Designing a virtual environment within a digital game occupies a large part of the design procedure, requiring holistic attention and a broad arrangement of the game constituents. Considering other design disciplines, they occupy a unified design methodology; however, a comprehensive literature review reveals the lack of the intended design methodology in the digital game domain's virtual environment development, despite a currently proposed theoretical methodology trying to dissolve the issue. Hence, this research aims to determine the industry's requirements and provide a (...) set of assets included in current digital games as an initial step of providing such a design methodology for the domain. In this regard, the researchers reverse-engineered ten selected digital games, understanding the current condition of digital games via adopting the mentioned currently available design methodology. This dataset reveals a lack in the assets of the story layer in the recent digital games, despite their focus on being story-based. This dilemma leads to long text or speech conversations between game characters, disrupting the players while following the game. The current design focuses on environmental resources only, however, as a virtual landscape, the story needs to be reinforced to be a balanced and well-designed game. Hence, increasing the ratio of the assets in this layer will advance the games' interactivity. Also, as future work, this data set could pave the way for a digital game industry design tool regarding the virtual environment. (shrink)

This essay presents a theory of aesthetics for landscape gardening based on Karsten Harries’s theory of the ethical function of architecture. It begins with an attempt to understand Horace Walpole’s praise of William Kent’s contribution to the development of “the modern taste in gardening,” according to which Kent was largely responsible for achieving the progressive revolution in landscape architecture that produced the picturesque style of English landscape gardening. After examining Harries’s theory, the essay discusses whether (...) landscape architecture can produce works of art and examines several historically-important garden styles to argue that it can. Finally, it discusses problems inherent in Modern and Postmodern landscape architecture. (shrink)

Tri Hita Karana is a traditional Balinese philosophy that emphasizes the importance of balance in the relationships between humans and God, humans and others, and humans and the natural environment. Although this principle underpins many aspects of life, its application in architectural and urban planning often faces various challenges. This research identifies the gap between traditional principles and the demands of modern development. A qualitative case study approach was used in Kedonganan Traditional Village, Kuta, Bali, employing in-depth interviews and direct (...) observation methods. The results of the study show that the people of Kedonganan Traditional Village still uphold customs and cultural traditions, which are implemented in various aspects of daily life, including religious activities, mutual cooperation, and environmental management. Collaboration between the government and traditional communities has proven effective in maintaining ecological, social, and spiritual balance. Additionally, the findings indicate that cultural, architectural and landscape elements remain relevant and functional in community life. The implications of this research highlight the importance of integrating Tri Hita Karana values into development policies to achieve sustainable balance. (shrink)

Sound and listening are intrinsically linked to how we experience and engage with places and communities. This guide invites landscape architects and urban designers to become soundscape architects and offers practical advice on sound and listening applicable to each stage of a design project: from reading the environment to intervening on it. This book foregrounds listening as an affective mediator between subjects and multispecies environments, and a vehicle to think and conceptualise environmental design beyond prevailing visual and human-centred modes. (...) The guide expands landscape architects' and urban designers' tools and skills to assess existing soundscapes, predict how those soundscapes will be altered through their designs, consider sound as a creative and active part of the design process, and envisage how users might perceive and be affected by those soundscapes as they evolve in time. The volume sits in the interface of research and practice, and incorporates theoretical, methodological and creative contributions from acoustic ecology, ecoacoustics, bioacoustics and sound art. Each of the design stages is illustrated through project examples that demonstrate the many advantages of incorporating attentive listening and sound into Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Practice. The book shows how incorporating listening and sounding as part of the design process promotes slow and subtle ways of practice, adds social and ecological value through the reduction of noise pollution and by monitoring the health of habitats, and enables the design of soundscapes that complement the character and design intent of a scheme and elicit joy and wonder. The book will be of interest to landscape architects, together with other design professionals such as urban designers, architects, geographers and engineers, who play a primary role in the composition of the soundscape. (shrink)

This paper presents a framework for understanding the value systems inherent in landscape architectural practice. It is based upon a close analytical reading of the academic and professional literature, supported by a series of in‐depth interviews with mid‐ and late‐career British landscape architects. The empirical results of these interviews will be presented in a future paper. A tripartite classification of values is suggested, based upon the categories of the aesthetic, the social and the environmental, each of which is (...) internally complex. This framework is offered as a tool for future landscape architectural criticism. The relationships between values both within and between these value areas are discussed. The conclusion reached is that there is no overarching value which can be used to arbitrate between conflicting values. However, while it is possible to identify areas where values conflict, there can also be significant convergence between aesthetic, social and ecological values, and the paper suggests that it is possible to create landscapes which have positive value in all three areas. (shrink)

Landscape architectural sketches as a painter in real life performance of the most simple and efficient means of drawing attention to the form of linguistic diversity to pursue both a true reflection of objective reality, but also further demonstrate the unique inner experience, mining personality, weaknesses, enrich and improve the artistic quality.

