation be made ‘real’ in an eventual proposition, that it
should retain form, but this is one decision within a range of possibilities. The field work is analogue
in that its looseness allows room for manoeuvre.
Analogue not only serves a desired design attitude of thinking through making and crafting, but
it also prolongs the immersion of our bodies and minds in the landscape. Activities such as walking,
contemplating, searching, collecting, foraging, and performing under the sky are extended into bod-
ily explorations of drawing, modelling, devising, composing, projecting, and performing under the
roof. Field activity therefore moves from a short duration of slow and cautious meanderings into an
extended period of action that negotiates a more complex form of spatial navigation. The slow pace of
the foot is replaced by the agility of the hand as it operates in the field of the ‘representational archive’.3
Under the pressures that studio based field work inevitably generates in its successive steps, analogue
techniques are a way of remembering material and topographical conditions, colour, structure, and
grain. Or at least resisting against the oblivion that could result in degenerative and detached banalities.
Things are inevitably loose, gestural, and open as the narrative of a place begins to reveal itself
through making. A variety of concerns emerge but the hierarchy of their relevance remains undetermined.
To pin things down too quickly is to close the seams of information and discoveries that may yield impor-
tant thematics that will later articulate an appropriate and considered propositional response. Instead,
Analogue fields 119

we enter a process of drawing and re-drawing; modelling and re-modelling, making and re-making – a
material repetition where each iteration is different, a re-orientation of concerns. No matter the media
employed, this process of making is inevitably analogue – each drawing or construct is unique and its
value determined by its difference to its predecessor and any subsequent draft.4

Acknowledgement
We would like to acknowledge the artist Victoria Clare Bernie regarding her collaboration with the
Island Territories field work development.

Notes
1 Allen, Stan. Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999,
p. 92.
2 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum Books,
1987, p. 12.
3 Dorrian, M. and Hawker, A. Urban Cartographies. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2003, p. 9.
4 Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 1936.
120

15.1
Island Territories ii: Venice – Lagoon Atlas. A journey across the Venetian lagoon to Murano is recorded
through a series of incremental drawings that register the field of vision from the viewpoint of the helmsman of
a boat and the apparent repositioning of cultural artefacts caught within this shifting visual field. The drawings
are collated into the form of an atlas, the wooden binding of which forms a table – another form of mapping
that sifts and grades the sands dredged from the lagoon floor. The sands are then ordered according to the
fabrication requirements of the historic Murano glassworks. By Laura Barr, Emma Garland, 2012.
 121

15.2
Island Territories iii: Faeroe Atlantic – Klaksvik Table. An ambitious array of tunnels now connect the majority
of islands that form the archipelago of the Faeroes. Townships such as Klaksvik which have developed around an
orientation to the sea – the historic point of arrival – are now approached via a semi-agricultural hinterland. The
Klaksvik Table maps this inversion and the consequential restructuring of landscape hierarchies through a form
of gameplay. The oak table is inscribed to receive a forest of copper rods and silk threads into which historic lines
of movement are negotiated. Four elements are offered to the table as ‘players’ – each an oak and wax cast section
through landscape of the fjord. By Oliver Bywater, Kris Gratz, Emily Nason.
122

15.3
Island Territories iii : Faroe Atlantic – Klaksvik Table – Fjord Casts
The oak and wax cast sections through the landscape of Klaksvik. The wax is pigmented by black basalt sand
brought back from field investigations. The sand is introduced into the wax as a form of material drawing. By
Oliver Bywater, Kris Gratz, Emily Nason.
 123

15.4
Island Territories i: Valletta – City of Exiles, A model is developed out of a field of drawings to explore the
empty spaces within the nineteenth century extension to the historic Maltese capital, Valletta. These voids
within the urban landscape are scars formed during the Second World War siege of Malta. The model
explores the spatial potential of re-animating these landscapes through the re-articulation and re-calibration
of the historic limestone fortifications. This process of modelled drawing develops a field and grain that hold
constructed references to many of the cultures that have sought refuge on the island. The model is treated as a
new ‘map’ into which propositions can be offered. By Daniel Burt, Sam Dawkins, Ben Olschner, Pan Wang.
124

15.5
Island Territories i: Valletta – City of Exiles. A distillation of the City of Exiles model into four new landscapes
that explore the programmatic potentials of theatre, exhibition, sport, and transportation. By Daniel Burt, Sam
Dawkins, Ben Olschner, Pan Wang.
Analogue fields 125

15.6 and 15.7

Island Territories iv: Nicosia – Diachronic Garden. The ‘Green Line’, the United Nations patrolled Buffer
Zone established between Turkish occupied north Nicosia and the Greek Cypriot south, appears clearly
demarcated on maps and city guides. The reality on the ground, however, is far looser, far less clearly defined.
Does the edge of the no man’s land occur at the barricades, the broken walls, the vacated ruins or the dense
vegetation that has taken root through five decades of abandonment? The drawings and models of ‘Diachronic
Garden’ operate within the Buffer Zone’s ambiguous margins and draw upon the cultural layers, the memories
of previous inhabitants, and the study of the seasonal flora and fauna that has slowly taken hold within this
guarded landscape. By Sarah Comfort, Chiara Fingland.
126 Adrian Hawker et al.

15.8 and 15.9

Island Territories iv: Nicosia – Thalassophilitos. Thalassopholitos refers to the ‘littoral’ – the liminal tidal zone
between land and sea. This modelled mapping of the no-man’s land that cuts through Nicosia, separating the
Turkish occupied north from the Greek Cypriot south, acknowledges this land as being in a state of perpetual
anticipation – always expecting a reunification that seemingly never comes. Far from being truly empty,
the Buffer Zone holds mineral wealth, arable land, and the occasional village that resisted the conflict and
subsequent abandonment. Like the littoral zone of the island’s edge, this inner edge is in a state of flux. Things
get washed up here, emerge from the depths, and are negotiated into place. By David Dawson, Mahdhav
Sarna, Andri Orthodoxou.
 127

15.10
Transitions and thresholds – from base map to ‘memories map’.
Fieldwork activities to encounter the complex landscape of The Calanques National Park, near Marseilles,
included walking. The group comprising four graduate students defined three main walks through which
they could establish relationships, affection, proximity, and pressure between the city of Marseilles, to the
northwest, and the park. During those three walks, students collected material from points that would
coincide, in their perception, to meaningful transitions and thresholds. Upon return, personal and collective
memories and experiences were abstracted into personal representations, and subsequently calibrated onto the
base map to create a ‘memories map’. By Honor Reekie, Theoni Zompola, Joshua Going, Yatong Jiang.
128

15.11
Taking things seriously: The flaneuse’s political ecologies. A flaneuse personified in The Calanques National
Park aimed to bring nuance to this landscape’s affective qualities through recording and representing the
vibrancy of physical matter. She focused on her encounters with three actants on site: bauxite, quarried
limestone, and Agave americana. Intentionally seeking to draw out the thick, messy, political, and rhizomatic
constellation of human–material relations, the political ecologies of the three actants afford insight into the
scales of time, space, and power that shape the landscape. The collection of drawings aims to perform as discrete
glimpses into the spatio-temporal complexities of the landscape in a state of becoming. By Molly Gordon.
16 Land types and models’ forms
The art of represented models in middle-
scale landscape architecture
Chen Jieping

Design requires an analogue process to facilitate imagination. This approach is adopted throughout
the whole process from design concept to implementation. Site model is one of the most common
media that helps us “see the big world through a smaller one”. It also shows the site structure, trend,
atmosphere, explores the potential and enhances our imagination.
For landscape architectural design, there is a specific content that needs to be revealed as
landscape design sites require more careful efforts. Most sites do not require drastic deviation but
should comply with the consolidation and repair to eventually show a special look through local
re-molding and re-connection. But for different scales, operation modes of the medium can be
quite different.
The design of a landscape with houses, hills, trees and stones in a site of about 10,000 m2
(one-hectare) can be referred to as a medium scale design. The size of a site is different from the large
scale of land, basin and city, or the small scale such as a building courtyard. The size of a building is
different not only from the high-rise buildings, but also from the accessory ornament in the scenic
area or park. Sites and buildings in such a scale may be a boundary of three-dimensional landscape
space pondered using an entity model. Only the “masterplan” with larger scale is considered a better
medium. Then how do we operate such model types to help with the design?
The existing private gardens in China provide a useful reference, which is the model of “seeing
the big world through a smaller one”.

Potential: scale and density

The scale of model adopted for the site accordingly suggests the extent to which the media can present
the site information and characteristics.
One-hectare equals 15 mu (1 mu = 666m2) or so. In Chinese tradition, a dozen to several dozens
of mu happens to be the scale of a garden. In many existing private garden relics of the Ming Dynasty
in Suzhou, the Lingering Garden is 30 mu(20,000m2), Master-of-Nets Garden is 10 mu(6670m2), and
Surging Wave Pavilion Garden is exactly 15 mu(10,000m2) in scale; 30 percent are architecture and
70 percent are garden.
The scale of landscape suggests a state of close cooperation between man-made and nature. The
detail resolution on the site is so high that it cannot be ignored. The density of buildings, roads, spot
reservation traces and so on are superimposed on the site’s original terrain. Other natural conditions
present a highly inlaid form, which also contains the latent potential of the site as well as the alterna-
tive development trend.
130 Chen Jieping

How are these pieces of information introduced hierarchically to different stages of design
in model operation? There are different scales from 1:1000, 1:500 to 1:200 and beyond. The ter-
rain model in the abstract pixel form, the scene model mixed with a variety of synthetic materials
(comprehensive media), as well as the clean model adopting the same material for buildings and
sites, they all have their respective roles. However, they have adopted different attitudes towards
the site information density.

Character: site-types, texture and atmosphere

In the Ming Dynasty, Ji Cheng divided garden land into six categories in Chapter Looking for/
Observing Site in the book Craft of Gardens. The categories are named mountain-site land, urban-site
land, village-site land, country-site land, villa-site land and lakeside land.1 The effects of site types on
landscape design were distinguished, which lay in the atmosphere and artistic conception. The differ-
ences in views, the distance from the city or nature, the convenience of transportation, the plant type,
the lifestyle and so on created different atmospheres and contained the site potential as well.
Keen awareness and fast operation are required for grasping the atmosphere. Hence, hand sketch-
ing and photographing are usually the optimal tools. But site model has its own advantage that it can
create a three-dimensional holistic perception. The key is to choose suitable synthetic materials for
easily getting started quickly. Such model may be quite inaccurate formally, however, it is endowed it
with infinite potential thereof.

Observation and output

In such gardens, neither architecture nor landscape take an absolute advantage. Therefore, the figures
and background are equally important in the model. The bird’s-eye view is just as important as human
visual observation.
The bird’s-eye view focuses on the overall site: It looks at which elements are selected as the figure,
and which elements as the ground? What relation between figure and ground? Is it clearly separated, or
merged together or as the Chinese saying goes, “I’m part of you and you are part of me”?
Human visual observation facilitates the representation of the local space and landscape sequence,
with the highest requirements for the accuracy of model building, which can even be expressed by a
large-scale sectioned model.
In short, models help us with the perception of imagination of sites. They are helpful not only
with the representative final-models but also with the sketch models that can reflect upon and develop
the work methods and design tools.2 Thus, the production of models itself also requires imagination
as well as rational analysis.

Notes
1 Cheng, Ji. Craft of Gardens. Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press, 1988. The version of translation comes
from Stanislaus Fung and Ge Ming.
2 Vogt, Gunther. “Between Search and Research.” In: G. Vogt (Ed.). Distance & Engagement. Baden: Las Muller
Publishers, 2010.
Land types and models’ forms 131

(continued)
132 Chen Jieping

16.1a–16.1d
Teahouse in a park (scale: 1: 100). Bird’s-eye view and perspective are both important here. Emerald and
brown oil painting pigments are painted on corrugated paper to demonstrate the ups and downs of landform.
Sewing needles are used to simulate the constructing rods. Wires are used to simulate linen ropes connecting
bamboo structures, producing light and shade effect of the site; white cardboard arrays are used to simulate
the floating needle and awn vegetation; different colors of wooden pieces simulate various hard floors; verdant
branches simulate the roofs, and the dead branches are used to simulate the current ‘firmiana walls’, stressing
the nearly parallel growth of trees with large intensity, embracing the site like walls.
The model is as a means to record the development of the concept from the beginning to the end through the
manufacturing process, and to discuss the mutual integration of the light and shade in flowing time as well as
the coastal diner surrounded by a circle of tree walls in the changes of seasons and day and night. By Li Hao.
 133

16.2
Teahouse in a park 2 (scale: 1: 100). The motif of the site is abstracted and developed, the original land form
is simulated with sketching paper, while the stones of the site are simulated with black and white eraser. The
pond shores and the falls are simulated with staples of the staplers, iron wires are bent to form the architecture
structure, cardboard and wooden boards demonstrate the architecture and hard floor. The relationship of the
trees is simplified here, stressing the difference of the entrance space. By Liu Binyu.
134 Chen Jieping
 135

16.3a–16.3d
Tourist and community center by the city wall (various scales). Here, cotton is used to represent the soft
atmosphere of vegetation on site, the black thread hints at the topography and paths, strong contrast with the
city wall in grey cardboard. Hard Lego blocks imitate the buildings extended from the retaining wall, stockings
imitate the tensioned membrane structure to keep the soft atmosphere of the site.
The final model using the cascade of frosted glass to express the soft, hazy texture of the original site,
contrasting with the hard gray cards that shape the solid functional building blocks close to the streets. The
rational structure of the white fine rod frame provides a transition from the hard solid to the gentle curve.
Light irradiation, glass outlined the curve wrapped, wandering in the structure, building and the environment
together to build a conflict between the soft dream of coexistence. The collage of digital model and the solid
model photo show the location of site between the city block and the historical wall. By Xie Qizheng.
136 Chen Jieping

16.4a–16.4b
Tourist and community center by the city wall (various scales). Clay was used to convey the understanding
of the site topography in an abstract manner. By manipulating the clay surface, the original geological
information was preserved as well as moderately modified. During the course of development, a paper model
based on the triangle motif was applied in an attempt to recall the ambience of the site whereby the city wall
has been bestowed with a sense of history as well as power.

