18 September 2013

Xsection 2012 | Submission from Changespace




‘If 19th century culture was shaped by the novel, and 21st century culture by cinema, then the culture of the 21st century will be shaped by the interface.’ In opening his 2010 TED talk, Aaron Koblin raises a sentiment which has interesting implications for landscape architecture.

Culture is a regular feature in modern definitions of landscape architecture, appearing as a sort of foundational element alongside environmental concepts and physical processes. Theoretical works by Guallart or Girot describe culture/nature as inseparable, a conjoined system where nothing is natural or artificial, therefore could we assume culture is landscape architecture?

Returning to the idea of culture being shaped by interface, our research proposes that studying different types of interface should reveal a transforming edge to the way in which people are relating to and interacting with landscape.

Our chosen experimental interface has people interacting with vast algorithmically generated worlds of cubed materials; Minecraft employs a blocky approximation of landscapes and ecosystems to capture the attention of 7. 3million players. The approach is intrinsically related to landscape architecture; users shape the surface by destroying and relocating blocks, making it more habitable, productive or aesthetically pleasing for their pixelated self.

Maungarei Mount Wellington provides a real site which meets certain criteria - pronounced topography, intersecting ‘urban biomes’ and definite potential to perform an energetic role within it’s developing surrounds. We are proposing that a game level of the mountain could be used to exploe a new type of information gathering. How will users behave, what will they create - and will this harness a kind of lay-mans ‘design opinion’ about the site?

The process began with a greyscale height map constructed in GIS, which produced
a rough topography including water tables for the Pakuranga estuary, Panmure basin and nearby quarry wetlands. We then literally hand detailed the model, adding surface objects, materials, laying roads and populating the villages, all over a glass of red near the end of a working day.


Additions of instructional sign posting, tools, and material blocks to undertake construction upon the mountain bought the model to a point where it could be issued to test subjects. It’s still early days, but at this point we have received designs for an art gallery within the volcanic cone, a futuristic night club perched atop the maunga, hand- glider launch pads, and a glass extension to the peak.

It’s not our intention to take these concepts at face value and launch into feasibility studies, but rather to weigh up the value of a technique which can collect thousands of spatial opinions.

You can think of it as an advanced form of community consultation where survey forms, hearings and public forums are replaced with pixelated tools, unrestrained physics and explosives. Or you can think of it as a version of generative design where ‘turtles’ are replaced by real test subjects whose behaviour can appear just as complex.

Either way Xsection2012 need an answer to their question, Landscape architecture is culture-produced and crowd-sourced.

Research by Ethan Reid and Jamie Stronge of Changespace 




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23 August 2013

Xsection 2013: First edition xsection journal- Master student Trina Jashari


SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPES


Trina Jashari



The Rena oil spill has seen New Zealand facing one of the largest environmental maritime disasters, better yet; it’s also heard an enormous amount of criticism on clean up and management efforts.

What we don’t realise though is that everyday we are also contributing the same type of pollution to our waterways, and that’s through stormwater contamination. 

Auckland is set to face a nearly 10 billion-dollar tag to upgrade and manage sustainably stormwater networks for next 50 years.

Stormwater contains extremely harmful chemicals from the transport network such as zinc, copper and obnoxious oils, it also contains rubbish, and many other pollutants that severely degrade water habitats.

Auckland’s waterfront contains one of the most serious stormwater problems in the country.
What you may not be aware of when you visit one of the trendiest waterfront development in Auckland, “Wynyard quarter”, is the contamination and the environmental degradation that takes place underneath you.

Under Wynyard Quarter a large and historic urban area, is drained, where more than 80% of stormwater is left untreated, that approximates to 13 football fields put together with a depth of 1 meter, which is poured into the sea.

Unnecessary investments are being made on projects that are only temporary; we need to plan towards the future and not just temporarily fixes. 

Methods to remove contaminants from stormwater have included the creation of artificial wetlands, grassy swales; vegetated filter strips and many others.

However it has been noted that these methods not only limit the amount of water that they can treat at one time, but at times they lack to embody aesthetics, learning environments, public engagement and so on.

With the Rugby World Cup this year we have all seen how the waterfront has manifested it self into the number one destination zone. All around the world Waterfronts are some of the most desirable and celebrated places and some leading waterfronts display best practice through the use of green technology to integrate multiple uses.

In this research project I will study ways in which stormwater can be remediated through sustainable design, and ways in which it can add value to waterfronts and create a multi layered landscape . 

