A follow-up to the interactive interview on Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture Bradley Cantrell sent me a couple of links to the work he and others are doing in the digitial realm down at Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture at Louisiana State University.

:: image via reactscape

The first is his own blog, reactscape.visual-logic.com, which primarily focusing on digital media and responsive environments in landscape architecture. From his bio, you get a feel for the topics that Cantrell is interested in:

“His own research and teaching focuses on using digital film and techniques to represent landscape form and phenomenology. This work in digital representation ranges from improving the workflow of digital media in the design process, to providing a methodology for deconstructing landscape through compositing and film editing techniques. Another of his research interests is creating interactive landscapes using devices which express site characteristics through ambient cues. A continuation of work started while he was at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, this research aims to strengthen designers’ analysis and understanding of landscape and the everyday use of space.”

Some twitter links lead to thoughts on mechanization of farming and the modeling capacity of legos which set the stage for delving into an interesting mix of technology and the landscape worth exploring. A quick perusal of the rest of the site (if ‘quick’ is possible with all of the interesting tangents and links) yields a range of interesting work, notably the explorations of ‘Ambient Space’ (see concept model above), and and exploration of the abandoned Mississippi Basin Model, a large scale analog model for testing performance of strategies in the lower Mississippi detail region. As you see from the model images the systems aren’t representational, but rather use materials that simulate functions to test the variety of scenarios.

:: MBM Model – image via reactscape

A more formalized site lab.visual-logic.com features a range of work conducted at LSU around design computing, as well as the research for a fascinating course ‘Illustrating Ecologies’ is compiled, along with other research and resources.

Without going into too much detail, I will offer the link and an invitation to explore for yourself, and will be posting some interesting finds from the site in the future. The potential explorations should provide some seeds related to new media forms and a reconfiguration of the means of representation in landscape architecture, which is far overdue. The combination of information gleaned from other sources, along with original research is fascinating.

Check out both sites, you won’t be disappointed.