In the final edition of the model, wooden board was utilized to conclude the city wall and the original
urban environment. White platinize as well as white artificial grass pallets were applied to give a sense of
the topography. The outer layer of the building was made of white paperboard while the inner part used
wood, another kind of grass pallete whose particles were much finer were applied to the outer layer so that
the architecture could blend into the natural environment as well as stand out in a harmonious way in that
the inner wood color emitted a modest glow, forming a gap within the site while transforming from urban
surroundings into a natural environment. By Shi Huiwen.
 137

(continued)
138

16.5a–16.5b
Corner at SEU campus (scale 1:200). The models use all kinds of forms and materials including thick
millboard and trace paper, clay, and vegetation. 16.5a by Xie Yuchen and 16.5b by Zhai Zhiwen.
Land types and models’ forms 139

16.6a–16.6b
Corner at SEU campus – Hill of Freedom (scale 1:300). White paperboards piled in an arranged sequence
successfully expressed the curved roof. The “iso-height-liked” texture breaks down its scale, which also creates a
kind sense of dimension. By Xue Wenyu.
17 Modeling ecologies
Raw materials and conceptual optics
Simon M. Bussiere

The role of life is to inject some indetermination into matter. Matter is nothing more than the deposits of life,
the static residues of actions done, choices made in the past, unfolded actions already on the way to becoming
something else.
(Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution 19111)

As landscape architects, we are asked to solve environmental “problems,” often in the form of designs
and the subsequent construction of what regularly amounts to static elements inserted into the land.
Yet we face an ever growing and increasingly challenging set of dynamic environmental conditions
beyond our control, from sea-level rise to atmospheric carbon-based pollution at a global scale. By
enabling the detection of key spatial and circulatory arrangements across a variety of surfaces and
conditions, the applied methods explored in my studios help to demonstrate that those multi-layered
systems in the land relentlessly change over time, accruing and self-modifying in often indeterminate
ways. In practical terms, this form of anticipatory learning is arguably largely deficient in some design
curricula, despite being so well suited to contemporary landscape architecture education – a pedagogy
mutually linked so directly and simultaneously to both the arts and sciences.
In contrast to some conventional landscape studios which tend to focus more or entirely on
representation and less on working with tactile landscape media, my students engage physical materi-
als in pure analogue to enable the sensing of physical forces in nature; learning to distinguish between
intention and reality, with concrete, measureable and objective veracities to gain a greater under-
standing for the landscape and its inherent instability. We deliberately integrate creative and technical
processes with a focus on simulations as early-integrative learning tools, rather than as post-design
rationalizations.
Core landscape architecture education more broadly involves the study and use of a variety of
drawing and modeling techniques to generate visual records of ideas, analyses, and to explore a set of
creative processes and workflows. As a relatively new field of study, landscape architecture education
largely draws on pedagogical models from more classical arts and sciences such as biology, geography, etc.
and more recently developed fields including landscape and urban ecology for analyses methods, while
also relying heavily on representation tools and practices from architecture – the plan, section, elevation
and perspective – to communicate ideas. While those fields in the so-called hard-sciences often engage a
laboratory setting to gather data and test hypotheses, students of landscape architecture have the studio.
In the landscape architecture studio, we reinterpret and reinvent techniques borrowed from
other older professions and areas of the academy in an ever-expanding array of novel and hybrid meth-
ods. In Land Mosaics, Richard T.T. Forman describes “a rich palette of techniques is used by landscape
Modeling ecologies 141

(architects) and regional ecologists. Some, such as remote sensing, geographical information systems,
landscape-scale macro-experiments, and spatial modeling, have rapidly expanded our knowledge and
horizons.”2 Further, “geologists, astronomers, and physicists are often eyeball-to-eyeball with large
complex objects where experimentation is difficult. Yet these detectives of nature have made great
advances by linking observable phenomena to existing first principles or basic theory.”3As Forman
explains, we lean heavily on only a few (often digital and abstract) tools from other fields to develop
an understanding of landscape.
In teaching his students about core principles of landscape ecology at Harvard’s Graduate School
of Design, Forman defines a model as “the simplification of a complex system to gain understanding.”4
His simple yet elegant definition situates two important and distinct issues addressed in this essay:
tactile simplification toward tacit understanding, and the rational or logic-based diagnosis of design oppor-
tunities within complex large-scale systems. Generations of landscape architecture faculty and students
have followed Forman in modifying visual and analytical processes in the design studio, breaking
down and categorizing the land and its constituent materials into legible and discernable patterns for
the sake of recognizing their broader relationships.
Reinforcing the necessity for early introduction of such foundational concepts, James Corner
states that

the process by which ecology and creativity speak are fundamental to the work of landscape
architecture. Whether biological or imaginative, evolutionary or metaphorical, such processes are
active, dynamic, and complex, each tending toward the increased differentiation, freedom and
richness of a diversely interacting whole.5

He argues convincingly that ecological comprehension is a fundamental challenge in the training of

landscape architects. Corner’s assertion crosses from the theoretical to the pragmatic. In his 1997
essay, Ecology and Landscape as Agents of Creativity, he illustrates that

landscape (architecture) is not only a phenomenon of analysis, but is more significantly some-
thing to be made, or designed. The landscape architect is very much interested in physically
manipulating the land to reflect and express human ideas about nature and dwelling therein.
After all, landscape architecture is not simply an ameliorative or restorative practice, but is more
precisely a figurative and representational art.6

This challenge to re-center focus on the visual and sensorial qualities of landscape – with borrowed
methods of simulation and synthesis from both science and art – offers a persuasive framework and
underpinning for the landscape architecture studio.
Running within that framework, my studios extend this argument into the classroom, chal-
lenging students to read fine and course-grain patterns in nature while fostering design research
through analogue experimentation and optical instrumentation. Testing and probing first-hand
with physical, non-representational material including water, soil, plants, bacteria and yeast, stu-
dents learn to recognize fundamental dynamic patterns and processes. Traced through a series of
critical projects that demonstrate learned anticipation of key temporal aspects of environmental
systems more broadly, the projects track material changes, each with their own unique time frame,
within complex and dynamic natural systems. Analogue models, photography, video and subse-
quent diagrams and other drawings break down the composite accretion of material[ity] in each
experiment enabling a replicable form of open-ended exploration and, due to the infinitely scalable
nature of the mediums used, provides corollaries with and reflective discoveries of material arrange-
ments in much larger systems.
142 Simon M. Bussiere

Notes
1 Introductory quote chosen at the start of this essay from Bergson, H., Mitchell, A. (trans.) Creative Evolution.
New York, NY: Henry Holt, 1911, pp. v–vi. This book inspires much of my teaching philosophy and encourages
a deliberate creative and technical interaction with physical patterns and processes in the design studio.
2 Forman, Richard T.T. Land Mosaics: The Ecology of Landscapes and Regions. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University
Press, 1995, pp. 29–39.
3 Ibid.
4 I quote Forman directly here from a lecture in his 2008 Landscape Ecology class at Harvard Graduate School of
Design.
5 Corner, J. “Representation and Landscape: Drawing and Making in the Landscape Medium.” Word & Image: A
Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 1992, 8(3): 265–275.
6 Corner, James. “Ecology and Landscape as Agents of Creativity.” In: G.F. Thompson and F.R. Steiner (Eds.).
Ecological Design and Planning. New York, NY: Wiley, 1997. Reprinted in N. Lister and C. Reed (Eds.). Projective
Ecologies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Design; New York, NY: Actar Publishers, 2014.
 143

17.1
Structural landscape study. The form originated as a structural project generated from systematically punching
holes in the surface to create rings or massive “pipes” like that of the bone structure. These rings are rigid
enough to span across the existing piers. By Clint Johnson, Washington University in St. Louis.
144

17.2
Cloth tessellations. By holding a loose curve within two or more control points – in this case, cloth, held by
pins – one can begin to appreciate the variability of a wave. When that flexibility is controlled by the strategic
placement of sewing needles that serve as anchor points to control and impact succeeding actions. This exercise
conveys that one action impacts all others and that one cannot exist without the other. A piece of cloth and an
assemblage of sewing needles amount to the generation of surfaces inspired by fluvial morphological change.
Crumpling reveals that one action impacts the rest and that other succeeding actions or events are impacted
by the first move. Also this exercise gives great perspective into morphological change. By Jonathan Quach,
University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
 145

17.3
Lofting wood grains. This surface model studies how wood grain results from systematic and repetitive layers.
In the case of tree growth, each line is a ring formed over a year of development. For this model, the focus is
on key control points and on spans in between. A complex curve is generated by pinning down thin strips of
cardstock at terminus points where tangents intersect. By Clint Johnson, Ball State University.
146

17.4
Yeast pattern studies. This exercise generates a simple dough assemblage by first mixing flour, yeast and water.
Once the dough begins to rise, it expands and forms a structural pattern comprised of substantial hollows and
solid masses. These patterns reveal locations where sugars and yeast interacted. Gravity, ambient temperature
and moisture content are other significant formal or operative descriptors that help shape the dough. By Melise
Nekoba, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
 147

17.5
Yeast pattern studies. Lofted surface models from a yeast exercise trace key formal attributes of dough. By
Melise Nekoba, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
148

17.6
Soil pattern and stamp studies. Taken directly from a range of sites, these stamps mark the variety of common
surface conditions found for soil in the Mānoa valley. A small white square canvas is applied to the surface,
then removed to reveal a micro-topography left from the sample site. Even on these small samples, the
variability of possible patterns ranges dramatically. By Diane Moore, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
 149

17.7
Layered site model. This thickened spatial model of an abstracted site drawing identifies intersections between
key programs. There are several individual parts/prosthetics that merge distinct geographies together, but they
become camouflaged when added to the full composition. Each piece goes through a series of operations to
relate it to an adjacent component. By Clint Johnson, Washington University in St. Louis.
150

17.8
Lofting studies in hillshade and control vectors. This digital image is traced and modeled directly from an
analogue analysis of a coastal site. The computer generated hillshade can be changed quickly to simulate
anticipated transformation of site topography. By Jonathan Quach, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
Modeling ecologies 151

17.9
Planetary simulation laboratory. The site plan involves the extraction or masking off of regions of the immediate
site. These fragments are represented in linear bands and reorganized and reoriented as a patchwork back across
the same site. The site is divided by a 25-foot-tall levee. This process pulls landscape conditions from both the
wet and dry side of the levee to unite the two sides. By Clint Johnson, Washington University in St. Louis.

17.10
Site fragments study. Fragments of a site-analysis are nested together based on formal similarities, using density
of line/poche, and color to emphasize key features. By Clint Johnson, Washington University in St. Louis.
18 A kiss over a tweet
Operating a snow academy to scale
in a cool climate
Dietmar Straub

Some may think that the digital revolution of images would have rendered hand graphics and physical
models obsolete, but to me it seems to be the opposite. The analogue and its digital imitation have
experienced a renaissance, and with the benefits of digital technology it is even more advantageous
than ever before.1
The search for alternatives to the world of immaculate renderings has just started, and ironically
some software developed for attaining perfection or hyper-realistic imagery, now aspires to achieve the
flawed imperfect look. Breathtaking worlds of digital imagery have become a commonplace and have
reached a high degree of saturation. They have long since ceased to be a guarantee of success in terms
of ‘standing out’ from the masses of competing image producers.
The ongoing process of digitalization, with Fab Labs popping up like mushrooms, led to a strong
countermovement toward analogue and tactile techniques. Educators and professionals recognize that
traditional communication methods have retained their value in the development of excellent designs
and their representation. Not due to reasons of ‘nostalgia’, but rather because these indispensable tools are
still present and esteemed in the everyday life of spatial designers in education and professional practice.
The imperfect touch is now considered ‘sexy’. Freckles, an elegant mole, or a small tooth gap
have such a seductive and strong effect that even top models capitalize on these decorative defects.
This trend has gathered further momentum generating the questionable beauty practice of crookedly
applied artificial canine teeth.
Physical models out of plaster, epoxy resin, wax, salt, sugar, fire, water and snow all have wrin-
kles, scares, scratches, wounds and uneven cracks. Anyone who has tried pouring, melting, ramming,
squeezing, punching, battering, or chopping a landscape out of these materials knows the result may
bear failure and imponderables. Constantly changing states of aggregation is a method of invention
that provokes uncontrolled and unexpected surprises. Liquefying, melting, softening, freezing, or pet-
rifying keeps the material in motion, and results in a chipped, cracked, brittle and imperfect execution
leading to an abundance of rich problem-solving opportunities. In my opinion, this is a more desir-
able, suitable and truthful achievement than any ‘supermodel’ that lives off clean data or clean cuts.
Defects and flaws are part of our daily life, and to integrate that perception is more honest and accurate
than binary perfected representation.
The work of landscape architects is focused on the distant future, and the designers must be able
to envisage the projected space before the ‘foundation’ can be laid. Working with tactile models on
the 1:1 scale is a classic way of extrapolating ideas. A model is “visible spatial thinking with heuristic
qualities: It can be used to seek and to find solutions for design questions but it also can raise new
questions.”2 Incorporating unpredictable and erratic changes allows for the merit of failure as a ‘differ-
ent way of thinking’.
A kiss over a tweet 153

