The large lecture project

The Large Lecture Project Robin Slovak LA 203 2nd Year

Table of Contents Lexicon Entries

1-11

Theory Responses

12-20

External Discussion Responses

20-21

Individual Insights

30-31

Preface This studio has challenged me to begin to form my own values and what my definition of landscape architecture really is.

Portrayed here are my collection of thoughts and ideas accumulated through the quarter.

Lexicon Entries The following lexicon entries are a vocabulary specific to my individual understainding of the ever expanding field of landscape architecture.

What I find most important is to question the things you don’t know and further expand upon one’s terminology and glossary.

Abstract Agency Cartography Dichotomy Dynamic Field Conditions Infrastructure Program Speculation Typology

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Abstract

Amalgamation

Abstraction is a method to pull out and synthesize information as to make complex and intricate ideas understandable. Using generalized form to make one’s intent clear.

In design, forms and ideas are often created through amalgamation; the action, process, combining or uniting of various components.

Showing the process of adding two forms together and the finished product.

Exploring diagramming through showing a processtranspire by abstraction using hand shapes to create different shadows.

Figure ground is an abstract way of looking at patterns and density rather than all the irrelevant data accumulated from an aerial photo.

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Showing the mixing of different algae and how it begins to combine to create a hybrid of them all.

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Dichotomy

Cartography

A division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different. They allow for relationships to be seen, for form to be uncovered, as a means to look at connections differently.

Cartography is the abstraction of a site’s potential performance and spatial representation. It is an opportunity to make the undiscovered appear, the invisible visible. Layering information using visual techniques allows for a better understanding of urban complexity.

Showing a dichotomy of empty/full in its most basic form to convey the difference between the two and the figure ground relationship revealed.

The act of layering information through maps allows for the site to be read sequentially and understood comprehensively.

Mapping a site allows for an in depth analysis of a place and makes patterns and fields clear.

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Showing the movement of water, a liquid, against the static surface of the concrete, a soild. Whether it is a physicality or a an occurence, dichotomies are ubiquitous in landscape.

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Dynamic

Field Conditions

Dynamic in landscape architecture is loosely defined as the ordinary arrangement of observed changes which prevail conditions, functions, and structures over time. Fitting right in with complexity, dynamics creates unpredictability in time and scale of circumstance, characterized by constant and active progression and change.

Field conditions are a spatial generator relating the form and behavior of a place that is found within a place. There is a certain contiguousness that is closely associated with the idea, consolidating several parts into a whole while formally respecting the integrity of each.

Dynamics developing temporally through different phases. The initial position of the circle and its journey to the final position led to a progression of dynamic growth.

Using a process of geometrical parts such as lines, planes, and solids to form a larger whole and the idea that not all fields are grids but all grids are fields themselves.

Showing how the amount of water released is always dynamic and contingent upon multiple factors.

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The form created between objects is more important than the individual objects. Showing how the form created from the bridge creates habitat for birds.

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Perpetual

Infrastructure

The landscape itself is undergoing a never ending process, it constantly undergoes change. It goes through phases and cycles that seem endless and are uninterrupted throughout time. .

The fundamental foundation or structure of a system or organization. A structural entity that houses multiple programs and links connections. It is an ever evolving

Showing a progression of how a form or an idea can constantly build on itself and never cease to end on its perpetual process..

Displaying how infrastructure is very meticulous and planned. The relationship between several parts, it is all in cohesion together working in one system.

Infrastructure may seem complicated, but citizens traverse everyday through our bridges and freeways that interconnect our entire urban setting.

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Showing that growth in landscape is inevitable and perpetual and is not something that should be attempted to cover up.

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Speculation

Reciprocity

Speculation is an idiosyncracy of the design language. It allows the designer to reveal using an experimental process of reflection. This is what gives designer’s freedom of expression, where creativity sparks. One should view at as an investigative device to hypothesize about the unknown.

The beneficial exchange between two mutual things, It is situational and dependent upon the relationship in question in which each entity allows the other the same privileges.

Your Ideas

Your Techniques

Unknown

Speculation requires all your ideas, strategies, previous experiences to move forward in design and lead you in the process of discovery.

