Focus Week 3 - What is Landscape?

This week's Focus Week was a series of lectures/seminars by Landscape Architects and other designers. These talks were based around the topic of 'What is Landscape'. A great topic, as I found myself often thinking what Landscape actually is! Furthermore I could have a proper answer to tell my friends who think I am studying to be a gardener!

The best and most simple answer was "Landscape is everything under the sun" which came from Neil Porter.

First up was Studio Weave. The people responsible for the 'Longest Bench' situated in Littehampton. See Captions below

These designers work in a strange but exciting way, where they create stories behind their designs. Personally I feel that it is a great way to attract people to visit the site!

One of their story as such was 'Freya and Robin' which was at Kielder Water. A love story that took place from both sides of the bank. After hearing the story, I could understand how the approach of having a story behind a design can encourage people to visit the place.

What is Landscape? - Christian Spencer Davies

Christian Spencer Davies - AMODELS

A fantastic talk by Christian, who showed us many of his 'strange' and unconventional models was a perfect example of how designers can have their own style.

AMODELS have made models for big architects and designers such as Will Alsop and Zaha Hadid.

Major projects that they have been involved in are; Diana Princess of Wales Memorial (Hyde Park) and a model used in the film Breaking and Entering by Jude Law!

Christian Spencer Davies believes in making models "unrealistic and colourful which are full of life"

A lot of people attending the talks might have disagreed with his approach, however I believe that it is a great and unique way of making models.

Caption below: Oyster Pleasance; Lincolnshire County Council

What is Landscape? - Heather Ring

The talks were getting very diverse and interesting throughout the week!

Heather Ring from Wayward Plants helped run the plant exchange where new homes are found for unwanted plants.

An interesting 'project' that she was part of was a Guerilla Garden situated on Upper Street. a Guerilla Garden is when planting is undertaken without permission!

Heather had many little projects that she done, however in my eyes they were more like 'movements' and not projects.

She summarised her thoughts on what she thought landscape was. 'An exploration at a small scale" "a way to see people interacting"

Although my interests lie with creativity shown in projects, Heather's 'movements' was a great way to show how her temporary stalls and pieces went a long way in gaining a lot of recognition and attention.

Focus Week 3 - CAD/Photoshop

CAD and Photoshop tutorial

During this week, I was learning how to make plans on AutoCAD which was to be rendered in Photoshop.

The first step was make a new layout on AutoCAD to place a the plan onto

Once this has been set up, 'print' using CutePDF setting the scale to 1:1.

A view port is then made to centre the plan onto the page. When scaling, in the command bar, type Z ENTER, S ENTER followed by desired scale in the format of 1/200 ENTER.

Once this has been done, the image can be opened as a PDF on Photoshope. Resolution should be set to 150 dpi, and the required page size should be set.

The PDF is now up on Photoshop and is ready to be rendered. Specific areas were selected and 'masked' with a picture or effect.

This red area selected it to be masked with a paving effect.

The process is repeated for different elements such as trees, grass and planting. Special effects can be added to improve the quality of the layers. For example, the trees were given a shaded effect as seen above.

Finally the unneeded surrounding, like the buildings were deleted and what as left was given a different shade. this effect highlights the landscape within.

Final piece