In Auckland there is potential to incorporate green technologies mixed with current stormwater management methods to possibly day light pipes, which would create efficient state of the art places that cater for multiple functions such as sustainable and resilient environments, economies, culture, education, and much more.

Today, our seas are faced with more and more devastating pollution, and we should no longer tolerate these places. Our world is facing a crisis in so many ways and we need to make a stand and better plan and manage the wellbeing of our environment for the future.

14 August 2013

xsection 2013: Comment | Contextual Information for Submission |


Placemaking: How do we create a contemporary sense of place?

Why are some places more successful than others, and can this be measured? What are the principles of ‘Placemaking’ and are they a vital component in the design of a place or merely just another consideration? Is there a New Zealand specific aspect to Placemaking?

X-section 2013 continues the tradition of bringing together the opinions of Landscape practitioners, academics and students, providing opportunities for rigorous discussion of a topic pertinent to the industry, with a particular emphasis on the voice of young landscape architects. Now is the time to consider your submission towards this year’s publication. What does Placemaking mean to you? 

For more information click here

13 August 2013

Xsection 2013 Throwback | Conversation with Ken Smith | Xsection 2011



New York-based Ken Smith is best known for traversing the boundaries between art and landscape. Ken has also taught at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. His practice WORKSHOP: Ken Smith Landscape Architect was established in 1992 and recently expanded into Southern California to facilitate the massive 'Orange County Great Park.'

XS
We have noticed that your portfolio of work has been for a variety of clients at a variety of scales, how to you begin to identify and priotritise the influences for each site when you start a design

KS.
 I think first of we have always taken almost all work that’s come our way, which is why there is a great range to the projects, and we’re not exactly what you would call a theory driven practise, in that we don’t have a kind of singular viewpoint that we try to push through every project, that’s not to say that we are not interested in the theory because we are, but generally each individual project Is dealt with individually so we  look at a project when it comes in and basically sum up what we think is  the opportunity of that project or some aspect of that that is of interest, so I have generally found some thing that I think is the core that I am going to push on with that particular project. And then even with other people working on the project I tend to kind of drive that through

XS
So with that where do you generally start, is it anywhere or is there a particular process you go through for how you start? Such as drawing?

KS.
Sometimes it is looking at precedents, often times its understanding the site in some way, we don’t really have a formal process, we don’t do like site analysis and then alternatives you know, at the end of the day you can step back and say that we did touch on those things but we don’t hav a formal thing, the other thing is that I was taught in school the formal classic top down deductive method of research  and analysis and the moving toward a pland and then coming up with an idea and then all the deails followed down from that but then in practise we as often as not use inductive, the bottom up process that there often times something about the particular of a site that is of  interest and that starts to shape a larger idea or there is something  about the client that shapes the larger idea. In most projetys in  the end are a combination of both deductive and inductive thinking.

XS: I was quite interest to read that you worked in collaboration with kennedy and violich architects in the east river ferry landing project, I was wondering on large scale projects such as that one and also  the orange county project, how do we teach that collaboration and how important is that within landscape architecture.

KS: As the projects get bigger and more complicated you just have to work with more people unless your going to organise your practise where you are going to go to battle and fight about everything, you have to collaborate, its just how it is, generally you want to  find people that you want to work with, people that you share ideas and agenda with and so, s*shear and fono* were great because we were colleagues from Harvard and know each other, we’ve also done a lot of work with shock architects recently and we get along as colleges and that has been very good working relationship, I think you have to  pick your collaborators carefully

XS: I think that rings true at this level aswell, doing group assignments

KS: Not everyone can play in the sandbox right

XS: So is that how we teach collaboration in class, making them work in groups, and to choose who they work with?

KS: That’s the traditional method, when I was teaching I generally did projects where they were generally individual projects, because I was more interested in someone trying to find there own identity and attitude towards design, but then at the same time at this school there were faculty who were organising group process, and there would be a lot of kind of collaboration gaming going on, not exactly as nasty as survivor on tv but the would set up situations which would test the dynamics of the group and force people to come to some kind of concesus

KS: I think for a lot of landscape architects, traditionally landscape architects have been too nice, and accepting of other people leading things and I think that landscape architects as a group need to be a little more assertive in these group situation because we bring a lot to the table and we need to be equal among the other people at the table, and I think thats a challenge, and its an ongoing challenge to the profession but its probably a challenge of each generation to kind of get your place at the table and be part of the decision making

XS: I’ve heard that kind of true about our crit sessions here and a couple of lecturers have told me to go and sit in on an architecture crit and just see the difference, and theres a lot of niceness and softness about the crits in landscape and then you go to architecture and there a lot more brashness and everyone’s standing up and really announcing that their designs the best and then everyone try to cut them down, and then we’re like up there saying it kind of nice don’t you think and everyone’s else is like yeah.

