HKU-Landscape-Annual-2013-14

MLA
ARCH7204 / 7205
Digital Media for
Landscape Architecture
Instructors:
Ashley Scott Kelly,
Danny Tang Wai Kwong
(teaching assistant)
Digital Media for
Landscape Architecture
Digital Media for
Landscape Architecture
Design must be culturally relevant and it must also have form.
This two-course sequence developed and refined skills in a
diverse range of analytic representation and digital design
techniques, including GIS, computational logic, and advanced
data visualization and interaction, for landscape research
and design. Digital histories from the 1960s through the
1990s digital revolution provided context to make critical
design decisions when working with digital mediums. As a
parallel to the MLA1 studio during the semester, we focused
on agriculture, forestry and development impacted by large
infrastructure projects in data-poor central and northern
Myanmar. Student project groups followed the now-complete
Shwe Pipeline and included: the Chinese-financed Kyaukpyu
Deep Sea Port; agricultural development; Irrawaddy Myitsone
Dam (as an infrastructural and environmental correlate to the
pipeline), Shan-Yunnan border area; and Kunming-Ruili route.
Landscape confronts forms much more complex than the
other design disciplines. Students manipulated geospatial data
from remotely-sensed and open-source datasets to build
a generalist’s understanding of digital media for the range
of scales landscape architects confront and in which they
collaborate. Automation and iterative, procedural workflows
were stressed as part of an efficient design process and
problem solving toolset (i.e., design thinking). The sequence
was not intended to promote proficiency in isolated software
environments but is instead engineered to build dexterity and
foundational knowledge in logic, automation, non-destructive
editing, precision, and other topics common across all
platforms.
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50 51
2
4 5
3
1
Map showing locations of
students’ projects
2
Ronnie
Rong PENG
3
Angel
Pui Sheung WAN
4
Lee
Chenchen LI
5
Rose
TAN