The work of landscape architects takes place in the real world, but their architectural models
are typically a miniaturized version of the existing or envisioned reality. Working with a 1:1 full-scale
model supports my intent to make spatial design faithful and genuine, not just real. As soon as a model
gets built to the 1:1 scale, the perception of the model shifts and is placed into question. The profes-
sional standard ‘idea – model – concrete object’ is reversed. First the concrete space is shaped at the 1:1
scale followed by scale model, site plan, and detailed drawings. The students and their designs benefit
from the precise examination of the real conditions of a place, and the intensive interaction with the
applicable design factors. To illustrate this process and style, I shall refer to a design studio I taught
recently at the University of Manitoba.
In Winnipeg, we live in a climate where our calendar is comprised of nine months of winter
and three months of bad skating. My teaching therefore strives to facilitate an understanding of local
conditions, risks and opportunities, while developing a flair for the splendor of snow. Students learn
through experience how humans have developed infrastructures and techniques in order to survive in
this extreme climate. What could be more suitable for upcoming landscape architects than to study
this ‘cool’ environment in a Snow Academy?
“The physical substance of what is built has to resonate with the physical substance of the
area. . . . Material and construction have to relate to the place, and sometimes even come from it.”3
Our building material for the Snow Academy was snow that the prairie winter produced and threw
out that year. Initially it was gathered from parking lots on campus due to the fact that this building
material is cheap and abundant. The snow was then poured on a riparian clearing adjacent to the Red
River hibernating in its frozen bed. On the 1:1 scale the students worked on a set 40-meter long ellipse
radiating elegance and acting as the white heart of the academy. A ‘seeding field’ of columns, as well as
a generous ‘dining room’, complemented the silent yet telling setting.
During the day, the sun acted as a splendid landscape painter by casting shadows on the snowy
white canvas. Upon night fall, the students lit up the dark with colorful shadows making lasting
memories and fiery discoveries. Thirteen bonfires in a late April night was our way of bidding fond
farewell to this fleeting landscape.
I typically ask students to build hand models with great attention to craftsmanship and to pro-
vide ample time for exercising due care. Constant rigorous reflection and precise observation skills
demands intensive physical interaction and presence. Shaping, stepping back and refining is a way of
dialoguing with the models and can result in either acceptance and success, or rejection and the open-
ness to start over from scratch. This slow process of becoming is an almost magical experience, with
students typically becoming very proud of their physical models as they emerge in three dimensions.
Maybe this is due to the fact that the models are being touched and formed with their own hands. This
is common sense: ‘a kiss over a tweet’ always trumps, even in a digital world.
We must be open to unexpected findings, unpredictable outcomes and accidental creations. Flaws
and failure can lead to the unearthing of important matters and brave new worlds such as the discovery
of America by Christopher Columbus, the X-ray by Wilhelm C. Röntgen, and the curative effects of
penicillin by Alexander Fleming. Chance, accidents and faults combined with coincidence, curiosity
and delight in experimentation teach us that the disposition to fail is the ultimate measure of success.

Notes
1 Straub, D. and Thurmayr, A. “Tactile Models Carved by Binary Numbers: Connecting Digital and Physical
Design Methods.” In: E. Buhmann, S. Ervin and M. Pietsch (Eds.). Peer Reviewed Proceedings of Digital Landscape
Architecture 2013 at Anhalt University of Applied Sciences. Berlin and Offenbach: Herbert Wichmann Verlag,
2013, pp. 40–47.
2 Vogt, G. Landschaft als Wunderkammer. R. Bornhauser and T. Kissling (Eds.). Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers,
2015, p. 233.
3 Zumthor, P. Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, 2010, p. 99.
154

18.1
Observatory. Using a base image at a scale of 1:1000, table salt is used as a medium for the morphological
design of the site. Many objects are used but in particular rulers, forks, knives and straws – essentially common
objects along with bare hands. This technique is useful as it allows the designer to both visualize and perfect
their work in three dimensions and without relying on software. It allows designers to add or subtract with
relative ease and at a low expense. While applying this method we found it helpful to continuously take
photos. By Sean Gallagher, Blaise Lachiver, Andrew Schlukbier.
 155

18.2
Pouring a snow academy. First, a negative mold was produced out of styrofoam by a CNC milling machine.
Then, the mold was framed with wood and covered with a polythene sheet. Finally, plaster was mixed and
poured into the mold. After a thin layer of poured mixture, blue gridded fabric was put into the plaster to
reinforce the model. After 4 hours drying time the entire piece was flipped over. The wooden frame and the
styrofoam mold were removed to reveal the finished product. After its unveiling the result was mesmerizing.
By Caitlin Brock, Samantha Brodick, Ian Cheung, Claire Davis, Ellen Enns, Matthew Hagen, Jane Hilder,
Genevieve Mead, Kathleen Nicanor, Zaenab Saeed, Matthew Sawatzky, Jessica Suter, Neda Uddin, Dale
Wiebe, Wei Zou.
156 Dietmar Straub

18.3
Snow academy on the 1:1 scale. The task was a full scale model made out of snow and ice. Initially the snow
was gathered from parking lots on campus and then poured into a riparian clearing as a 40-meter long ellipse.
After two days and nights in extreme cold (–25 C and below) the snow was compact enough to start sculpting.
Stairs, ramps, stages, spectator terraces, sky seats and slides were carefully carved out of the elliptical block
of snow and ice. A field of pillars and a cove completed the spatial ensemble. By Caitlin Brock, Samantha
Brodick, Ian Cheung, Claire Davis, Ellen Enns, Matthew Hagen, Jane Hilder, Genevieve Mead, Kathleen
Nicanor, Zaenab Saeed, Matthew Sawatzky, Jessica Suter, Neda Uddin, Dale Wiebe, Wei Zou.

18.4
Snow academy in flame. The ellipse reminded us of a dragon mast-headed Viking ship and thus we thought
it fitting to introduce fire to the site. With movie scenes of Viking funeral pyres in our heads, we lit small fires
in the snow eclipse and let them melt their way into the snow. Long exposure photographs captured students
bringing fire from one fire pit to the next, creating dramatic flame trails that wrap around the ellipse. By Caitlin
Brock, Samantha Brodick, Ian Cheung, Claire Davis, Ellen Enns, Matthew Hagen, Jane Hilder, Genevieve
Mead, Kathleen Nicanor, Zaenab Saeed, Matthew Sawatzky, Jessica Suter, Nead Uddin, Dale Wiebe, Wei Zou.
A kiss over a tweet 157

18.5
Pouring a landscape. A laser cut model made out of millboard as the mold for the plaster model. Next, a
wooden frame was built around the millboard model in order to hold the plaster. Next, a thin plastic sheet was
laid over the millboard model and was smoothed out by slightly stretching the corners. An electric mixer was
used to mix the plaster, once the mixing stopped the plaster had to be poured over the mold immediately. As
the plaster is being poured, the sides of the mold had to be tapped in order to prevent air pockets within the
plaster model. By Joie Chan, Pearl Yip, Heather Scott.

18.6
Positive negative positive. A 3.5 feet x 4 feet site model of the Rat River in the prairies of Manitoba at a scale
of 1:1,500. From left to right is a laser cut model made of millboard, an inverse plaster model casted from
the laser cut model, and a final plaster model casted from the inverse model. By creating the inverse model,
it created opportunities to experiment by visualizing the site in an abstract way where rivers became hills and
ditches became ridges in the landscape. This method of visualization became an important tool in revising the
final site plan. By Joie Chan, Pearl Yip, Heather Scott.
158

18.7
Negative positive topogarphies. The process involved several steps, including the creation of a laser cut
cardboard model using the inverse of the site topography. On the left, the inverse plaster model casted from
a laser cut cardboard model. On the right is the final plaster model casted from the inverse plaster model.
Model size: 3.5 feet x 4 feet, model scale 1: 1,500. Both the existing and proposed topography were visible on
the models. The finished ‘landscape’ provided an incredibly elegant overview of the topographic layout of the
design intervention. By Joie Chan, Pearl Yip, Heather Scott.
 159

18.8
Cast light and topography. In order to produce the plaster model, a mirrored and inverted cardboard
topographic mold was necessary. Placed within a sturdy wooden frame, the cardboard model was lined with
a thin plastic sheet and synthetic mesh for structural stability. Once the plaster and water mixture had been
poured, agitated and cured, the mold was removed to reveal the modeled terrain with subtle anomalies such as
bubbles, creases and folds mimicking similar imperfections in the landscape. The purity of the plaster surface
allowed for experimentation with shadow and light conditions and the effects of placing various interventions
among the terrain. By Darko Sajdak, Janis Leighton, Garth Woolison.
160

18.9
Traces of hand-made work. The existing topography was casted out of one solid plaster block. The proposed
topography was carved into this white ‘stone’ using custom tools. The skin of the surface was crafted with
shallow incisions and marks left by the artisan work on the hand-poured plaster. By Lia Abolit, Curtis Krul,
Sarah Cloherty.
 161

18.10
Plaster plan. First a landscape model was carved from a solid block of hardened plaster. Subtle landscape
terraces were modeled separately from cardboard and inserted into the plaster topography. Both existing and
proposed topography were made visible on the model. A sequence of colorful strips was painted on canvas
representing a diverse pasture landscape in the Prairies. Photos were taken and pinned on the wall as a 2D
print. By Lia Abolit, Curtis Krul, Sarah Cloherty.
19 Modeling ideas
Landscapes as representational systems
Zaneta Hong

Landscapes are open and mutable systems that are continually in an exchange of energy and mat-
ter. This exchange activates and sustains the biological, ecological, and human-influenced processes
that form, inform, and transform our constructed environments. To intervene in these dynamic
processes, landscape architects engage in the spatialization of energy and matter first and foremost
through the deployment of representational models. The outputs of these models allow for the
simulation and visualization of landscapes as tangible systems, and ultimately interventions that
would be materialized into the physical realm. The disparities between the real landscape and its
model – itself the product of a set of design decisions – reveals what information is valued and how
it is interpreted. However exact these decisions may be, representational models are nevertheless
limited due to their abstractions and generalizations of the systems and scales that they are meant
to portray. Unlike their modeled analogues, landscapes systems are biotic and abiotic in nature,
simple and complex in computation, and not fixed to any particular time frame or bounded to any
finite territory. How we approach these issues of variability and complexity with time and territory
requires a greater mandate on the range and extents of observational and operational regimes applied
by landscape architects; and with expanding urbanization, the intertwining of existing frameworks
with new, and substantial alterations and augmentations to re-constructed landscapes, this enquiry
has become a much more explicit and rigorous undertaking to improve, refurbish, and enhance with
new models and modes of representation.
Although the task of responding to these circumstances resides with many of the spatial design
disciplines, landscape architecture in particular has an accountability to purposefully contextualize and
evaluate these indeterminate and latent processes; and to find ways to communicate these elaborate
and expansive amounts of information through modeled ideas. As environmental, socioeconomic, and
cultural imperatives move landscape architecture practice towards more responsible, responsive, and
effective design solutions, generating employable and reciprocal relationships between representational
frameworks and the intricate systems and environments they depict challenges the premise of how
these products were conceived and manufactured in the first place.
New media and cultural theorist, Lev Manovich identifies two considerations for a representa-
tional model’s capacity to extract information and new forms of knowledge. He emphasizes that rather
than asking what information is conveyed in a representational model, the question instead should be:
What is the capacity of a representational model to convey those sets of information; and more impor-
tantly, how does the portrayal of the system’s logic and operations reveal inaccessible information? In
other words, what information does a representational framework communicate in its compressed
translation? And what information is not communicated or missing from the act of translation and
Modeling ideas 163

reduction? This is the one percent that Manovich refers to when he states, “We throw away ninety-nine
percent of what is specific about each object to represent only one percent – in the hope of revealing
patterns across this one percent of objects’ characteristics”1
If our observational domain is determined by a capacity to collect information, then the opera-
tional domain is defined by the discourses, techniques, and technologies that amass or act upon
that information. As more information is made accessible to the observational domain, it becomes
increasingly concomitant to its focus of inquiry; however, this positions greater liability to the opera-
tional domain – and the tools that instrumentalize, incorporate, and organize it. To any degree, the
purpose still remains the same – to provide a clear strategy and measured tactic towards organizing
information into relevant and corresponding sets of relationships, which as a whole or in part,
attempts to re-make an environment with necessary reductions of complexity and manageable for-
mats towards realization.
As new sets of information are integrated into a representational model or framework, novel
design interventions can be derived. It is through the creative design process and the production of
representational models that we as landscape architects can translate conceptual ideas (the intangible),
and synthesize sites and systems with material, structural, and dimensional specification (the tangible).
Information when it is conceptualized, integrated, and applied as a focus of inquiry unto itself, allows
landscape architects to move beyond conventional frameworks of representation; and by extension
afford greater fidelity to these sites and systems that we communicate to clients and larger audiences.
Although landscape architecture derives agency as a projective practice through its ability to
simulate and materialize descriptions of alternative and future environments, we as a practice will
always be tamed by the limitations of modeling with time and space. We are confined by graphic
conventions and building codes; and upon closer examination, are limited by the ways in which we
schematize form.
To compete with these limitations requires a reformulation of both the observational and oper-
ational domains landscape architects have to analyze and intervene, and to the ways in which we
conform and institute the profusion of information that is collected and visualized. As society’s reliance
on empirical information expands further into the design disciplines, conceptualizing and construct-
ing representational models that bear semblance to their origins become pressing issues not just for
landscape architects and planners, but for policymakers, strategists, specialists, and the like.