KS.
You do have to defend yourself especially when you get into public process or something, it can work, being nice actually does help in situation like when your working with a group of neighbours or something to make people feel comfortable, but on the other hand, you do need to know when to be assertive and push an agenda

XS: If its important to your design I suppose

KS: If you want to get it built and realised

XS: Another thing we are interested in is how do you, or do you think we should, stay connected and engaged in the human scale of things while working at large scales such as diagrams and plans, how do you remain connected to your project? In those initial stages and through to completion?

KS: I used to fairly regularly sit in on designer reviews at the university of pensilvania, Jim Corner used to invite me to sit on the jury and they were very interesting because Jim would always have his students simultaneously doing diagrams, and then montage views, and there was always this connections between this kind of larger idea and the quality of the space that it was creating with scale people in there and that’s the thing I thing you are talking about is how you get those two to work and that is difficult on all projects because it is very easy to  especially with the computers to kind of get sucked into the box at one scale and not really understand what your doing so in  my office we move very quickly to computers, we don’t draw  very much any more but then we do a lot of  visualisation, computer views, but we also build a lot of models, we built traditional models to kind of see  what the thing looks like, but we also   do full scale mock-ups,  last week we did a full scale mock-up of a seat to see if it was comfortable and we do things like we were trying to do a slope, and the  client was having great difficulty understanding the slope and so we found a big room and we took string and we executed the entire slope on the wall and they looked at it and the said “oh fine, no problem” so we often times work at full scale in some way in trying to understand and make that connection. Today at the end of the first lecture im going to show you a vine screen we are doing in Brooklyn, its tall, its 55ft tall, and we printed out a portion of it full scale, we have 12ft ceilings in our office and we put up a full scale drawing of a portion of it, just to see what it actually felt like, how big the pieces actually were, because often times you don’t know when your detailing something, how big is that, horizontal thing there so we try to make that connection. And also we spend a lot of time just looking at how people use spaces,  when I was teaching I always had my students read the William whyte, social life of small urban spaces, which is a really good book about how people use space, sit and people watch and stuff, and we kind of bring that social agenda to all of our work.

XS: How do you remain connected to the project, do you remain connected right through to completion

KS: We try to take all of our projects all the way through to construction. I really don’t like having other people execute the design work

XS: So do you remain on as the project manager?

KS: How the office is organised is: There’s me and I have a senior associate who looks over across the board of  all the projects that are going on. And then there’s a series of project managers. Each time a project comes in it will be assigned to a project manager and they will stay with the project right the way through, and I am involved in all projects, not on a day to day basis like the project manager but I help set the direction for the project initially, and I follow all the projects along, all the way through. I am interested in the construction documents and I always go to the construction sites, well I like the construction sites, but also a lot of stuff happens in the field and if you are not paying attention during construction things can go sideways. That’s not good.

XS: What’s the most rewarding aspect of the process for you?

KS: Generating the ideas is always the most fun, the very beginning.  Probably the worst part is in the middle of the project where you are trying to keep the thing going in the right direction. The are so  many forces trying to push and pull the project sideways or make it something else, but then construction is always fun also, as you start to see the thing happening in real space.

XS: I was just intrigued, going back that you like to observe people and how they use space. Do you often go back to projects of your own to see how people are actually using the space?

KS: I always try to go back to my projects, over time, whenever I can. The Yardville Park in Toronto I have been back a number of times, most recently about a year ago. And people really do use it. They sit everywhere, they have a very good social life there,  how they use it. So I do try to go back to see what people are using, what works and maybe what doesn’t work as well as I thought it might have and try and learn from that.

XS: Do you ever get a chance to refine those things when you see them not working?

KS: Sometimes you can, other times; you just have to learn from it for your next project. Some things you cant actually change after the fact.

XS: You have mentioned you use Photoshop extensively in the design process. Do you think the use of these digital design tools influences the outcome? Or is it just a tool?

KS: Its not just a tool, the tool is actually shaping the design, because you can do things quickly now that were very difficult before, so its making different kinds of design. I still draw sometimes, but I tend to work in photoshop first. I do diagrams in photoshop, kind of dumb diagrams but I’ll tend to layout a project in photoshop diagrams and then some kind of montages, that’s usually the first part. I find that the montage-ing, often times at some level, influences the look of the project, because you start designing that image. So then you find out that this actually looks better than that and then you take that back then into the plan work and it changes it. We are using more 3D software now and that’s also useful, to find out, well that’s too tall and you can start pushing things around differently.

