Land Geometry

Land Geometry ?Earth Surface Systems This course enables students to pursue digital literacy particular to the discipline of landscape architecture through the exploration of topographic manipulation, calculation and analysis. The focus of this seminar/workshop reflects current attitudes towards complex surfaces in landscape architectural design and the technologies and tools used in their representation, analysis, and construction. The current manifestation of the course examines methods and procedures for modeling complex continuous surfaces, their material composition, and subsequent behaviors in relation to phenomenal activity. Topographic surfaces are not neutral or passive. Surfaces receive actions from the variety of human sources and ecological systems. The processes operating on the surface of the earth can be divided into the endogenic and the exogenic. The course will begin to explore the strategies and possibilities to model the exogenic processes of rivers and wind on the land. The course seeks to identify and wield data structures that support the development of such digital representation models for the support of design exploration. The intent of this course from its inception has been to balance the working of digital and analog tools, in the pursuit of siting three-dimensional explorations in the design process. The course explores the materials and tools of analog and digital model construction, with the basic physics that contribute to transformations over time. Students should anticipate working with the suite of CAD/CAM technologies offered by the school The course will be broken up into thirds. The First explores the methods and data structures of complex surface representations, the second confronts issues of analysis, while the third addresses site dynamics and transformation. There will be weekly exercises and readings supported by tutorials as required. This course satisfies the fulfillment of a representation distributional elective in landscape architecture.Prerequisites:Successful completion of GSD2109, GSD2107 or equivalent.