Showing two forms both coming together to create a new form that makes a new relationship that is beneficial for both

Showing how the channel holds the water which is beneficial for the birds to drink from.

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Showing how the investigation of a place can lead to ideas beginning to formulate.

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Projective Ecologies: Flood Control Freakology Interested Readings

Projective Ecologies: Flood Control Freakology The term ecology houses so many different elements, it is a complex idea offering a wide assortment of relationships. There aren’t solely just ecologies as I’ve learned, but ecologies within ecologies. This quarter the investigation of urban infrastructural ecology has led us to emergent and opportunistic potentialities. David Fletcher analyzes how skewed our values and functions are about rivers and all the misinterpretation and confusion that goes along with it. The LA River has been seen as a “dystopia, an ecological disaster”, when really it is an effervescent amalgam of ecologies. I strongly agree that to understand these aqueous systems and their phenomena, we have to be able to reassess how we see rivers. Upon participating in the LA River clean up this year in Long Beach, I realized that the river is thriving with life and is in no way impeded by all the human interaction. The human excess which the ecology habituated to and now thrives on is what makes up the artificial urban ecology. We mustn’t solely look at trees and birds as nature anymore because all the storm drains and shopping carts are just as much a part of the ecosystem as you and I are. I previously was under the impression that cities were a detriment to nature, but that is a naïve outlook. Attempting to restore rivers to a more natural state in a concretized setting is a threat to urban ecologies that have arisen from river alterations. The evolution of the LA River is largely thanks to urbanization, so taking urbanization out of the “ecological equation” is downright ludicrous.

Projective Ecologies: Flood Control Freakology Instinctual Marks, Relational Fields, Sites of Wonder Composing Landscapes: Typologies Rambunctious Gardens Designer Ecosystems

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Instinctual Marks, Relational Fields, Sites of Wonder The tool of drawing, personally, is even more powerful than a designer’s vocabulary. Drawing is itself a language, it uses representation as a medium to form logic. Perry Kulper’s drawings correlate with the mapping I have done this quarter. By developing the opportunities mapped, I speculated whether my language of representation fully melded with the language of architecture. The mappings done in the studio all are revealing in one way or another, some portrayed nascent characteristics that allowed the observer to see emerging patterns. The beneficial attribute of mapping is that it allows you to actually unfold one’s thoughts to envision what is conceivable. Our mappings were effective in that they brought together the vibrant mixes of ecology to form a whole, but they lacked in clarity, often leading to falsifying patterns and data. Often the lines and points made carried little value or significance and didn’t create potential to later build on that data. Whereas Kulper and Corner both portray data that is relevant, although the representation Kulper uses is far beyond the pictorial style than that of James Corner and he really does create “Sites of Wonder”. This reading delves deep into the abstraction of information and I personally am intrigued by the drawings, but absolutely cannot clarify them.

Showing how we see rivers as dirty useless space but in actuality they should be seen as places of potential and opportunity to become.

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Composing Landscapes: Typologies SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS

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This essay helped me to understand the role that types play in the design process. Typologies are a means of demonstrating the progression of form through an architectural language. It’s a comparison analysis tool mediating spatial forms to reveal data that was previously revealed. Without this tool, the forms we created for our final design would have been completely incongruous. The idea functions as a basis for form to take shape, without types, we’d be left with amorphous shapes with a vague process. The myriad of iterations I produced served to compare and contrast the rules which created forms, by illuminating the differences and similarities of those to analyze and reflect upon. This comparison for using types to study forms is useful in that it allows one to bring social and cultural aspects together, making a viable of connections between the relationships uncovered. Types allowed me to formulate new meaning to form making, as a means of extending my experimental and research arsenal. It allowed for the narrative of the project to take off from the vocabulary formed by the merging of the forms.

Variation is the result, a dynamic series of forms emerge.

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Arcadia Wash

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C arbon Dioxide

34 3’ 52” N

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Malva neglecta

10 42 - 92 days

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EL MONTE March - Sept 15 days

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1 month - 50 years o

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LOS ANGELES

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Lashbrook Park

Oxygen x

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ACCUMULATION

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Mexico

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Puente Hills Land Fill

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WHITTIER NARROWS

NORTH

SCALE: 1” = 50’

SCALE: 1” = 1000’

Through mapping the Rio Hondo, the way we mapped the channel had a profound influence on our final design. By looking at all the different speeds and masses associated with the channel in hatches and symbols, we decided where and why to place program.