XS: Is that with CAD or video software aswell?

KS: We are using Rhino in the office now and the thing with that, in terms of fabrication, more and more, the CAD drawings go directly to the fabricator. So there’s a much stronger connection, a kind of industrial design connection between how things are built and design that is changing. The products, the forms are more complex than they were 20 years ago because the computer allows us to do that.

XS: We notice that you don’t have a website?

KS: No. Havent gotten around to it.

XS: Your online presence seems to be very carefully controlled, is that intentional?

KS: Part of the reason to not have a website is that, well it would never be up to date because we are just terrible at that, our office brochure was last updated in 2008, so we don’t even use it anymore. But the other reason, is, early on, people would call if they wanted information about the office, and that’s a 2 way conversation: you find out what it is they are interested in and then you can actually frame the material you give them in way you probably cant do with a website. We will probably have one in a few years.

XS: Where do you see the future of social media technology within landscape architecture.

KS: We haven’t been doing that very much but it makes sense that that would be the way you would do it, you are not going to mail a postcard to anyone these days, it doesn’t make any sense. So the interactive aspect of that where people respond is a very useful way of getting feedback. I would say it could be a major tool in the future for public participation.

XS: Do you think social media could be a useful tool in the Orange County Great Park project?

KS: Yes, Orange County is a good example of that. It has been very media savvy. The park itself was born out of vote initiatives, ballot initiatives. There were people who wanted to build an airport there and there were people who didn’t want an airport. The people who didn’t want an airport did a great deal of political polling, and what they found out was that people wont vote against an airport, but they will vote for something else, so you have to have a positive thing to put out there. They polled and they found that people would vote for a park. Even the name The Great Park had a great deal of appeal to people and that is why it is called that, all a result of political poll taking. Even during the competition they had websites and a lot of interactive measuring going on to see what people like and that was part of how we got selected for the project. So already that is happening in contemporary projects.

KS: The Orange County Park is a good example of that. It’s been very media savvy and because the park was born out of vote initiatives , ballot initiatives, because there were people who wanted to build an airport there and people who didn’t want an airport there. The people who didn’t want an airport did a great deal of political polling and what they found out was that people won’t vote against an airport but they would vote for something else so you have to have a positive thing to put out there. they polled and found out that people would vote for a park. Even the name, they did polling and they found that the term ‘Great Park’ had a great deal of appeal for people, and that’s why it’s called that, as a result of a very sophisticated poll taking. Even during the competition they had websites and a lot of interactive measuring that was going on to see what people liked and that was part of how we got selected for the project, so, already it’s happening in contemporary projects.

XS: What other sort technologies do you see influencing the disciple of landscape architecture in the near future, as far as [new software/ hardware interface e.g laser cutter, 3D modelers etc] How do you see that influencing the ways we design?

KS: Well, it’s all part of our means of production, and that is changing the profession. but I think that probably another thing that might be  an influence, is the research models that come out of other professions. I mean you see it certainly  in the ecological aspects of the profession, that you don’t have to be ecologist to adapt a model for community sampling or species diversification, and then you apply it to a project and I would expect that we would use research findings from public health and other related fields as design form-makers in a way, where we are starting to apply other kinds of models into the work that starts to shape the design.


XS: I suppose GIS the big influence there?
I’m not sure. I think the organizational models, spatial models, performative criteria I think those things we will borrow. GIS is really a different scale -  big scale - right? We don’t really do planning in America so we don’t’ know anything about that!

XS: So do you think there is a danger in GIS-based or ecologically derived design?

KS: No, no. I think it makes sense a big scale, but it is a very coarse scale and when you get down to the specific site it won’t tell you how to plant or to grade, or make things work. It doesn’t tell you how to make the interaction between the ecology and the culture work. That’s a different kind of endeavor.

XS: How do you see nature in the future?

KS: Huh. I don’t know. It changing, right?  Well, humans are a part of nature, we’re a pretty active part of nature and we’ve pretty munch manipulated the whole nature of the planet at this point. Including the melting of the icebergs. There isn’t any reason to think that humans are going to be less active in manipulating nature so we should perhaps be better managers that we are.


XS: What would be you number one piece of advice for students entering the industry?