Note
1 Manovich, L. “What is Visualization?” 2010, (pp. 5–6). Web. 6 January 2015. http://manovich.net/content/04-
projects/062-what-is-visualization/61_article_2010.pdf.
164

19.1
Material explorations & mechanical operations. Students can explore material properties and techniques
with inexpensive modelmaking materials; in this case, regular bond paper, before advancing to heavier
Bristol paper or cardstock paper. The transition to a thicker ply sheet material asks students to reinforce
formal decisions with definitive design intention and greater confidence, while simultaneously developing
modelmaking skills and an attention to material craft (i.e. calibration, tolerance, accuracy). Explorations in
mechanical operations (e.g. aggregating, entangling, folding, interlocking, laminating, perforating, waffling,
weaving) are performed to generate basic geometries that would ultimately develop into landscape form and
simulated material effects including light and shadow. By multiple students at UVA.
Modeling ideas 165

19.2
Mechanical assemblages: surface models. Students further articulate their formal studies with an expanded
series of operations and programmatic potentials. Multiple iterations are necessary to mediate the students’
design intentions, and their translations into surface-based information – from a two-dimensional modelmaking
material to a three-dimensional spatial expression. By Wahaj Chaudhry, Sophia Chesrow, Sara Douglas, Sam
Gillis, Kathleen Hanley, Amy Jiang, Angie Jo, Julian Avery Leonard, Henry Li, Chris, Liao, Katja Lierhaus,
Emily Lowe, Valentina Lyau, Heather Mauldin, Matthew Ricotta, Jihyun Ro, HooIn Linda Song, Stella Tu,
Liesl Ulrich-Verderber, John Wang, Sherrie Wang, Matthew Wong, Gianina Yumul.

(continued)
166

19.3 and 19.4

Mechanical assemblages: cross-sectional models. Cross-sectional models can concurrently represent
orthographic projections in two- and three-axis. This modelmaking technique can explore material properties
and effects including concepts of porosity and density. Figure 19.3 by Francesco Buccella, Sam Gillis,
Katherine Ingersoll, Angie Jo, Samia Kayyali, Katja Lierhaus, Benjamin Lopez, Heather Mauldin, Matthew
Ricotta, Jihyun Ro, HooIn Linda Song, Stella Tu, Liesl Ulrich-Verderber, Sherrie Wang, Gianina Yumul.
Figure 19.4 by Samia Kayyali.
Modeling ideas 167

19.5 and 19.6

Mechanical assemblages: volume models. In the selection of a modelmaking medium, whether soft or hard,
flat or solid, transparent or opaque, a physical model can evoke various interpretations of design intention
and material effect. One of the challenges of working with a flat modelmaking material such as paper is
taking a two-dimensional artefact and transforming it into a three-dimensional spatial volume. Figure 19.5
by Francesco Buccella, Sophia Chesrow, Sam Gillis, Samia Kayyali, Emily Lowe, Valentina Lyau, Heather
Mauldin, Matthew Ricotta, Jihyun Ro, Whitney Thornburg, James Thurm, Stella Tu, Liesl Ulrich-Verderber,
Lauren Verdine, John Wang, Gianina Yumul. Figure 19.6 by Emily Lowe.
168 Zaneta Hong
 169

19.7, 19.8 and 19.9

Field patterns & site strategies. Models can represent field patterns and site strategies for performative
landscapes, simulating material systems and environmental processes including geological and hydrological
effects, i.e. ebb–flow, erosion–accretion, freeze–thaw, etc. These models attempt to visualize a process of
material (in)formation as merely a singular state, a fixed time frame, an episodic phenomenon, so that the
designer can reveal an opportunistic moment where experimentation, play, speculation, and as result, a design
opportunity can occur. Figure 19.7, 19.8 by Chris Liao; Figure19.9 by Yufan Gao.
170

19.10
Material systems. The student’s model investigates a material system of solids and voids to speculate
alternative aggregates for groundcover porosity. By Eleanor Birle.
20 Making parts and pieces
Paul Russell

This essay reflects on model making as an analogous exercise to construction and an iterative process
of exploration, essential to understanding the nature of materials, and revealing the potential of form
and space as designed elements that compose the built environment. In Peter Zumthor’s, Thinking
Architecture, he writes that “construction is the art of making a meaningful whole out of many parts,
and that, the real core of all architectural work lies in the art of construction.”1 As a design educator,
I am interested in the process of making models as tools for exploring the potential of materials and
form—as making is an essential catalyst for innovation and understanding.

Materials
Materials selected within the built environment vary in physical properties, dimensions and strength
ratios, and how they respond to environmental conditions such as climate, soils and atmosphere. In
addition, materials also reflect cultural and aesthetic values and norms, often implying complex con-
cepts such as longevity and permeance, as well as monetary expense and refinement.
Figures 20.1 to 20.4 represent a series of iterative design investigations, exploring the elemental
and compositional potential of concrete. Using plaster of paris as a viable and cost-effective substitute,
the unique characteristics of concrete emerge as both a fluid medium that becomes defined by form-
work and as a stable and strong solid material providing structural stability.
20.1 explores the important process of adding water to the substrate to establish a suitable fluid state
capable of taking the shape of another object, otherwise simply known as a casting. The process requires a
series of trials and errors on behalf of a student until the optimal ratio of water and substrate react and the
medium becomes fluid. Most errors are not revealed until after the chemical reaction has completed and
the liquid compound has cured. Often with initial efforts, the media binds to the cast and will not release,
leaving a rigid mess stuck within the formwork. Through this hands-on process, the student realizes how
important it is to have the “right” ratio prepared in order to have a successful outcome.
In subsequent experimental studies, students explore the potential for concrete to take the form
of a designed negative space within the volume of a simple cube. Building on the previous lessons
learned, the focus becomes the properties of the formwork itself during the curing process. In turn,
the complexity of negative space increases as the familiarity and comfort with the medium and various
form materials used grows. Rudimentary and blunt spaces are developed into precise, rhythmic articu-
lations of the formwork itself—creating a complex series of studies each increasing in responsiveness
as the understanding of the nature of the various formwork materials increases. For instance, digitally
fabricated Plexiglas molds create the smoothest surface and most likely result in a clean and consistent
form release, while absorptive molds tend to have weaker structural integrity and are more difficult to
separate from the cured form.
172 Paul Russell

Earthworks and interventions

‘Plastalina’ clay and chipboard models (Figures 20.5 to 20.8) become analogues for earth, soil and,
in turn, reveal the potential of actual landforms. The malleable nature of Plastalina enables the con-
ceptual study of form, space and slope without being bound to a precise scale or hindered by detailed
constructs. As intuitive to manipulate as Pla-Doh, the forgiving nature of the media is liberating and
lends itself to design experimentation.
Slicing through a specific plane, the sectional profile is revealed with a new projection that
articulates landform typology, slope, providing the experiential qualities of the newly emerged form.
Through taking simple survey measurements from the model, a conceptual study quickly becomes a
useful tool for estimating volumes for soil cut and fill, slope percentage, circulation accessibility, and
run-off data. Detailed measurements and recordings of a constructed abstract model translate to spe-
cific contour data that can be mapped and developed into more specific and accurate studies.
As the modeling media transitions from malleable to rigid, so too does the interpretation of
the model, and its value as a communication device. Whereas Plastalina is intended to represent an
abstract landform, the precisely drawn and laser-cut chipboard models represent the literal interpreta-
tion of specific contour data complete with their values and signatures. In contrast to the Plastalina,
rigid cut models quickly reveal imperfections and technical issues at a glance. This transition from
abstract landforms to precisely constructed models is an essential step for students to understand the
iterative process of the parts and pieces that compose the larger, constructed landscape.

Character, scale and space

Depicting the character, scale, and the potentials of space is at the very essence of our work as design-
ers. Communicating in a three-dimensional spatial language is aesthetically compelling but it is essen-
tial when establishing authority to make an argument. Developing such communication skills requires
tremendous study and refinement of the craft. Zumthor writes, “People often say, ‘a lot of work went
into this’ when they sense the care and skill that its maker has lavished on a carefully constructed
object.”2 While Zumthor is referring specifically to a constructed work of architecture, I believe this is
akin to the time, effort and refinement involved when students fine tune and craft design studies, parts
and pieces to a larger comprehensive whole.
The accurate modeling of trees is beneficial for designers and is an enriching component of
the research and learning process for students (Figures 20.9 and 20.10). To accurately craft a tree to
reflect the character and habit of a specific species involves research and observation on the part of
the designer. Study sketches are made to ensure accurate proportions of the trunk height and caliper
proportions, the branching structure and habit, are revealed as is the proposed scale of the specimen.
Direct experience where a student is required to locate, identify, observe and record all the species
nuances on site and in person is immensely beneficial. At a minimum this modeling technique requires
significant research and attention to detail on the part of the designer. It creates an inherent under-
standing of the species nuances and intricacies, and enables the designer to retain essential information
and relevant data regarding growth rate habit and potentials, all of which increased one’s own profes-
sional credibility as a landscape designer.

Conclusion
Brad Cloepfil, principal of Allied Works Architecture, writes that, “there is a distinction in archi-
tecture between the desire to assemble something and the desire to make something.”3 The making
of models plays a significant role in the process of understanding construction materials, how they
respond to variable site conditions, how they behave as medium, and how they ultimately perform
Making parts and pieces 173

when implemented in the built environment. Through a process of trial and error of iterative studies,
designers develop a familiarity and relationship with materials that strengthens their own understand-
ing relative to the medium at hand. This is very different than plugging in manufactured or specialty
constructs. This translates into inquisitive designers who are willing to fully explore potentials of form
and of material choice with little apprehension. Through this thoughtful engagement, models propel
design innovation.

Notes
1 Zumthor, P. Thinking Architecture. Second, Expanded Edition. Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhauser- Publishers for
Architecture, 2006, p.11.
2 Ibid.
3 Cloepfil, B. Allied Works Architecture, Occupation. New York, NY: Gregory R. Miller, 2011, p. 197.
174 Paul Russell

20.1
Casting. Cast modeling using fluid and temporal media testing the nature, composition and response of
materials to a given form, alternate material, and part. By Taylor Inzetta and Zhenrui Mei.

20.2
Cubic mass/void. Analogue models can be literal interpretations of two-dimensional line drawings and have
the potential to accentuate the relationship of mass and void, light and shadow in a dynamic and uncertain
framework. By Yuanyuan Wang, Sharvari Gangal, Erin Larimore, Taylor Inzetta.
Making parts and pieces 175

20.3 and 20.4

Cubic strata. With iterative analogues the relationship of material and proportion, and spatial characters,
layers and strata are quickly explored, tested and assessed. By Taylor Inzetta.
176 Paul Russell

20.5 and 20.6

Loose precision. Malleable models lend themselves to the exploration of loose and often expressive forms,
which can be developed to specifically calculated precision studies. By Taylor Inzetta.
Making parts and pieces 177

20.7 and 20.8

Technical parts and pieces. In the technical analogue two-dimensional lines are abstracted into three-
dimensional parts and pieces, extruded volumetric space and landform. 20.7 by Yuanyuan Wang, Erin
Larimore, Taylor Inzetta, Emily Kelly. 20.8 by Yuanyuan Wang.
178

20.9
Character spatial experience. Analogues communicate character and scale, line, path and movement, as well
as the potential for experience and interaction. Sketch model of spatial experience using wire for trees. By
Vanessa Merriweather.
 179

20.10
Character spatial experience. Analogues communicate character and scale, line, path and movement, as well
as the potential for experience and interaction. Sketch model of spatial experience using black mesh for tree
canopies and thin wooden dowels for tree trunks. By Jackson Burke.
Afterwords
Professional practice using the analogue
21 A new way to produce landscapes
Portal into intuition as method:
DoodleTech
Allison M. Dailey, Ballistic Architecture
Machine (BAM)

As landscape architecture takes a leading role in shaping future cities, the following essay presents
a problem internal to the discipline, which is the need for a new way to produce landscapes. This
includes from idea through construction, using less deterministic and more intuitive methods and
techniques. Working towards a solution, this essay discusses the importance of analogue graphics and
modeling as used at our firm Ballistic Architecture Machine (BAM).

The problem
Nowhere is there evidence to suggest that our simple, artificial constructs are sufficient for exam-
ining and, subsequently, manipulating the landscape. It is therefore unconscionable, to me, that
we justify our self-indulgent preparation of two-dimensional drawings by manufacturing the
myth that alluring graphic plans practically guarantee desirable landscapes. Despite lip service to
the contrary, the ‘plan’ has become the object (both noun and verb) of landscape architecture.
Are we jealous of the architects’ building elevations? We admonish our students and ourselves
not to design solely in plan, but no effective alternate mechanism for designing is proposed.1
(Steven Krog, 1983)

To envision and build landscapes, as a practical matter, the landscape architect borrows techniques
from outside the discipline including architecture, engineering, and graphic design. It is possible that
the plan, section, rendering, and even the conventional 3D model, may not be enough or constitute
all that is needed to productively envision and build landscapes. The definition of ‘landscape’ is a focal
point of debate, but generally presents for the designer a working material largely in flux, subject to
irrational, random, changing conditions. With such specialized criteria, how can landscape be analyzed
or produced by any other than its own native set of principles?