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Rambunctious Gardens: Designer Ecosystems Everything on Earths evolves, nothing is stagnant which is exactly why ecology is such a complex subject. We as a species continuously move forward and build our world up, making complications for other coexisting lifeforms. This has led many to believe we must make areas where we restore the other natural order of things because that’s the way it should be. First off their defense behind why we should restore things is biased and serves no higher function than to please some animals. Even restoring a place will eventually cause it to begin changing again because transformation is inevitable. It is clear to me that ecologies operate under two values, that of cultural and natural systems, and it is up to designers to fundamentally structure these together developing strategies to incorporate both into spatial and built environments. It’s really funny to me that in the past, landscape architecture has simply responded to new priorities, rather than provoking new priorities. “Nature in city is disappearing so we have to revert it back.” That statement sounds more ludicrous every time I read it. Landscape architects won’t simply respond to the idea of people’s misunderstandings of nature in the city, but they will endeavor to intensify the awareness of the role that natural systems serve and make them more visible. As I have seen, there is a lot of projection and speculation about how to make creative ecologies and have them serve functions at the same time. I believe that to make nature more aware and acceptable in today’s society, we must experiment with nature for the sake of architecture. Negotiate with the landscape and through time the usefulness and ethics of nature in cities will emerge.

Showing how forms are investigated, then altered, then reapplied in design.

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Witnessing a Discussion Liam Young Frank Escher Leo Marmal Thomas Heatherwick

This idea of provoking new ideas rather than just responding to what currently exists is how design shoud be tackled. By using simple forms to show that when given simple forms and how combining them rather than keep them separare can provoke.

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It is clear that we live in a technocratic society and it is completely changing the way people view cities. Liam made a witty remark about how we can “measure our age in phone generations.” This made me realize that phones are really just cultural creatures. They are in fact our second brain and without them we would be lost.

LIAM YOUNG

People log onto their media but to them where they are is unimportant. They become fixated on their phone, trapped in this emptiness while they are out in the openness. Our world may seem connected through technology but really it has disseminated how we interact with the city.

Phones disconnect us from the way we interact with space, our environment, our city.

“There is so much emptiness, create more openness.”

Liam Young Liam Young’s lecture was by far the most interesting lecture I have attended in my short career as a designer. Whether it was his topic, the creative narrative he wrote, or the out of this world visuals portrayed on screen, I was in all the way. I honestly wasn’t quite sure what to expect from a lecture about Kim Kardashian and a futuristic city. He himself is a very speculative designer and through exploration discovers consequences of fictional urbanism.

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This is so interesting to me because the way he sees cities is completely different from how I perceive them. I had the pleasure of taking Liam around LA and the way he talked about Los Angeles, picking apart all of its flaws and opportunities was exciting. This idea of exploring an alternate world to understand our own can be a fruitful way to look at design and use creativity and imagination as agency to design for the future.

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I have discovered a lot through model making by the accidental occurrences that come about from them. A great example of this is the 3-D prints we made. The tops of our surfaces were the rule and it was interesting how we all explored different forms, but when you turn the skin over and look at the result on the bottom, a whole new form emerges, one that is accidental but also revealing.

FRANK ESCHER

This lecture if anything opened my eyes more as to how I can view form differently and not just have one zoned in frame through which I am looking.

Viewing form through different angles and perspectives allows for one to explore and have moments and ideas revealed.

“We sustainably and affordably create a dialogue between form and construction..” construction.

I went to a rather dull lecture about architecture and what was talked about was really just their buildings which were mainly residential. Although seemingly boring, the language of design was still being used and it intrigued me enough to understand what was being said. Frank spoke of how houses are arranged in a series of volumes and are nothing more than fields laid out. It is through the use of different levels that can be tinkered with. experiences

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His use of framing different materials as a device to create and use accidental elements intrigued me. I have been learning that the way I frame and view things can completely change the perspective of what I am looking at. Our combined critical model for example looked very flat when viewed as a sectional cut, but when viewed from a more axonometric aerial view, one could really explore and see the narrative we tried to instill.

