Focus Week 3 - Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture: Contemporary Techniques and Tools for Digital Representation in Site Design

Authors: Bradley Cantrell, Wes Michaels




This is an excellent introductory book with more advanced techniques as well. Very clear at demonstating how the integrated use of several industry standard software packages can produce very good results which wide variety of forms of digital visual representation for Landscape Architects and designers. The last few chapters give quite a good overview of creating perspective visualisations through various methods, a very useful tool for promoting/selling a scheme. It is quite expensive but then that is to be expected in such a specialised subject area. It also shows the inter-connectivity between these software packages (for example methods of rendering PDF line work exported from AutoCad into Photoshop) to make the most of their respective advantages. This book would have been a great addition to me in my first year of university.

Focus Week 3 - Museum of London - London in Water

This exhibition contains a serious of photographs edited to convey how London would be like if it was under water, although it is very beautiful it is demolishing at the same time.
Many locations such as piccadilly circus, leicester square, house of parliament, hyde park and the London eye are all shown in this exhibition.

Focus Week 3 - Museum of London

The Museum of London portrays the history from Prehistoric to the present day, its primary focus is with the social history of london and its inhabitants historically. The new modern London galleries contain prehistoric, Roman and medieval London galleries. The museum provides plenty of examples of historic times in London and provides a number of models that are useful to those interested in Landscape.

The museum is a non-departmental public body.

Focus Week 3 - What is Landscape?

Sam Johnston headed this lecture, he is currently employed with Gustafson Porter. He described landscape as EVERYTHING, I interpreted this in such a way that landscape is everything we can see, from roads, parks, pavements, canals, and streets.

He then went on and talk about some of the projects he worked with.

- Lake Balaton




- Hooke Park


- Milan City Life



- Woolwich Squares -> 2 squares designed with differen themes, Ballroom and Gardens.



I was wilding interested in this lecture since I have had visited Swiss Cottage Open area which was also designed by Gustafson Porter.


All images courtesy of gustafson-porter.com

Focus Week 3 - University Lectures

This week there were some lectures at my university, there were two that I attended. The first lecture was Christian Spencer Davies, the Director of AModels. Architectural Model Making is there professional field. His main target is to make beautiful models and is committed to finding the correct material for his work and that being creative throughout a design was key. What interested me is that he showed a presentation on how they represent vegetation, I was particularly inspired by this seeing as this related to my course.




All images courtesy of amodels.com

The other lecture was hosted by STUDIO WEAVE. What kept me engaged was there main project, a small cabin installation that they designed in Kielder Water, Northumberland. They incorporated there work in a form of two fictional characters, Freya and Robin (Both who lived by a lake as I could remember). This fiction explains there design immensely. The immenent base of characters enforcing a creation of such intelligence is controversial, as I couldn't believe it!




Images courtesy of Studioweave.com

Focus Week 3 - CAD & Photoshop Tutorial

This is my final piece from the tutorial given by an employee of Bernard Seymour Landscape Archititects.This was a 3 hour session in which we learn serveral stages of development towards a complete masterplan. The techniques were based from converting a CAD file to a PDF, to enable the use of texture to be added on in photoshop. Then were taught several steps in rendering the full image in terms of shading.

This enhanced my abilities in learning how to adapt a successful masterlplan to my work, even though I knew a few steps this tutorial gives me an insight to fully completed masterplan.

Focus Week 3 - Aspirations

For the commencing week my main aims were to visit the lectures and tutorial classes held at university. A few lecture to look forward to with topics such as model making and also the spokemans of Gustafson Porter, Sam Johnston was attending.
I also intend on improving my software skills, I will aim to improve my masterplans and learn more about 3D modelling softwares.

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Landscape Architect's Pocket Book

Authors: Siobhan Vernon, Nicola Garmory, Rachel Tennant




I can't believe how much information is stored in such a small book, it even fits in your pocket. It focuses on garden designers: a reference book that gives all dimensions for loading, path widths, height restrictions. It contains a lot of information for Pathway to Chartership including planning and legislation, landscape architecture work stages, sustainability of materials. A book that contains a lot of depth but fits in your pocket!

The Eden Project