The aim
In practice, BAM understands landscape as everything outside of buildings. Landscape systems embody
the cyclical progression of dynamic, boundless territories such as wind patterns, water behavior, biota
succession, entropy. Landscape architecture addresses technological, spatial, historical, ecological, hor-
ticultural, social, and psychological conditions. The role of the designer is to orchestrate these bodies of
knowledge using a fluid and transformational medium to ultimately create an experience that humans
sense and perceive.
184 Allison M. Dailey

Landscapes are so vast, so erratic, so interpretive compared to architectural fields, that quite
possibly, the most precise and computational tools available to the designer are the intuitive connec-
tions that pass information from eye to brain to hand while thinking and creating in the landscape.
Necessarily and naturally, the landscape architect already employs high intuitive function when think-
ing and creating to progress toward buildable ideas. But what is intuition more precisely, and how might
intuition become a rigorous, reliable method and technique for landscape architects in particular?
Landscape architects Steven Krog and James Corner have pointed out the need to disassociate
from the architect’s projected schema. In Representation and Landscape (1992), Corner submits that a
more productive method might ‘elicit effects’ in the landscape. For Corner landscape is something “to
be made” and representational tools are “generative” just in the way the fine artist “[touches and holds]
. . . the same worked artifact that will become the final piece.”2 “During [this] time of engagement,”
Corner describes, “there occurs a spontaneity of . . . expression arising both from a reactive response to
the medium and from an imaginative source deep within . . . The making is . . . a perceptive conversa-
tion between medium and imagination that cannot be intellectualized.”3
To expand methods and techniques used to produce landscapes, the alternative must bend toward
and embrace what “cannot be intellectualized.” The alternative must ‘get deeper into’ the human expe-
rience of change happening in the landscape. The alternative must support anticipatory, spontaneous
reaction, because landscape effects and one’s experience of them can never be predetermined, only
anticipated.
The landscape architect’s design process is applied to French philosopher Henri Bergson’s
‘Intuition as Method.’

The proposal: intuition as method

How is intuition defined by Bergson? In Bergsonism Gilles Deleuze studies Bergson’s ‘intuition’ which
is understood as a procedure for accomplishing something. For Bergson “intuition is neither a feeling,
an inspiration, nor a disorderly sympathy, but a fully developed method [with] strict rules,”4 Deleuze
explains. Intuition is an intelligent action both spirited and analytical.
Bergson distinguishes three rules for ‘Intuition as Method.’ The First Rule is “the test of true and
false to problems . . . Condemn false problems and reconcile truth and creation at the level of prob-
lems.”5 The Second Rule is to “struggle against illusion, rediscover true differences in kind or articulations
of the real.”6 The Third Rule is to “state problems and solve them in terms of time rather than space.”7
‘Thought’ divides in two directions, one toward matter (bodies and movements), the other toward spirit
(qualities and changes in matter).8 Intuition is an action that slides between matter and spirit. Intuition
“seek[s] experience at its source” to find “the conditions of . . . properly human experience.”9 The first act
of Intuition is a leap, and the leap can never be re-constituted using analysis.10

The portal: DoodleTech

BAM selects the Doodle as a portal through which ‘Intuition as Method’ might enter design problems.
An Intuition action, the Doodle is both a vehicle for ‘instinctive tendency’ and ‘mobile anticipation.’
The technique is called DoodleTech, standing for ‘doodle’ and ‘technology’ (‘technology’ from Greek
techne: art, skill, cunning of hand; science of craft11). DoodleTech is one single test-application of
‘Intuition as Method.’
It is commonplace to understand a ‘doodle’ as scribble made absent-mindedly.12 It was not until
Andre Breton’s 1924 Surrealist Manifestos that elevating the utility of the Doodle becomes possible.
Breton’s Surrealism sought to channel the unconscious mind through “psychic automatism in its pure
state, by which one proposes to express . . . the actual functioning of thought.”13 In kinship, the
Doodle is neither aimless nor distracted, but “dictated by thought in the absence of control exercised
A new way to produce landscapes 185

by reason.”14 Furthermore the Doodle is “exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”15 The Doodle
instead harnesses ‘being’ over ‘good taste’ and visual beauty. Doodling is like writing; anyone can do it.
DoodleTech functions in analogue and digital modes, for together the availability of informa-
tion surges. BAM finds in ‘analogue mode’ a surprising expression of productive information, gathered
through direct connection between matter, the human body, and durations in time. What new, rel-
evant information might DoodleTech in ‘analogue mode’ bring to the landscape architect?
Applied ‘Intuition as Method’ aims to pull the designer’s work process away from illusion and
closer to what is real. Does ‘Intuition as Method’ help the landscape architect solve problems in terms
of time rather than space? Does ‘Intuition as Method’ allow the landscape architect to ‘get into’ the
experience of a landscape effect through ‘conversations’ between body, matter, and ‘spirit’? Does the
method, which uses the Doodle as vehicle for application to design problems, sufficiently open up
the designer’s ability to make ‘leaps’ using purer ‘functioning of thought’ about the ‘properly human
experience’? Are results stimulating, warranting further research?

Notes
  1 Krog, S. “Creative Risk Taking.” In: S. Swaffield (Ed.). Theory in Landscape Architecture: A Reader. Philadelphia,
PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, p. 64.
  2 Corner, J. “Representation and Landscape: Drawing and Making in the Landscape Medium.” Word & Image: A
Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 1992, 8(3): 243–275.
  3 Ibid.
  4 Deleuze, G. “Intuition as Method.” In: Bergsonism. New York, NY: Zone Books, 1991, p. 13.
  5 Ibid., p. 15.
  6 Ibid., p. 21.
  7 Ibid, p. 31.
  8 Harris, D. “Notes on Deleuze, G. (1991) Bergsonism, New York: Zone Books.” N.p., n.d. Web. 3 March 2018,
www.arasite.org/bergsonism.html.
  9 Op. Cit., p. 27.
10 The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Henri Bergson.” Stanford, CA, 2016. Web. 3 March 2018., https://plato.
stanford.edu/entries/bergson/#3.
11 Google Dictionary (no citation).
12 Google Dictionary (no citation).
13 Theartstory.org. “Surrealism.” N.p., n.d. Web. 3 March 2018.
14 MOMA Learning. “Surrealism.” N.p., 2016. Web. 3 March 2018., www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/
themes/surrealism.
15 Ibid.
186 Allison M. Dailey

21.1
DoodleTech for intertidal habitat design. “Doodle Dictionary.” Landscape systems (biosphere, aerosphere,
hydrosphere) are recorded by Doodles whereupon the body acts in direct relationship to site. The designer
Doodles responses to landscape ‘kinds’ by spacing oneself within the ‘duration’ of the associated effect. This
allows designers to ‘get back to and know [the effect] in all of its ineffable originality.’ (https://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Intuition_(Bergson) (Video stills. Charcoal, marker, India Ink, acrylic, and sponge on paper.)

21.2
DoodleTech for intertidal habitat design. “Defining Doodle Rules: Towards Design Operations.” The
“Doodle Dictionary” is used to devise a ‘kit of rules’ for landscape design. Left: ‘Doodle Rule’ to increase water
retention. (Hot glue on wood with water and dye.) Right: ‘Doodle Rule’ to create crevices, or carving valleys
and pockets into flat surface. (Video still. Chalk and Dremel on painted high-density modeling foam.)
A new way to produce landscapes 187

21.3
DoodleTech for intertidal habitat design. “Prototype Habitat: Breakers, Wave Action, Sediment Transport.”
Top left: ‘Doodle Rule’ to orient and position four types of concrete breakers (breaker design applies engineering
standards). (High-density modeling foam.) Top right, Bottom: Prototype habitat mobilizes to gather empirical
data about wave action and sediment transport. (White-washed wood, North Atlantic shoreline.)

21.4
DoodleTech for intertidal habitat design. “Prototype Habitat: Tidal levels and Surface Crevices.” Left:
Using a physical model of the habitat, tidal levels are projected onto breakers. (Projector, cast plaster, chia
seeds.) Right: In the surface of breakers between tidal levels, crevices are doodled. Seeds represent microfauna
and microflora. (Cast plaster, chia seeds.)
188

21.5
DoodleTech for intertidal habitat design. “Design Proposal: Prototype Habitat for Microfauna and
Microflora.” Module pictured can be repeated along North Atlantic rocky coastline. Top row: Intuition as
Method promotes ‘getting back to and knowing’ crevices in the intertidal zone. (Cast plaster, water, dye, chia
seeds.) Center: Design proposal informed by Doodle Rules and attendant operations. (Cast plaster, chia seeds.)
Bottom row: Atmospheric effects (rain, fog, time of day) digitally generated, layered over photographs of
analogue prototype.
 189

21.6
Angler plaza. “Interactive public sculpture, Angler: Sketches.” Rows 1–2: ‘First acts of Intuition are leaps
which can never be re-constituted using analysis.’ Leaps contain superior information about preliminary spirit,
the essence of revelation. Using a wide-tip marker to create small, rough drawings on paper, visions emerge
slowly and imprecisely. The method and tools themselves extend uncertainty and open new directions. Rows
3–6: At a finer grain, pen and pencil on paper lengthens reflection and spontaneity in the ‘conversation’
between the imagined and the translating medium.
190 Allison M. Dailey

21.7 and 21.8

Angler plaza. “Interactive public sculpture, Angler: Digital Renderings.” Creative activity and the ‘making’
discovery process eventually engage digital modes, whereby modeling software ‘rules of the game’ push and
pull against Intuitive will.
A new way to produce landscapes 191

21.9
Masterplan for Chatham, Southeast England. “Hand-drawing and painting on paper.” Without software,
the designer is subject to far fewer ‘rules of the game.’ This creates potential for a stronger intuitive approach,
one that opens up instead of closes in, whereas, functions and regulations of software systems tend to
necessitate myriad regulations in mobility in spite of seeming endless optionality. Big and imaginative ideas
expand efficiently when analogue methods—and the body itself—are employed.

21.10
Masterplan for Chatham, Southeast England. “Digital Renderings.” The hand-drawn and painted
masterplan is transcribed accurately and literally into modeling software, so that the resulting digital version
presents a kind of ‘pop-up’ analogue masterplan. Thus the digital renderings retain a feeling of workmanship
and continue to support the process of thinking–working, versus presenting a ‘falsely’ finished, precise idea in
the form of a realistic digital rendering.
192

21.11
Titan monument and bridge. “Figural clay model.” Hand-modelling Titan consciously avoids numeric
software estimations of the human figure. Currently digitally rendered flesh does not benefit from sentient
engagement that an artist brings to sculpting the human figure in clay. Through touching and responding to a
malleable, resistant material, the artist transforms into artifact the experience of perceiving an athletic, powerful
male swimmer.
 193

21.12
Titan monument and bridge. “Pencil drawing on trace.” Over a paper print of the digitally scanned clay
sculpture, details of the Titan form and structure, such as finger articulation and trusswork, are developed
using pencil on transparent paper. This step allows the design team to reflect on the functional and aesthetic
direction of the proposal, and freely suggest changes. Resulting layers of information are put back into the
computer and used to produce a digitally refined drawing.
194 Allison M. Dailey

21.13 and 21.14

Titan monument and bridge. “Digital Renderings.” Titan’s torso stands 100 meters tall above Nanjing’s
Youth Olympic Park (also designed by BAM) while reverberations of the swimmer’s body movement create a
bridge that stretches across the adjacent river.
22 How a sketchbook shapes a practice
OLIN
Rebecca Popowsky, OLIN

After 40 years of practice, with hundreds of built projects, eleven partners, dozens of designers, and work
in over fifteen countries, does it matter that OLIN, as a landscape architecture firm, began in a sketch-
book? Does it matter, still today, that Laurie Olin shaped his understanding of cities and landscapes not
so much through formal training but through a life of intense observation and incessant sketching?
I would argue that it does indeed matter, and that our firm’s beginnings, in the pages of a sketch-
book – or better, in a series of red, numbered, cloth-bound and weather-worn sketchbooks – shapes
the way that we practice to this day. There is an underlying culture in our office that the most immedi-
ate and essential way of engaging with a city, a landscape and its people, is by being there – by walking,
by sitting, by seeing and by drawing.
I have seen Laurie Olin draw a lot. First, as a student in his studio at the University of
Pennsylvania, I watched my teacher layer sheets of yellow trace paper over my design work: respond-
ing, correcting, suggesting; later as a landscape architect at OLIN, I have stood at the drawing table
with my colleague: imagining gardens, fountains, benches, forests. But it was only through teaching
with Laurie, while traveling with a class of University of Pennsylvania graduate students to Pienza,
Italy for a design studio, that I saw Laurie draw for the sake of drawing: in his sketchbook. The
first thing that struck me, watching him sketch the interior of a little café on Corso il Rossellino,
while taking a break from design critiques, was the fact that he started drawing what seemed like an
insignificant detail – a glass case filled with cakes – at what seemed like a random point on the page –
about halfway up, two-thirds of the way across. The drawing began at this one point and, without
lifting the pen, without looking down at the page for more than a glance, the drawing wandered, bit
by bit, across and around the page, aimlessly. Surprised, I remarked that he had not started with broad
strokes, structuring the drawing on the page or laying out the composition, moving from primary
gestures to smaller details. Laurie responded that yes, you could do it that way, but that this way felt
more like taking a walk with your hand.
It strikes me that this describes, equally well, the way that Laurie enters into every landscape that
he encounters. Whether it’s a new site or a city that he’s visited many times, he believes that the way
to see the place is through sketching, by taking a walk with one’s hand, and allowing the drawings to
both ask and answer essential questions.
As a designer, when you engage a site through sketching, you immediately bring yourself closer
to that place. Drawing a person or a tree by hand creates a connection, not unlike empathy, that helps
you see that tree or that person as an individual, rather than one of many, and to design accordingly.
When someone who has spent decades sketching people sitting on chairs, benches and stoops, for
example, decides to design a bench, which bench will likely be a good one for sitting.
196 Rebecca Popowsky

Any designer that works or has worked at OLIN has seen that understanding landscape through
sketching is an essential act of design. If you have drawn a place, while standing in that place, and
if you have drawn many places like it, you are more likely and more able to design in a way that is
sympathetic to that place. We have witnessed what has fostered from a career of sketching, sketching,
and more sketching; so designers in our firm do not draw by hand out of nostalgia or with romantic
notions, but out of the desire to see more clearly and to engage more fully with our work.
As in many firms, OLIN designers use hand drawing as one of many design, analysis and vis-
ualization tools – large, complex projects require it. As in many firms, a visitor to our office will
see large, communal drawing tables strewn with stacks of digitally plotted linework, surrounded by
hand-worked trace paper and pencil shavings, conference rooms papered with hand-sketched scenarios
alongside parametric iterations, and workstations where keyboard and mouse jockey for position with
pen sketches and hand-written notes. As in many firms, OLIN designers communicate with one
another and with design teams using all available technology, but often most seamlessly and directly
using only paper and pencil. Many landscape architecture practices rely on a similarly wide range of
visualization and communication strategies. Significantly though, and perhaps more than many firms,
OLIN originated in the pages of a sketchbook and has grown a culture of practice that continues to
celebrate the connection to place and to people that comes from that origin – from walking, seeing
and sketching.