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Leo finds the implications and associations of a site that are made nebulous through time and recreates them with greater magnitude. I never thought that applying a different style of architecture to another was even a possibility.

Restoration is a powerful tool that can amplify the original, it bares the power to mimic and recreate what once was.

LEO MARMAL

Creating something from nothing is hard, but giving an old place new meaning is even harder. Design is more about creating connections of a work and the creation of more out of less. Rather than tearing down the building and making a brand new one, resurrecting the old building to a better version is not only good design, but it can reveal so much more about the possibilities that architecture holds.

Being able to look at a piece, see what the original intent of the design was and try to amplify that using modern ideas.

“Thou shalt not change historic fabric.”

The topic of this lecture spoke of the timeless aesthetic of Modernism. Leo believes that historical architecture has fallen victim not only to age, but by erroneous renovations. Leo takes the idea of restoration as a strategy to challenge the way we look at our architectural heritage. I find it important that we ensure the survival of work of our ancestors because by studying their work, it creates students out of all of us.

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The way we treat these modern buildings is an investigation into how we view architecture and the past.

Much like archaeological excavation, we study the process that created these structures to gain a profound understanding of the original architect’s intent. I find it amazing that designers can actually trace the development of a project by merely looking at it.

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THOMAS HEATHERWICK

Thomas designs intentionally to only cover part of the site he is working on. He makes the entire site memorable by using the tea cup concept and creates a moment that is memorable. He makes the design subdue the entire site with just one piece, there is such raw power behind manipulating the void space of a site. What astounded me was how he formulated the strategy in the first place.

The project itself was low budget which already put boundaries on what he could make. This restriction actually pushed him as a designer to think small but with a big concept. He chose concentration as a key mode to focus the resources available on a small area of the site. This kind of thinking with restriction I have been learning is a true test of a designer’s capabilities and will often foster great work.

Looking at how to concentrate space and focus one idea in a single space rther than having to disperse that idea across a place.

“To make architecture with any real value is a massive challenge.”

From all the lectures, Thomas Heatherwick got me thinking as a designer the most. He is a designer who creates experience and doesn’t just want to serve a purpose. He creates space with value and that is what gives the place purpose. The way he looks at design is fascinating.

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I along with everybody in my class see a site and instantly have to design every square inch of it. We think the more full the better. But as I keep hearing, less is more and the most important part of the tea cup is actually the void part because it contains what is most important, the tea.

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My Opinion I believe that urbanization, conflicting with the opinions of the masses, can actually provide more opportunities for the integration of wildlife that pristine space ever could. This is a bold statement but backed up from my examinations and observations of building complexity this quarter. I myself had falsified beliefs about cities being good, that they were just an impediment to seminal wildlife progression. The spread of urbanism does in fact enhance and provide new opportunities for the natural world that were before unseen. The Los Angeles region is a prime example of this occurrence and is extremely prevalent in our understanding of urban and ecological processes marrying. The concretization of rivers is ubiquitous in the Southern California area making it of the utmost importance to acknowledge them. We replaced nature in cities with infrastructure and instead of restoring it, we encourage it as a process. Overall, the attitude that the only functioning living system in cities are humans is complete balderdash.

Humans are the ones constructing the built forms that enable development and versatility among the living systems.

Final Introspections My Opinion My Definition

My Definition There are key terms that people have their own rough definitions and understandings of which often leads to conflicting ideologies.

I, like many others, struggle to understand words such as “nature”, “river”, or even “ecology” fully and frequently misinterpret them leading me to false conclusions. I’ve noticed that when I think about the Rio Hondo and I slap the word “river” at the end of it, I immediately compare it to a river of my definition, swimming with fish, high human interaction, lush, and friendly. This is an unfair comparison to an utterly different ecology of what our alignment really is. The Rio Hondo is an infrastructural ecology, lending itself to emerge its opportunities with the inhabitants around it. The river is, as I now see it, defined as a fully controlled system, a fluvial phenomenon in a vascular network of movements. Only by reassessing one’s vocabulary and integrating it to develop new narratives can we become more informed about the misunderstood and unknown.

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Thanks