Reviewed by Madis Pihlak, ASLA
Well-written computer books are rare, but Stephen Ervin and Hope Hasbrouck of the Harvard Graduate School of Design have authored a readable book, profusely illustrated with color images from all over the world, for landscape architects interested in landscape modeling issues. This is not just a book for the "digital gear head" or the "CAD corner" of the office; there is enough conceptual development and landscape modeling theory to pique the interest of even the most technophobic landscape architect. Organized around the timeless components of landscape--landform, vegetation, water, and atmosphere--this book will be useful to landscape modelers long after the last software package mentioned is retired to the scrap heap of computing history.
Significantly, the book is also the organizing concept of the Fourth International Conference on New Trends in Landscape Architecture at the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in Bernburg, Germany, May 15 and 16, 2003. Ervin will be the keynote speaker.
The book's six chapters start with a broad introduction to landscape modeling and conclude with a synthesis chapter that brings all the threads of the book together. A list of references follows each chapter.
The book includes a companion CD that is really the entire book in digital format. The color images on the web site and CD and especially vivid on a good computer monitor. The CD is copy protected, but the authors should be applauded for risking theft of the images to give the reader a platform-neutral version of the book's images, which look much better on computer monitors than they do on the five-by-eight-inch book page. The web site is even better because a large page of the text of the book is available for easy retrieval at www.landscapemodeling.org.
The first 36 pages of the book are especially useful in introducing technical terms while discussing the operations and calculations of landscape modeling. The authors' examples come primarily from digital images produced by practicing landscape architects and academics. If the book is to be faulted, it would be for its lack of focus on the high end of landscape modeling, such as the work of Pixar Studios (seen in the movies Toy Story and Monsters, Inc.) or DreamWorks (seen in Shrek). This Hollywood level of digital simulation might inspire a new generation of landscape architects to digitally model the natural world.
The second chapter, on landform, introduces the tutorial that is carried out throughout the rest of the book. The simple tutorials engage the reader in a way that leads to possible longer-term understanding of the concepts, although less digitally inclined landscape architects may not be able to make the conceptual leap to select the appropriate software to complete the tutorial. However, these tutorials make the book a perfect tool for an office contemplating an increased use of design computing for projects.
The book contains no reference to computer hardware. The rapid pace of change within the computer hardware market makes this a wise decision.
At the end of the book there are a technical appendix, a glossary of technical terms, and a listing of 27 software packages. The software listing is somewhat limited, because no matter how generic the authors of any computer book attempt to be, they are challenged by the speed at which design software is evolving. One example: Because the book was substantially written in 2000, there is no mention of new software packages such as Sketch-up, the innovative design-oriented rapid modeling package for designers.
Overall, however, this is an attractive and useful book. With its publication, landscape architects no longer have any reason to avoid landform modeling. (Landscape Architecture )
LANDSCAPE MODELING: Digital Techniques for Landscape Visualization by Stephen Ervin and Hope Hasbrouck
from the Introduction
This book is about modeling the landscape, and so it has both an action-oriented purpose--modeling--and an object-oriented one--landscape. Modeling simply means making representations, such as drawings, paintings, and cardboard mock-ups; or, more specifically, using digital computers and computer software to organize information in the form of numbers or bits, then creating images on a computer screen or printed on paper; or creating a series of images to form an animation; or even producing a three-dimensional artifact, such as a physical model created by a numerically controlled machine. Modeling by computer is similar in some ways to drawing or painting with pencil or brush, but is quite radically different in other ways--the differences are mostly what this book is about. Landscape means the natural world, in which we live, garden, work, and build, including both natural systems such as plants and weather, and also built systems, such as roads and cities. Though we may sometimes speak of "the landscape," that is misleading, as there are many different landscapes in this world, and many different perceptions of them. In this text, "the landscape" is used in the same spirit as when we speak of "the human race," meaning to focus on the commonalities and shared attributes, but without ignoring or demeaning the variety and individuality to be found within it.
Four essential elements of the landscape--landform, plants, water, and the atmosphere--are the focus of this book. The first three are the traditional palette of landscape architects, and are the essential components of the natural world, without people or buildings. Of course, in the real world that we live in, the landscape includes structures of all kinds, including buildings and bridges and cars, and a wide variety of animals who activities are vital to the function and look of the landscape. There is a vast literature on using computers to model buildings and structures, using Computer Aided Design (CAD) software, and while this book assumes some familiarity with those ideas, it does not focus on making models of buildings. Landscape elements are different enough from most buildings and machines--rarely square or flat or simple or small, often curved and fuzzy and complex and large--that while many of the same basic digital tools are used in modeling the landscape, their application requires different techniques, and often a different frame of mind, as well. Landscapes usually combine the four major elements in a myriad of ways, both in nature and when designed and built by humans in many forms including gardens, parks, building sites and urban plazas. This book is motivated by a desire to share techniques for using CAD modeling and rendering tools, combining them with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and tapping the power of computing to help landscape planners, designers and modelers expand their representational repertoire, as well as start to grapple with the complexity and dynamics inherent in the landscape...
Landscape architects and other environmental designers make models of landscapes for the same reasons models are made in all design disciplines: it is easier, faster, often safer, and more responsible, to experiment and try out alternatives with "stand-in" representations, rather than with the "real thing." A landscape architect comparing alternative planting plans--one-, two-, or three-abreast rows of shade trees, for example--can simply look to the real world for some examples of each, and so[me] good designers do keep libraries of examples and references garnered from their own and others' experiences and observations. To actually try out several different schemes, in situ, though, is complicated almost to the point of impossibility. Comparing growth patterns over time, or visual effects in different daylight conditions, could take literally years. Sketches, models, computer renderings, and other representations, however, can be made relatively quickly, and with infinite subtle variations. How good these representations are in helping designers choose between alternatives becomes a question of the detailed characteristics of the representation used--the media, the techniques, the levels of abstraction and realism, and so on. (Harvard Design Magazine )