Further reading
Olin, L. “Thinking, Seeing and Drawing.” In: M. Treib (Ed.). Drawing/Thinking: Confronting an Electronic Age. New
York, NY: Routledge, 2008.
Olin, L. Across the Open Field: Essays Drawn from English Landscapes. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2000.
Olin, L. Be Seated. Novato, CA: Oro Editions, 2017.
 197

22.1
Roman gate in Arles, France, sketch by Laurie Olin during first trip to Europe, in 1967.
 198

22.2
Place Furstenburg, Paris. By Laurie Olin, May 1997.


22.3
Steiger Farm, cattle, by Laurie Olin.
199
200 Rebecca Popowsky

22.4
Design sketches for fountain basin at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, PA. 2008.

22.5
Laurie Olin’s collection of his sketchbooks.
How a sketchbook shapes a practice: OLIN 201

22.6A and 22.6B

The sketchbook remains the tool of choice for reading and understanding places for many OLIN designers.
OLIN Associate, Abdallah Tabet produced these façade detail studies in Beirut, Lebanon and in the Jewish
Quarter in Marrakech (Mellah). 2015.
202 Rebecca Popowsky

22.7A and 22.7B

Most designs at OLIN take place in a hybrid zone of digital and hand drawing. These sketches, produced by
partner Richard Roark for the Eastern Market in Detroit, Michigan and for the Hunts Point Lifelines Project,
are typical of the iterative process of drawing by hand over digitally produced linework. They represent one
moment in a constant back-and-forth design process that takes advantage of the strengths of both digital and
analogue techniques. 2015.
 203

22.8
Presidio plan sketches, testing concepts and forms.
204 Rebecca Popowsky

22.9
Presidio Final Plan, digitally color-rendered, using the sketch design as the base.

22.10
Presidio Final Aerial Oblique View, digitally modeled and rendered (from hand sketch to digital production).
23 Strokes of inspiration
The hallmark of evocative design – EDSA
hand graphics
Kona Gray, EDSA Inc

Artistic expression is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks and having fun. It’s about design,
color, texture, shape and proportion. Everything we do has all those elements.
(Joseph J. Lalli, FASLA)

Landscape Architecture and art

Landscape Architecture is an art form that requires hand graphics to truly express the soul of design.
For centuries, hand drawing has served as a prized and idealized method for conveying ideas by the
design community. Drawing by hand allows the mind to retain details and expressions of the subject.
Although it may seem simple, there is a powerful connection between the hand and the eye. Hand–eye
coordination and the ability to train your brain to express ideas in two dimensions that have depth is
the underpinning of hand graphics.
This connection is especially important to the person viewing the drawing. It is an ability that
can be harnessed with training and practice. Several techniques including trace, sketch problems, and
gesture drawing can hone the skills. Not simply representative of beautiful images, works of beautiful
hand graphics serve as expressions of form, function, scale, social magnitude, and more. But, in today’s
technology-driven design world – are pen and ink sketches passé? Should design-based software pro-
grams perform the drawing function, freeing designers? Not exactly. At EDSA, we are always looking
for emerging technology and exploring ways to work more efficiently. However, the truth is that tech-
nological advances in the industry cannot replace or devalue the freedom of hand sketching. By seeing
and experiencing things with visual interpretation, we are able to conceptualize ideas and immediately
execute those thoughts through graphic illustration. Likewise, drawing life’s realities in real time fosters
greater observation and a better understanding of things that inform our designs.

Creating the story

As part of the visioning process, EDSA begins every assignment with a distinctive image and stated
purpose followed by a creative progression where alternative design solutions are formulated, evalu-
ated, and ultimately implemented. The vision is always inspired by humanity and ecology towards fos-
tering design that is meaningful. Exploration of an idea happens with a few strokes that can be edited
as the design proceeds, even allowing certain aspects to be revisited without changing other related
elements. The mind of the artist begins to approach the concept from a comprehensive standpoint as
opposed to working within the limits of a computer program.
206 Kona Gray

Similar to the process of creating a blockbuster Pixar film, hand drawing is utilized to generate
ideas quickly before utilizing the computer. The concern is that computer-generated graphics can
appear manufactured and a little robotic. Even state-of-the-art technologies require careful refinement
and the trained eye of a designer to create realistic results. Alternatively, hand drawings have many lay-
ers that extend beyond technical prowess and capture the unique touches of designers. That in itself is
special and should not be lost as we advance toward a more technological age.
Design visioning is built around an ability to express ideas. That is the essence of our profession.
And one of the best ways to express design – is to illustrate it. In doing so, we must bring ideas to life,
nurture them, and modify them. Having a clear, well-thought-out, and well-delineated vision at the
onset is critical to a project’s strategic success and long-term sustainability. Clients want designers to
“hear” what they are saying and have the ability to visually express what will be built.

Bringing the story to life

Drawing and observing are essential to us as designers, thinkers, and problem solvers. Sketching also
helps deepen cultural appreciation of a place while allowing us to memorialize, in ink, the favorites we
encounter. Sketching on a small scale is very beneficial for developing the idea. Traveling and sketch-
ing what we see has always proven to be a great way to learn all the aspects of a place. The places we
draw allow us to photo document the experience in our minds. Also, quick sketches are fuel to spark
transformative ideas.
It’s essential that every design idea start with a hand-drawn sketch that evolves into something
more elaborate and complex. A hand-drawn plan takes its presentation beyond explaining the design
of a space. By bleeding out line work, your eyes are able to fill in the spaces, where clients can visualize
the end-user’s experience with an assurance that careful decision-making has influenced every aspect of
development. There is a magical moment when a designer is hand drawing the idea as it is developing
in front of the client.
At EDSA, we utilize the design charrette for the purpose of engaging the community, client,
and end-user in the design process. Similar to the scientific method, the design process is exploring a
hypothesis based on several “what-if ” factors. As the factor evolves, a hand drawn sketch of the latest
opportunity can lead to the solution for any design problem. Actually, one of the greatest satisfactions
for a landscape architect is when that sketch becomes reality and people interact in the space that has
been positively improved through Landscape Architecture.

Legacy of artistry
EDSA’s founders knew that cultivating a strong artistic legacy was the best way to differentiate the firm
and add value for clients. In the end, we are designing for the people who occupy the environments
we create, and that means appealing to them on an emotional level. Over the years, we have assembled
the styles of many drawings that have created the EDSA style. It is not unusual to see a drawing and
instantly see the flavor of the firm. Also, the style is evolving with the use of different applications of
technology that become overlays or washes to enhance the hand graphics.
Computer applications are great tools, just not at every stage in the design process. The computer
is wonderful for providing a framework to “sketch over” and confirm dimensions in space. We believe
technology is a great supplemental design tool but, while software has made many advances in our
profession, it falls short during the initial creative process. We must remain steadfast and cognizant
that technology cannot translate our designs with high visual accuracy. And, we mustn’t become too
fascinated by what a program can do and forget to insert our own individuality. So, while the use of
technology and software can provide a skeletal framework, nothing conveys mood and emotional
depth like an artistic hand.
Strokes of inspiration 207

Cultivating a strong artistic heritage is the best way to add value. Design, after all, is an art form
and sketching enables designers to humanize their visions. Just as computers will never replace people
or serve as a substitute for personal interaction – technology will not supersede hand graphics for the
true designer in all of us. What you observe as you draw and the thoughts that are conceived from the
process and first impressions make you appreciate the life within your designs. Just remember to keep
drawing, as hand graphics are the key to learning.

References
Allyn, J. and Hall, M. “Ink–Artistry in Motion.” Design Matters Magazine, 2011.
Propes, E., Bulemore, D., and Cissel, D. “Digitally Designed.” Design Matters Magazine, 2015.
Smith, D.C., EDSA Graphics Book. Fort Lauderdale, FL: EDSA, 2010.
208

23.1
Mohamed Bin Zayed City (MBZ), Abu Dhabi, UAE. The technique used is watercolor wash over bond.
Strokes of inspiration 209

23.2
Port Ghalib City Masterplan, Marsa Alam, Egypt. Using pen and marker rendering with Photoshop.

23.3
Port Ghalib City – Hilltop Village, Marsa Alam, Egypt. Using pen and ink for the perspective drawing.
210 Kona Gray

23.4
Port Ghalib City – Urban Core, Marsa Alam, Egypt. Style/Technique: pen and ink perspective.

23.5
Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt. Using pen and marker rendering with Photoshop.
Strokes of inspiration 211

23.6
Costiglion Del Bosco, Tuscany, Italy. Using pen and marker rendering with Photoshop.

23.7
Port of St. Maarten, St. Maarten, Netherland Antilles, Masterplan. Using pen and marker wash rendering
with Photoshop.
212 Kona Gray

23.8
Gilgamesh Island, Bahrain, aerial perspective. Using pen and marker rendering with Photoshop.

23.9
SK Marina Village, Turks and Caicos, aerial perspective. Using pen and marker rendering with Photoshop.
 213

23.10
Dalian Wolong Bay, Dalian Liaoning, China, aerial perspective. Using pen and ink with colored markers.
24 The analogue version
Shannon Nichol, David Malda and Keith McPeters,
Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN)

Years ago, my friend Kevin had an early-model Ford Taurus that was on its last legs. It was nicknamed
the ‘Taurus UK Edition’, because it had what he called ‘The Universal Knob’. All of the dashboard’s
other knobs had gone missing over the years, so what remained was an array of unlabeled bezels
around holes. Recessed in the holes were the bare ends of the stems that controlled things such as the
windshield wipers, the defrost, and the radio.
The remaining knob – the UK – was the sole interface between the driver’s mind and the vehicle’s
safety and environmental systems. As Kevin drove and held conversations with passengers, he moved
the UK subconsciously from unlabeled port to unlabeled port, magically controlling a comic array of
functions with one humble object and only two moves – rotate or push – on/off, more/less.
Precisely due to its low-resolution simplicity, ‘the Universal Knob’ was a perfectly fluid interface;
it responded to diverse human direction without prompting the driver to answer questions or break
his important flow of concentration on the road or conversation.
This is the kind of dumb and magical, universal interface that we need to draw the design work
that happens in our minds. The ideal tool to communicate, test, and visualize the most inventive track
of a design project must stay with the designer’s mind as he/she thinks forward – not only leading the
work into creative territory but into a problem-solving medium that is non-linear, multi-scaled, multi-
categorical, and in collapsed time.
The design strategy being born in that fluid workspace does not yet know which program, view,
scale, or medium would best represent it, so the more universal and simple the drawing tool is, the better.
Choosing to work too early in a specialized medium or program replaces the big, clear frame of leader-
ship with a barrage of details that aren’t yet organized – too many pixels asking to be filled too soon.
We all need reminders to choose tools that are not too high in their resolution of imagery, too
soon in our own resolution of thinking at a given point in time. At GGN, we often find ourselves dis-
cussing the “right tool-resolution for the level of resolution of our work,” as we meet in a group called
the ‘Design Critters’ which reviews all phases of our project work.
Sometimes in our ‘Design Critters’ reviews, we encounter graphics that may be well-rendered but
show inconsistent or confusing details in content. After first suspecting that the design has not been fully
organized and consistently executed, we often realize that the design is in fact cohesive and intact – just
at a lower level of detail (a higher level of thinking) than what was unnecessarily, prematurely displayed in
the graphic. There is clearly a natural impulse to choose a more ‘realistic’ tool over a more diagrammatic
tool – even when our thinking is not yet ready to lead the depiction of the given level of detail.
Physical and 3D models present the same test and dialogue in proper tool- and resolution-
selection for the content. The plaster casts of clay models that are sometimes part of our work are
actually a form of purposeful, low-variable rendering – monochrome, single-material – that helps
The analogue version 215

