BRIEFING
3. This one was last year March 2019) when a student was standing at their desk there while I went into the session. 4. This one is after COVID (March 2020) – so no student was standing next to me in desk crit – this was a fully remote session.
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application was for the review and feedback portion within the design development and problem-solving process of the students’ drawings. Can the digital studio environment engage students? Paper-based design critiques often lack iterative context when reviewed later. The DRS via
1. RT Painters – Yodo River walkway, Osaka, Japan. © RMT Images
1 The Scottish Landscape Alliance is a grouping of over 60 organisations with a common interest in raising awareness of the importance of Scotland’s landscapes to climate resilience and biodiversity, economic performance and public health and wellbeing.
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synchronous video, audio, images and text mimics, to the best degree possible, the face-to-face interaction in design studio critique. The DRS captures vocal expressions of emotion and intonation for emphasis of critical design components and those ‘pen-topaper’ clarification moments or other
subtle gestures difficult to match in graphics-based critiques (i.e. standard digital markups). Though the DRS is one-way, a student could send similar media or expand it to include a video-shared desktop. Digital pedagogical tools will increase within studio learning, and its interactive design feedback potential requires further application and exploration of effective student and distance learning utilization.
Dr. Richard LeBrasseur is Director of the Green Infrastructure Performance Lab at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
Sue Evans and Rachel Tennant
Landscape for health and wellbeing The Scottish Landscape Alliance1 has been exploring the role of landscape in public health. The research now exists to support what most landscape practitioners already know to be self-evident – that landscape and nature are good for us individually (both physically and mentally) and collectively (helping with community capacity and cohesion). The research also reveals that place quality is key; we will not benefit from our ‘natural health system’ if it is poorly managed and, consequently, underused or misused. The global pandemic of COVID-19 has highlighted the basic human need to be able to access the outdoors. As we emerge from the impact of this terrible virus and effort is focused on the extraordinary steps that will be required to revitalise our country, we should think afresh about the role of landscape as part of the critical infrastructure and solutions needed for our recovery. It is timely that Scotland’s Planning Policy and National Planning Framework are under review, as this provides an opportunity to think about the shape of our future
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cities and towns – their density and connectedness, the distribution and scale of greenspace, and the types of activities that take place in them. We need to think about who uses our public spaces and how; COVID-19 has exposed the inequality in access
to greenspace. Poor landscape and deprivation often occur together, with those in greatest need least able to access quality outdoor spaces. The data suggests that the disadvantaged and vulnerable have been particularly impacted and, for families in a 11