KS: I don’t know. Just to learn as much as you can and to get out there and start practicing as quickly as you can. Learn from your mistakes. You shouldn’t be nostalgic; the world is changing very quickly and you should jump onto the changes and go with them.

XS: What was the biggest challenge you were dealing with when you were teaching? What did the students find the hardest to grasp?

KS: I think scale has always been a difficult thing. Understanding the scale of what you’re working on, and the scale for the person within it. That, and actually figuring out how to take ideas, and how to apply them in design.  The development of an idea. Coming up with a idea is easy, but the development of the idea into a design, there’s a real rigor to that. I think with my design students, I didn’t really care what the idea was, if the student had an idea then fine we’ll take that. A lot of people would anguish all semester over the idea and never actually do anything - that’s probably fine.  But in my studio we were really much more focused on taking the idea and seeing how you would go about developing the idea into something that’s a real design. I think that is a rigor and an art and something you need to learn.

XS: Outside of LS arch, what influences you at the moment?

KS: I go to art galleries all the time. For the past twenty years I have gone to galleries several times a month just to see the new ideas. Because artists are always quick to present new ideas in a big range of things and that’s interesting. The whole level of imaging within the arts, the impact of photography, and digital photography  - digital means -  is really apparent in the art world and that’s interesting. At one end people do very sophisticated things with imaging and digital things and then at the other end you have people doing entirely rigorous, crazy craft things with found objects and you find both of those things happening at the same time and that’s interesting, yet they’re both contemporary.

XS: The MOMA project must have been pretty close to heart for you then?

Yeah, that was a good project - it was fun. It was a good client. They pretty much let me do what I want.

XS: And that was originally a temporary installation?

KS: Well, that’s still not clear. It was designed with a 7-year life and were at 7 years now, so there’s been a little bit of restoration on it, but it’s not really clear.

XS: You mentioned earlier that you have a couple of smaller installation project coming up. Are they more arts-based or permanent interventions?


KS: Well, they’re done at no profit to the office, we do them because I’m interested in them. We always have one or two residences that we’re doing,, and we loose money on those. But they’re small scale and interesting and I like doing them and I like having the small scale in the office. We have some sort of art installation in Metis, Quebec, [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/garden/the-international-garden-festival-in-quebec-nods-to-new-yorkers.html]  and then we have a really silly one in Hamburg Germany for the International Garden Show 2013, where they give you a little plot. they assigned me, well they told me what to do, they gave me a theme that was really stupid. My theme is the ‘American Dream’, and then they went on and gave me the description of what the American Dream was. Usually the ideas come pretty quickly, but with that one I think it took me about 6 weeks to come up with an idea. We’re doing a gameboard, like a walkable gameboard and it’s based on Monopoly, which I guess is the American Dream –speculation, greed and money and all that. It’s called ‘Dream-opoly’. So it’s a little cynical. But it’s hard not to be cynical when you’re given an assignment like that.


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07 August 2013

Xsection 2013: Throwback to first edition xsection journal [2011] Field_LA


Multidimensionality

Field_LA






Is the analysis phase of landscape architecture due for a makeover? Do aerial mapping techniques give the designer a hint of the ephemeral and dynamic nature of things? Perhaps techniques borrowed from the fine arts offer the possibility of helping us to explore how landscapes work? Or at the very least, provide a distinctive way of documenting and interpreting the landscape.

It was our hunch that focusing on the moments that regularly occur, but are often overlooked in the landscape, such as birds flying, children running, and cars moving would contribute to a greater understanding of how a landscape actually worked.   

An area we thought worth exploring was the work of the Cubists and with their interest in multiple veiwpoints and therefore the conclusion in a single image of the temporal.  And more recently, David Hockney’s collage work and large panoramas.  Pablo Piccaso’s work Femme Couchee, for example, and the work of the analytical phase of Cubism in general demonstrates the dismantling of objects and having analysed them into component elements rearranging them in a new order.  This new articulation reiterates the sentiments of the Abstractionists.  The potency and relevance of this new articulation is reinforced by the Abstractionists’ belief that no imitation can ever reflect the strength and beauty in the appearance of nature.  In order to depict nature fully we must find another way.[1] The exploration, outlined below, at Cornwall Park in Auckland, New Zealand permits landscape moments recorded in photographs to contribute to the landscape design process in a way that realises a multidimensional understanding of the site.  