us, our clients, and our collaborators clearly see and critique the overall landform that we have
developed in drawings. Landform – especially when designed around the modest scale of the human
body – can appear so subtle before it is built that it can go unnoticed in drawings or be dismissed
as an accidental series of detached spot elevations beneath the more exciting colors and materials on
its surface. Therefore, to fully work through landform design and remain focused on it ourselves, we
refrain from adding further details or media into our grading drawings and models until we have
fully resolved the form that will host them.
While the most tempting dangers in higher-resolution/empty-pixel tools are often digital, this
issue is just as easily encountered when working by hand on paper. Drawings that are made too large,
too soon, for the resolution of the current design problem – drawn in a fine point, with too precise a
hand, and in too many colors – prematurely unleash an unnecessary flood of secondary variables into
the work that threatens the completion of clearly organized, strong design work that would guide these
details down the road.
With that said, we notice the most frequent slide into the passive, pixel-filling mode when
designers are seduced by the convenience and power of software. Therefore, we put the most deliber-
ate efforts at GGN into balancing this magnetic danger with reminders and tools that prompt us to
remain in the lead of the work, thinking ahead and at a higher resolution than our tools and graphics
rather than following them. It has proven helpful to prompt inconvenient-feeling reviews that require
the designer to clarify thoughts with pencil on paper. It has also reinvigorated our designers’ control
to require hand-thumbnailing of our work before we begin a construction detail or a perspective view.
Pencils are the heroes in these cases – fat pencils and small drawings in the beginning of a project and
mechanical pencils and larger drawings later on.
When used properly for the given stage of work, a pencil will never demand a higher level of
resolution than the work that you’ve set out to draw. A pencil will do anything you want it to, with one
versatile mono-medium. With a pencil you can draw a partial gestural impulse that has no clear form
yet, without even realizing you have drawn it. You can then argue with that gesture – or further define
it – by diagramming its conflict with something else. This requires the ability to easily draw something
that is impossible spatially or conceptually. A pencil doesn’t care.
On the same page as these gestures, you can do a quick slope calculation and write an important
phrase that you heard the client say – all without switching tools, media, or interface for these modes.
All building into a multi-layered thinking flow that builds toward an immersion in rationale and a
new idea that is potentially sound but only exists in your mind. All this without thinking about your
tool, which would risk breaking your strange flow of multi-categorical puzzle-solving and visioning.
At GGN, we work hard to protect the full responsibility and freedom of the human mind to lead
all facets of the design process. Whether hand-sketched, CAD-drafted, or 3D-rendered, every draw-
ing should have a purpose. An “idea” drawing should clearly communicate the idea and nothing else.
A perspective view in any medium should convey the most distinct 3D aspects of a space, not merely
“render a perspective view.” Construction details should convey the key information that will guide the
contractors to align their work with the larger bone structure and landform of the design – not merely
call out dimensions.
Part of keeping our drawings purposeful is a constant effort to ensure that the interface we have
with our tools doesn’t nudge us into response-mode inputs – passive data entry – rather than strate-
gic ownership of every line and pixel drawn. Each person’s mind and body work a bit differently to
find the best concentration and means of communicating in a fluid manner the most valuable design
thinking, to thoroughly and creatively solve problems. Nonetheless, for most people, we have found
that simplifying the tools – making them work more like ‘the Universal Knob’ in Kevin’s Ford
Taurus – preserves the designer’s valuable ability to switch and integrate scales, categories, and types of
thinking. This is the best way we’ve found to empower our office’s creativity and each designer’s sense
of responsibility over the content of his/her work.
216

24.1
Aerial city view east drawing of Seattle topography study of I-5. The site concept sketch uses ink and
colored pencil on trace over Google Earth view overlay. Google Earth views provide a convenient source
of imagery for drawing over to abstract urban and landscape forms and patterns. This drawing was done to
decipher the route of Interstate 5 (in red) in relation to the hills, lakes, and bay that define downtown Seattle.
Other prominent roads were shown to see whether there was a consistent topographical logic to the various
routes of the roads. Surprisingly, these routes exhibit a logic of tunnels and bridges, ups and downs, that is not
as topographically determined as one might guess. I-5’s route represents an aggregate of regional topography,
local politics, urban renewal, and the boomtown evolution of Seattle.
The analogue version 217

24.2 and 24.3

From hard edges to soft edges. These drawings are of the India Basin Shoreline Park couplet, as design concept
sketches using pencil on paper. These two cartoon-like drawings show a problem and a proposed solution. Both
are required in sequence to best explain what would otherwise sound like a subtle or unnecessary argument for
traffic calming and additional intersections. The problem is a common one in modern waterfronts. There is a
dominant, physical and psychological emphasis on lengthwise, regional travel flow running parallel to the shore.
This lengthwise traffic device and design scale precludes the crosswise, local access to the water and even to the
other side of the neighborhood’s ‘main street’. The diagrams helped the team to explain why the proposed design
was composed of a legible series of small ‘cross grain’ connections rather than solely emphasizing the grand,
lengthwise continuity of the waterfront, as is so often expected in such projects.
218

24.4
Cross grain sketch. This drawing is of the India Basin Shoreline Park, as a design concept sketch using pencil
on paper. This quick sketch shows the physical design strategy introduced in the couplet of problem–solution.
The strategy is to place pier-inspired walking devices on top of the flowing shoreline and hillside topography
and into the water. The appearance of this series of devices, as simplified in this cartoon, is intended to be
surface-applied and dominant visually, so that they are a first read of the priorities and grain of the space (local
access and walkability over regional flow and traffic forms). People are drawn in exaggerated scale to clearly
show the experience and position of the human body in various moments in the transect, from bringing
convenient walking routes/hill climbs to the underserved project housing on the hillside to allowing people to
touch the water at the other end of each device.
 219

24.5
Boatyard aerial sketch. This drawing is of the India Basin Shoreline Park boatyard aerial view, as a design
concept drawing using ink and colored pencil on trace over Google Earth and 3D digital model views. This
aerial is one of a series done during the Concept Design phase to describe and test the evolution of the design
in response to community input, park programming, and design team refinements. Although these drawings
were used in public presentations to give the neighbors a clearer sense of the spaces and volumes in the new
park, these were not seen as final renderings. Rather these views were ongoing design tools used by the team
to test and shape the design of the park. To quickly respond to design input between sequential public
presentations, a hand drawing method was developed utilizing multiple layers of trace bases drawn from site
photos, Google Earth views, and digital 3D line work models. All of this data was ‘traced’ into drawing bases
to build up the surrounding context of landform, waterfront, streets, buildings, and neighborhood grain that
would help shape the park. Historical structures in the neighborhood and in the park were highlighted as were
crossings and connections to the waterfront.
220

24.6
Balcony escarpment, San Antonio Water Story. This drawing showcases context analysis in a cartoon-like
style, using marker and colored pencil on paper. This drawing connects regional geology and water as the
ground out of which San Antonio and surrounding cities developed. The drawing was a part of the team’s site
analysis and helped frame the Hemisfair Civic Park project during community meetings. By abstracting and
connecting key features of San Antonio’s ‘water story’ the drawing became an opportunity to engage residents
in a narrative of the city and the park design.
 221

24.7
Detroit West Riverfront Park competition model. This is a plaster cast model. The plaster cast of a clay
process model represents a moment in the design of a new park along the Detroit River. The model synthesized
numerous sketches and study models into a comprehensive topography of the site. While the plaster cast marks
a specific moment in the process, the model served as an ongoing point of discussion, evolving along with the
design to communicate broad concepts and spatial relationships with a high degree of specificity in grading.
222 Shannon Nichol et al.

24.8 and 24.9

Detroit West Riverfront Park competition model (details). Detail images of the plaster cast model showing
key points of the design and landform.
The analogue version 223

24.10
Lurie Garden process concept sketch drawings. These sketches showcase design concept sketches of the Lurie
Garden using pencil and colored pencil on vellum. This roughly chronological series of drawings were completed
by Shannon Nichol in a two-week timespan during the Lurie Garden Design Competition. They are of varying
scales and purposes but are all small in size (from about 3”x3” to 6”x6”) to focus on testing and refining the
overall format and landform of the Garden. The chest-shaped form was first created to make the garden into a
legible ‘muscular object’ of plants next to the adjacent open lawn of the concert pavilion. Then the garden was
broken down into subareas and subforms, landing on the diagonal separation between two ‘plates’. The diagonal
separation echoes the historic lakeshore beneath the site, and the landward plate (the Light Plate) is dry and open
while the lakeward plate is evocative of a mysterious, forest marsh (the past form of the site and shoreline).

24.11
North End Parks plaster cast model. This plaster cast of the clay model helped the community see how
landform can cohesively interpret the special history and social value of a site, prior to the need for interpretive
signage and other common measures of celebrating heritage. Expressing the observations from the concept
sketch, the landform implies that Hanover Street, the central street dividing the two parcels, is once again a
bridge that crosses over a low, wet valley between shorelines. The implication is that the valley’s subtly twisting
form continues beneath the bridge while creating a variety of proportions and spaces along its length. The ‘top’
(north) edge of the space is shaped as a terrace which the team called the Porch – extending the North End’s
densely used living space into its ‘front yard’ overlooking the High Spine of Boston to the south.
224

24.12
North End Parks concept sketch. This loose drawing is a site concept sketch using colored pencil over map
print on paper. This sketch helped summarize what was physically and historically special about the North End
Parks site (the black mark in the ‘crosshairs’). It was drawn as an internal, intuitive summary of key landforms
and their hidden past that explains them. The North End Parks site was the site of a double-decker freeway at
the time of design, so the community had a difficult time imagining it as anything but a back-of-house zone
and a low, dark area. Drawings were helpful to express this morphology as a positive distinction and place
that could feel unique and exciting – the very low point between two high points – Copp’s Hill and Beacon
Hill – which allows one to take in the best views of these charismatic landmarks from afar. It is simultaneously
the historic landbridge between two former tide flats – the sole crossing between mainland Boston and the
North End Peninsula. This special position of the singular crossing between Home and City was reprised and
emphasized in the designed landform of North End Parks, seen rendered in the plaster cast of the model.
 225

24.13
Campus elements typologies. These are quick analytical concept sketches using ink on paper in a moleskine
sketchbook. These sketches were drawn in real time during a group design discussion for a college campus
project. The sketches were visual ‘note taking’ pieces, analyzing some prominent qualities known about the
campus. They equally mark both campus landscape and architectural elements, including steep slopes and
large tracts of woods mix with different architectural eras. Some buildings framed spaces while others were
freestanding objects in the landscape.
226

24.14
Sketch book drawing of UW Rainier Vista and Montlake Triangle. The sketches are of pen and colored
pencil on moleskine sketchbook. While the Rainier Vista is typically featured in its orientation toward
Mt. Rainier, the approach from the south is a significant point of arrival into the University of Washington
campus. The sketch highlighted the spatial potential of trees breaking the axis of the vista from this southern
approach, creating a veil between the adjacent street and the interior volume of the new design.
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Index

3D modeling 3, 11–12, 68, 72, 101, 219; see also model chalk 186
building character 100, 101, 102, 103, 106, 130, 172
3D qualities, portraying 64 charcoal 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 27, 59, 65, 186
charrette settings 100
abstract forms 19, 71, 172 Chartpak markers 60, 61
abstraction 100, 111, 127, 133, 162 cheese graters 87
accuracy 110–111; see also realistic imagery Chinese gardens 129–130
acrylic paints 72, 186 chipboard models 172
activation of the site (what it does) 63 circles 51
active surface, landscape as 86 cityscapes 71
adaptability 100 clay models 68, 136, 172, 176, 192, 221
aerial sketches 219; see also bird’s-eye view Cloepfil, Brad 172
aesthetic values 110–111, 185 cloth tessellations 144
affective qualities 127, 128, 206 collage 47, 63–64, 66, 135
affirmation 15–16 collective perceptions 64
Allen, Penny 111 colonization 32, 34, 35, 89
Allen, Stan 117 colored pencil 48, 49, 51, 66, 76, 80, 81, 83, 102, 105,
American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) 43 219, 220
analytical nature of drawing 32, 93, 111, 130, 163, 184 communication, graphic 50, 51–52, 152, 196
archaeology of the drawing 28–31 communicational intent 73–84
“art,” misconceptions about 44 community, building a 44
artistic licence 51 community engagement 219–220
atlases 120 complexity 32–42
atmosphere 130 comprehensibility of hand-drawings 100
authenticity 100 concept measurement 101
axon views 51 concept plans 54
concept sketches 21, 22, 78, 216, 217, 218, 223, 224, 225
base colors 51 concept symbols palette 51, 54
base drawings 32–42 concrete 171
base maps 3 confidence, building students’ 57
Beall, M. 100 consistency 101, 104
Bergson, Henri 140, 184 construction, process of 171–180
Bernard Tschumi building in Miami 20 construction details 50–51, 215
bias 64 constructive drawings 85–92
bird’s-eye view 130, 131–132, 219 context, sketching with 44
blank space 51; see also void spaces contingency 28
blending techniques 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 69 contour lines 68, 102, 139, 172
block lettering 50 contrast 17, 19, 21; see also light and dark/shadow
blotting paper 21 Corner, James 141, 184
boat-building histories 40 corrugated paper 132
bodily encounters 118, 185, 186, 191 Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) 43
bond paper 2, 46, 47, 49, 208 crafting a drawing 74, 118
brainstorming 100 creativity of drawing 15–16, 19, 57–58, 73–74, 100, 111
Breton, Andre 184 cross-grain sketches 217–218
brick paving exercise 50, 53 cross-hatching 93
bristol paper 17, 18, 19, 23, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92 cross-language comprehensibility 100
Brunelleschi, Filippo 2 cross-sectional models 165–166
bubble diagrams 3 curiosity 153, 173
cut and fill 91, 172
Cantrell, Brad 43
cartographies of complexity 32–42 dashed lines 104
cartoon-like drawings 217–218, 220 decline in use of hand graphics 1–2, 3, 43, 57
casting 171, 174, 187, 188, 221, 222, 223 Deleuze, G. 118, 184
230 Index

