Discover how technology and computing in landscape architecture can be used as both a technical and cultural force impacting the profession and the built environment. Topics of interest include:
Software upgrades and “how-tos”
Graphic design
Social media in professional practice
Influence of technology on education and professional practice
As landscape architects, we make graphic design decisions constantly throughout our workday: from laying out presentations to basic font selection. With a better understanding of layout, typography, and use of color, we can make more thoughtful and informed decisions in how we communicate visually. In this webinar, we will walk through graphic design essentials: from type sizing, to page margins, to using InDesign more efficiently, that will help us communicate more legibly and beautifully.
Learning Objectives:
Familiarity with essential graphic design terminology.
Familiarity with best practices in typography (how we choose and use fonts).
Familiarity with page and screen layout best practices.
SketchUp 2014 brings with it many improvements. This webinar will present the improvements that will impact how landscape architects do business. You will hear from experts what scripts and plugins they prefer and they will share insights into some of the tricks of the trade. Speakers will discuss how plugins provide great capability within SketchUp as well as exporting a high quality rendered product. These techniques are changing the perception of what SketchUp can produce.
Learning Objectives:
Understand how software improvements to SketchUp 2014 can improve your projects.
Learn which techniques and extension tools are useful for site design.
Become familiar with how various rendering plugins can greatly enhance your project quality.
Landscape architects are often responsible for the design of stormwater systems. The US EPA National Stormwater Calculator is a new planning and design tool to document estimated performance (stormwater runoff reductions) of green infrastructure stormwater best management practices (BMPs). The National Stormwater Calculator is a desktop application that estimates the annual amount of rainwater and frequency of runoff from a specific site anywhere in the United States (including Puerto Rico). Estimates are based on local soil conditions, land cover, historic rainfall records, future climate change scenarios, and BMP designs. It is designed to be used by anyone interested in reducing runoff from a property, including: site developers, landscape architects, urban planners, and homeowners. Landscape architects will learn how to use the National Stormwater Calculator for potential projects. Attendees will also learn about future updates to the calculator.
Learning Objectives:
Learn about urban stormwater management planning and design tools & models.
Learn how to use US EPA’s National Stormwater Calculator, including potential applications for regulatory and voluntary projects.
Learn about green infrastructure (stormwater BMPs) climate resiliency planning and future updates to the National Stormwater Calculator.
Three design innovators share their cumulative experience working with metal and stone in the landscape. Through case studies, they elaborate on specific techniques, approaches, and inspirations throughout the design process. This detailed journey from concept through fabrication and installation illuminates the many complex and creative pathways to contemporary landscape design.
Learning Objectives:
Discover techniques and approaches for creating avant-garde metal/stone installations and details with the landscape.
Learn project design criteria and installation facts and costs.
Learn collaborative methods used with clients, designers and contractors in regards to metal/stone design as well as processes to create complex details through 3D modeling and representation for innovative fabrication.
Understand the challenges and successes from detailed case studies of a variety of metal/stone applications. Gain insight on how these new approaches can influence the future of landscape infrastructure.
This session will explore how technology influences and is influenced by practitioners, educators, students, and software developers. We will have a moderated round-table discussion bringing together professional practice, education, and digital technology. This session will also focus on the practical application of off-the-shelf software to achieving production in the workplace.
Learning Objectives:
Identify the software, platforms, and processes that are being taught to landscape architecture students.
Understand the requests that students are making for technology use.
Recognize how professional practice influences the technology curriculum, and the expectations of hiring firms.
Explain how the educational curriculum affects professional practice.
Become aware of how practitioners contribute to the development of software.
Identify new technologies that impact our products, workflows, and staff.
Become aware of how technology companies are working with educators to promote their products.
Visual social media such as Instagram and Twitter have the potential to offer more than a chronicle of our everyday lives. They allow landscape architects to reach into a vast storehouse of visual information and extract valuable information about the general public's shared landscape experiences. An ability to collect and analyze this information can give landscape architects, urban planners, and researchers insight into how snapshots reveal individual preferences and interpretations of the built environment.
This presentation will take the practitioner on a technological journey through the Instagram API Console and its potential when applied to a real site in an attempt to answer if this type of Big Data can be used to find hidden patterns and commonalities in the landscape. Webinar participants will learn how to use Twitter’s “Streaming API” to build their own tool for site analysis, post-occupancy evaluation, and design research.
Objectives:
Learn how Big Data is changing how the public views, collects and disseminates information about the landscape.
Learn how technology has changed how people view the landscape and how it has remained the same.
Learn how the tool can be applied to find hidden patterns and commonalities in the built environment.
Learn how new hardware and software technologies are helping landscape architects innovate in the planning, design, and post occupancy assessment of parks and public spaces. In this session you will see case studies from Sasaki, Soofa, a start-up from MIT’s Media Lab, and the Park District of Oak Park, IL.
Learning Objectives:
Learn what new technology currently exists in the market, both in hardware and software, and how landscape architects and clients are working together to deploy it in outdoor public spaces.
Understand the challenges in bringing new technology to parks and public spaces and how to overcome them.
Gain insight into how landscape architects can effectively collaborate with technology companies, and why such collaboration is valuable in the current era of smart cities and data driven decision-making.
Learn directly from a public sector client where landscape architects can add value in helping make smarter parks and public spaces and where there is room for improvement.
With today’s tight budgets, collaboration requirements and quick delivery of projects with regulatory or performance-driven guidelines, landscape architects need to work smarter, not harder. Explore the challenges associated with transitioning from traditional CAD platforms to building information modeling (BIM), new efficient workflows, and the benefits/challenges of this change.
Learning objectives:
Learn the deciding factors that compel firms to move from general CAD to BIM and how firms transition to new design workflows, including timelines, challenges, and helpful resources.
Identify the suite of tools and work flows available to assist and document design.
Explore practical uses of BIM from conceptual drawings and models to construction documents and presentations.
Understand how BIM workflows are used to complete applications for LEED, SITES, and state, local, and federal reviews and approvals.
Augmented intelligence (AI) is disrupting the complexity where designers thrive. A new era of collaboration enables shift from data overload toward data sensibility. How will capitalizing on augmented intelligence affect your practice? Your productivity? Geodesign, a unique AI, provides distinctive opportunities—learn from practitioners successfully navigating this shift. Learning Objectives:
Understand how geospatial data provides augmented intelligence that is relevant for design practices (large and small) and opportunities how to utilize this most effectively.
Learn the distinctive benefits and potential challenges of combining geospatial technology with landscape architecture design practices
Be able to compare technologies that provide augmented intelligence and how best to leverage various approaches to collaboration using the geodesign approach
Realize how landscape architecture’s skills and expertise are a perfect fit for leading geodesign teams and become inspired by these opportunities.
Expanding driverless vehicle use will force crucial recalibrations to streets, public spaces, and urban form. How can designers maintain human interests in increasingly autonomous cities? This panel of landscape architects and planning authorities will discuss initiatives to promote physical, ecological, and social sustainability through driverless technologies.
Learning Objectives:
Learn about case studies of current design research and experiments in design regarding autonomous vehicles.
Learn public engagement strategies and scenario based approaches to design.
Understand development of planning policies in various cities due to autonomous vehicle growth.
Examine the role of partnerships with local industries and academic institutions in designing for autonomous vehicles.