To begin we utilised the camera to initially record information.  At this stage the pictures were just that – pictures, which contained formal notions of perspective, a particular way of seeing the image, from a distance and in a static frozen ‘moment’.  Picasso’s works are often seen as distortions or abstract works, however if we introduce the notion of time to the way we think about his works, we can begin to read them differently.  Take the two archetypal styles of theatre; the Italian style where the stage is a box that contains backdrops that create the illusion of distance and perspective; and the Shakespearian style of theatre where the stage juts out into the audience so that everyone who views the theatre sees something different.  Picasso’s paintings can be described as working in the same way as the latter of these two examples.  They are in fact just another way of seeing.  It is as if the image is moving in time and we can see behind, beside and in front at the same time.  This is an idea we thought would be useful for landscape architecture.  What if we could articulate site information in this alternative multi-dimensional way, rather than a distanced static view as is normative with the types of methods we use to collect information and also in the way we represent that information?

The Landscape is encoded with the ephemeral, the moment, intensities and forces.  Looking at landscapes from the bottom up, or upside down, enables a different viewpoint.  By eluding familiar form and by viewing the landscape apart from its usual connections to objects and materiality, a new clarity becomes apparent, in much the same way as when drawing, if the concentration is focused on acute observation of the subject, rather than on thinking ‘can I draw?’, the outcome is startlingly competent.  This cognitive shift enables preconceptions about the landscape to be downplayed and ways of analysing the landscape to be enhanced.  

The new drawings have folded in, and are encoded with, temporal information contained within photographs.  This is an augmentation of the more usual use of photographs to determine, for instance, the facilitating or screening of view shafts, or analysis of existing landscape structures. 

Images that are stylised, abstracted, and distorted can often be dismissed as not being like the world, because they don’t look like the world.  Our drawings could be seen as such distortions.  It is easy to hold up a photograph and say, ‘see, this is what it looks like’.  However, when we do this we are accepting one viewpoint, one angle, perspectival rules, and the concept of outside looking in.  Our work attempts to achieve a multidimensional understanding of site photography, in particular, images, which record landscape moments.  This multidimensional perspective offers other ways of interpreting and understanding the forces and flows (made up of intensities and individual moments) that are functioning in and through the site.  The process by which we have gone about this highlights the idea that landscape architecture is a regulator, meaning that this design process taps into the forces and flows, and extracts intensities and expresses them in terms of configurations and forms.  This, rather than providing one solution for site problems or coming up with a static design for a bounded area, provides directives for the way the designer could go about configuring the landscape.  

In order to engage with forces and intensities it is necessary to engage with what may, at first, seem to be abstractions or distortions.  The ‘real’ views contained within the initial photographs taken at the beginning of this technique do not immediately reveal the underlying qualities embedded in them.

This technique enabled us to construct images that encompass the assemblage of conditions associated with various events.  Multidimensionality differs from the use of plans and maps because it offers, in the case of the birds flying composition, concepts of here, there and not there, change, chance and potentiality.  This is as opposed to numbers of birds, flight paths, species that can be represented through maps and denote ‘fixed’ conditions.  Our technique attempts to capture the more ephemeral and also functional characteristics of the birds and register their effects against the landscape. What results are an assemblage of effects registered against surrounding landscape in the diagrams change chance, stack shift, and move transform.  The analysis of the original photographs utilising this technique reveals qualities such as: the constant evolution of landscapes through adding, removing and recombining conditions, minute changes in behaviour within the assemblage can radically alter formations and, movements of forces layer up on landscapes so that we determine intersections of layers on a plane as well as the forces move through landscapes distorting and altering entire assemblages.


[1] C. Harrison, P. Wood, eds., Art in Theory 1900-2000 An Anthology of Changing Ideas, USA, 1993. p. 287.




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09 April 2013

Call for submissions - Issue 3










Placemaking
How do we create contemporary sense of place?


Call for submissions:
We are calling for contemporary, innovative
interpretations of placemaking. These should
investigate methodologies in creating place
through design process, academic analysis, or
cultural perception and be in the form of:

- 500 - 1500 magazine style (non peer reviewed)
- 1500 - 2000 journal article (double blind peer reviewed)
- Digital media and film (online content)
- Photographic essays
- Innovative design projects
- Collage

For more information on this years issue contact us:


PLACEMAKING: how do we create a contemporary sense of place

... is this years theme. For the comment head this way.

 (Judges Bay)


We're calling for submissions now.


13 September 2012


Here is one of the interesting images that was submitted for this years x-section journal and it looks awesome. Things here are x-section is picking up after the recent load of submissions that just came in. Looking forward to laying out the work and getting the finished copy out to everyone.