demystification 94 field sketching 93, 111, 117

density 129–130, 166 fields 117–128, 183–184
depth 64 fieldwork 32; see also on-location sketching
Design Conversation 28–31 fine art 74
Design Critters 214 flavoring 51
design workshops 100 flipbooks 64, 70, 72
desk studies 32 fluidity 25, 117, 171, 174, 183, 214
detail pen work 18 Forman, Richard T.T. 140–141
diagrams 73, 77, 78 fun, having 52
digital graphics: complementary uses with sketching 43, 44,
202; of flesh 192; giving away agency to 86; incorporating gameplay 121
in collage 135; lack of room for interpretation 86; and generative, drawing as 24, 85, 184
models 150, 188, 190, 193; for rendering 33, 191, 194, geographical information systems 141
204, 210; replacement of hand drawing with 43, 205; geometric primitives 163
robotic nature of 206; and the ‘rules of the game’ 190, Giotto 2
191; saturation point reached 152; students’ preference Google Earth 216, 219
for 57; supplementary nature of 206 gradient 64, 88
digital tools from other fields 141 grading plans 64, 221
distorted elements 74 graphic standards 50
diversity 64 graphite 82
Docklands 34, 36, 37, 38, 39–41 grids, breaking an image into 19
DoodleTech 183–194 group bonding 111
drafting tape 50 Guattari, F. 118
Drawing and Designing with Confidence: A Step-by-Step
Guide (Lin, 1993) 57 Halprin, Lawrence 85
drawing for the sake of drawing 44, 195 hand-eye coordination 205
drawing from life 57; see also on-location sketching hand-torn strips 64, 66
Drawing the Landscape (Sullivan) 43, 44 hardline graphics techniques 87
Dremel 186 hatching 51, 69, 93, 95, 101, 113, 114
drone imagery 116 heuristics 111, 152
durational quality 24–25; see also temporality historic features of a site 32, 64, 121, 123, 135, 183,
dynamic landscapes 64 219, 223, 224
historic maps 32
ecological modeling 140–151 hot glue 186
EDSA 100, 205–213 hourly drawings 25
elevations 20, 90; see also section elevations hue 76
empathy 195 human-space connection 63–64, 183–185
energy, spatialization of 162 Husserl, Edmund 24
engaged education 44 hybrid drawings 82
entourages, including 101, 102 hybrid methods 140–141
environmental acoustics 63 hyper-realism 152
environmental conditions, dynamic 140
ephemera 86 ideas, communicating 86, 111–112, 118, 163, 205, 215
eraser as modeling material 133 ideas, exploring 28, 58, 110, 115, 152, 205–206
eraser marks 17, 21, 23 illustrative landscape graphics 51, 64, 73
evocative design 205–213 imagination 16, 24, 28, 30, 58, 130, 184, 189, 195
exchange of ideas 28 immediacy of scalar feedback in hand-drawing 86
exclusion of elements 51, 58 immersive encounters with landscape 117, 118
expansion of ideas 28, 29 imperfection, benefits of 152
experience, value of 50–56, 94, 100, 205 in-depth research through drawing 3
experiential literacies 85–92 Indian ink 25, 27, 186
exploratory drawings 110, 115; see also ideas, exploring information portrayal, effectiveness of 162–163
exploratory models 164, 172 ink drawings 9, 29, 46, 47, 48, 49, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81,
“Exploratory Physiocartographies of Place and Time” 43 82, 105, 186, 209, 219, 225
ink washing 25, 93
façade detail studies 201 inlaying 129–130
failure, fear of 15 inquiry processes 28
fantastical intent of drawings 74 intent and craft 73–84, 167
felt-tip pens 93; see also markers interactivity 64
fencerow sketches 10 intermediate-level sketching 93–99
field of influences 117–118 interpretation of the world 16, 85–86, 93, 110, 162
field patterns 168–169 intuition 94, 183–194
Index 231

inverse forms 3, 157, 158, 159 movement, implications of 51, 86

“Is Drawing Dead?” Symposium 43 movement trace drawings 26
iterative processes 32–33, 57–58, 63–64, 85–86, 111, multi-sensory perception 57
118–119, 165, 171–180, 202
narratives 32, 64
Journaling 93 natural world, recording the qualities of 15–16
naturalistic intent of drawings 73
Kentridge, William 28, 30 naturalistic perspectives 83
Klaksvik Table 121, 122 negative spaces 3, 171, 174
kneaded eraser 19 neighborhood quality 45, 48–49, 219
Krog, Steven 183, 184 Newark, New Jersey 44–49
Nichol, Shannon 223
Lalli, Joseph J. 205 Nicosia – Diachronic Garden 125
landscape, definitions of 183–184 Nicosia – Thalassophilitos 126
landscape architecture education 1–2 notational topographies 85–92
language of drawing 29–30, 100 note-taking, sketching as 57, 225
laser cutting 157, 158, 172
Laszczuk, Michal 10 observation skills 24–25, 28, 44, 57, 63, 74, 111, 130,
Lavoie, Caroline 43 153, 163, 195
layering 23, 32, 64, 93, 149, 188, 193, 206, 215, 219 Old Main series 59
Leggitt, Jim 100 Olin, Laurie 195, 197, 198, 199, 200
Lego 134 On Site Design 44
lettering 50, 53 on-location sketching 44, 45, 111, 117, 195
lifework 113, 114 open-ended drawing 85
light 17, 21, 23, 63, 64, 65, 66, 135, 159 original, power of the 15–23
light and dark/shadow 19, 74, 90, 111, 132, 164, 174 originality 100
light frequency 93 orthographic drawings 73
Lin, Mike 57 outside the lines, adding items 52
line 50–51, 64, 67, 74, 90, 163 overlaying 32; see also layering
line quality 51, 74, 101, 104, 106
line weights/widths 14, 50, 51, 60, 74, 82, 101, 151 Paallasma, Juhani 24–25
local information 32 paper, quality of 15, 74
lofting studies 150 paper cut-outs 66
longer lines 50 partial detail 51, 58, 93, 162–163
looking, ways of 118; see also observation skills patience 2
looking versus seeing 94 pen and ink drawings 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 209, 213; see also
ink drawings
Manovich, Lev 162 pen drawings 55, 59, 62, 68, 71, 108, 209, 210, 211–212
maps 32, 34, 36, 64, 118, 123, 126 pencil drawings 9–10, 16–18, 21, 23, 29, 50, 59, 67, 68,
markers 21–22, 46, 51, 55, 59–60, 62, 77, 79–81, 83, 102, 69, 193, 215
105, 109, 189, 209, 210–213, 220 perception 94
marking, act of 15 perfection, seeking 57, 152
master plans 103, 129, 191 performative landscapes 168–169
materiality 67, 86, 87, 89, 171–180 performativity of a site 63, 64
materials sheets/palettes 50 performativity of drawing 25, 28, 30, 86
meaning creation 85, 205 Perkins, Professor 2
measurements 101, 102, 103, 105; see also scaling permeability 87
memories map 127 personal connection with a site 63–64
memory 86, 118 personal narratives 32–33
metaphor 28, 29, 30, 110 perspective 2, 13–14, 51, 58, 64–65, 73, 83, 84, 93, 101,
Michaels, Wes 43 107–108, 116, 131–132, 209–210, 215
micron pens 71 philosophy 24
middle-scale landscape architecture 129–139 photocopies 48, 49
millboard 3, 12, 138, 157 photographs: complementary uses with sketching 44, 45;
minimal linework 90 ‘hero’ shot 24; as means to learn hand graphics 2–3,
model, definition of 141 5–9; as reference 61, 62; role in model building 154,
model building 3, 11–12, 64, 68, 121–123, 126, 129–139, 156, 161, 188; as source of site data 111, 130; using for
140–151, 152–161, 162–170, 171–180 ‘base drawings’ 32, 33; using to create quick sketches
modeled drawings 123, 126 2–3, 5–9, 58
modeling foam 12, 155, 186, 187 photo-realistic drawings 58, 110–111
Moore, Kathryn 110 Photoshop 10, 209, 210, 211–212
motor memory 86 physical limitations of analogue drawing 15
232 Index

plan symbols 51 seeing versus looking 94

plan view symbols 51 Selby, E. 57
plans 54–55, 64, 66, 73, 79, 80, 81, 90, 97, 102, 183, 203 selectivity 58
plant materials 51, 95–96, 97, 98, 103; see also trees; sensory perception 57, 63, 186
vegetation Serra, Richard 12
Plastalina 172, 176 shading techniques 18, 60, 69, 82, 88, 90, 93
plaster models 3, 12, 157, 158–159, 160, 161, 187, 188, shadow 66, 87, 174
214–215, 221–223 shape 74
plasticine models 68 Sharpies 59; see also markers
poche 151 sheet layout 50, 53
porosity 166, 170 shortcuts, permission to take 57–62
post factum documentation 24 silhouettes 10
practice, need for 57, 94, 101, 205 site experience 63–72
pressure 65, 67 site fragments studies 151
problem-solving tools 64, 112, 140, 152, 206, 215 site models 129–139
program analysis diagrams 77 site plans 101, 102, 103, 153
projectors 28–29 site strategies 168–169
proportion 51, 74–75, 84, 101 sketch journals 93
proximity of items 51 Sketch Out/Loud public awareness event 43
sketch walks 43, 44, 45, 118, 127, 195, 196
quality of drawings (whilst learning) 100 sketchbooks 57, 93, 195–204, 225–226
quality of paper 15, 74 Sketching the Landscape: Exploring a Sense of Place
quick color, adding 105 (Lavoie) 43
quick sketches 3, 13, 74, 206, 225 SketchUp 5–9, 60, 61, 101, 107–108
skills training 2–3
raster shading 82 slope ratios 68
readability 51 slowing ideas down 28–31
readying the ground 112 smudging 17, 18, 21
reaffirmation, drawing as 15 Snow Academy 153–161
realistic imagery 58, 110–111, 214 soft-scape materials 101, 102
record of experience, drawing as 24 soil pattern studies 148
reference books 29 sound representations 66
refined drawings 73–84, 100–101, 102–109; see also soundscapes 64, 72
iterative processes space making 101, 103
reflective practice 153 spatial exploration 3, 24–25, 73, 85, 128, 172, 178, 179, 226
rehearsal of ideas 28 spatial modeling 141
Renaissance 2 speculative drawings 110
rendering: digital 33, 191, 194, 204, 210; markers speed benefits of hand-drawing 57, 58
109, 209 sponge on paper 186
representational systems 162–170 squaring the paper 50
represented models 129–139 stairways 99
resolution 214–215 standard measurements 101
Rhino models 72 stippling 66, 69, 101
ribbon study 68 stop-motion flipbooks 64, 70, 72
Richards, James xii–xv, 43 storyboards 111, 115
Roark, Richard 202 strata 175
rod frames 135 structural studies 143
Roehr, D. 100 stylized elements 74
subject of drawing, continuity with 16
salt 154 Sullivan, Chip 43, 57
sand 120, 122 surface materiality 86, 89
satellite imagery 112, 116, 216 surface models 165
scaling 3, 32, 50, 51, 53, 64, 129–130, 153, 172, 218 Surrealism 184
schematization of form 163 symbolic intent of drawings 73
Schoonover, P. 57
scores, notations as 85 Tabet, Abdallah 201
scrubbing with a pencil 50 tactile experience 85, 153, 192
section drawings 69 temporality 24–27, 33, 58, 59, 85, 128, 141, 163,
section elevations 3, 10, 32, 38–39, 51, 56, 73, 82, 90–91, 168–169, 205
105–106, 116, 172 texture 21, 23, 51, 69, 90, 101, 103, 116, 130
section overlays 66 thick space 28–29, 118
seeds (as modeling material) 187, 188 thickened present 24
Index 233

thinking-doing interplay 16 visual intelligence 110

thumbnails 74, 84 “Visual Notes for Architects and Designers” (Crowe and
tides 25, 27, 41, 126, 186 Lassau) 44
time-based approaches 63, 65, 70, 71 visual thinking 110
Titan monument 192–194 visualizations 162–170, 206
tone 60, 64, 67, 93 Vitruvius 16
tools 50, 74, 214–215; see also specific tools voices, broader range of 64
topography 67, 68, 103, 136, 158, 159, 160, 161, 216, 221 void spaces 3, 123, 170, 174
trace paper 2–3, 5–9, 21, 28–29, 58, 60–62, 66, 193,
195, 219 warm up sketches 59
train model 3, 11–12 watercolor paper 46, 47
transect exercise 111, 113–114 watercolors 20, 33, 46, 47, 59, 208
transparency 93 waveforms 144, 187
transparent paper 26, 193 wax 122
trees 10, 51, 96, 105, 132, 133, 172, 178, 179, 226 ways in to a landscape 118
Treffinger, D. 57 ways of looking 118
Trowbridge, Peter 2 weather, drawing the 27
T-squares 50 wetness 17
white space 51
unconscious mind 184–185 whiteboard conversations 111, 115
understanding, ease of 100 white-washed wood 187
“undo,” lack of 15, 64 wind patterns 88, 91, 92
Urban Sketchers 43, 44 wire 132, 133, 178
urban sketching 43–49 wireframes 76
Ursprung, Philip 15 Women’s Plaza series 59
wood grain studies 145
Valletta – City of Exiles 123–124 World Wide Landscape Architecture Month 43
value 74, 76, 84
vector line work 82 yeast pattern studies 146–147
vegetation 21–22, 26, 103, 104, 132 Yin, Weixua 113
Venice – Lagoon Atlas 120
verb, drawing as 94 Zumthor, Peter 171, 172