This paper presents a framework for understanding the value systems inherent in landscape architectural practice. It is based upon a close analytical reading of the academic and professional literature, supported by a series of in-depth interviews with mid- and late-career British landscape architects. The empirical results of these interviews will be presented in a future paper. A tripartite classification of values is suggested, based upon the categories of the aesthetic, the social and the environmental, each of which is (...) internally complex. This framework is offered as a tool for future landscape architectural criticism. The relationships between values both within and between these value areas are discussed. The conclusion reached is that there is no overarching value which can be used to arbitrate between conflicting values. However, while it is possible to identify areas where values conflict, there can also be significant convergence between aesthetic, social and ecological values, and the paper suggests that it is possible to create landscapes which have positive value in all three areas. (shrink)

In this paper the concept of knowledge in seen as embodying dialogue and learning in a shared practice. Sharing a practice involved sharing representations of practice. This necessitates the sharing of experiential knowledge at various levels and in various forms. It is proposed that participatory design can therefore be seen as consisting in dialogue and learning for the development of future practices and representations. The discussion in this paper is situated within the domain of landscape architecture. A study (...) is made of their co-operative practices, which are evolved, in order to show the need for participatory embodied activity (whether expressed verbally or physically) in sharing practical knowledge (e.g. of aesthetic judgement). (shrink)

This paper presents the results of a qualitative investigation into the ethical and aesthetic values held by late- and mid-career landscape architects in the UK. It identifies the dominant discourses within three value areas, the aesthetic, the social and the environmental. Within the web of value discourses, some are clearly conflicting, while others are compatible or mutually supporting. The most prevalent values are those associated with 'technocentric accommodation'. A 'trivalent' approach to design is advocated which combines values from the (...) three main areas. (shrink)

In the summer of 2017, wildflower seeds were spread on a large, empty open space close to a motorway flyover just outside Copenhagen, Denmark. This was an effort to use non-mechanical methods to prepare the soil for an ‘urban forest’ to be established on the site, since the flowers’ roots would penetrate the ground and enable the planned new trees to settle. As a result, the site was transformed into a gorgeous meadow, and all summer long Copenhageners were invited to (...) come and pick the flowers. In this article, I critically examine different aspects of this project – including the role of design, the perception of nature–culture relationships, climate change, and flower-picking as an event – in relation to my personal experience of visiting this meadow both on-site and on social media. The different temporalities that clash at the site give rise to conflicting interpretations, and I suggest that the meadow can be seen as a living plant archive of the Anthropocene, both physically and digitally. In doing so, I introduce and critique key conceptual pairs, including archive/death and bloom/decay, suggested by Lee Edelman’s queer cross-reading of Jacques Derrida’s ‘Archive Fever’ and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I thereby contrast flower motifs pertaining to the cycles of blooming, decay, and nature’s (failed) eternal return in the meadow with the expansive futurity of the digitally mediated archive. (shrink)

Architecture of ancient Egypt is criss-crossed by a series of giant projects whose aim was to celebrate the divine nature of the Pharaohs and their rights to eternal afterlife. In many of such projects a complex interplay between idealization of symbols in hieroglyph writings and shaping of built objects and cultural landscapes can be seen. Since the afterlife destination of the Pharaohs was in the sky, astronomy plays a relevant role in understanding this interplay, as it occurs, in particular, (...) in the Khufu project at Giza and in the planning of Akhenaten’s capital at Amarna. (shrink)

A new model for environmental and urban sustainability living architecture that connects artifice with the natural world through the use of materials that possess some of the properties of living systems, and can therefore actively exchange energy with the ecosphere, is proposed.

This essay offers a preliminary account of the ways in which alterations to the landscape of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Sukhothai and Chiang Mai figured within the micro-politics of these city-states. I show how landscape alterations inspired by Lanka and mainland South Asia served the consolidation and projection of royal power within the context of local and regional competition, and how such alterations formed part of strategic royal engagement with Buddhist monastic lineages.

A patent is a property granted to any new shape, configuration or arrangement of elements, of any device, tool, instrument, mechanism or other object or part thereof, that allows for a better or different operation, use or manufacture of the object that incorporates it or that provides it with some utility, advantage or technical effect that it did not have before. As a document, a patent really is a title that recognizes the right to exploit the patented invention exclusively, preventing (...) others from making, selling or using it without the consent of the owner. The fact of making a patent is motivated by the fact of promoting creativity, hindering competition in the market as only one person holds the patent, thus protecting the initial investment and fighting against plagiarism. Patents are available to the public for dissemination and general knowledge. It is generally recognized in the specialized literature that patents can be used as an indicator to calculate the results generated by research and development activities, being a very useful indicator to measure various social, economic or technological aspects. For this reason, it is of relevant interest to have tools or systems that allow us to obtain the patents developed in a specific period of time and to carry out analyses of various economic and social factors. These analyses can serve to obtain a social perspective of society’s progress in the technological field, and this is why an analysis of patents is of our interest. This paper proposes a platform specifically designed to obtain knowledge about patents as an indicator of Spanish social, economic or technological aspects. For this purpose, the platform retrieves, analyses and visualizes functionalities that represent data on the landscape of patents obtained from the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office as a particular case of study. (shrink)

The twelve contributors to Looking for Los Angeles focus on dramatic shifts in the urban landscape, important moments in the city's architectural history, and the role of the image in this mecca of image makers.

Drawing conceptually and directly on music notation, this book investigates landscape architecture's inherent temporality. It argues that the rich history of notating time in music provides a critical model for this under-researched and under-theorised aspect of landscape architecture, while also ennobling sound in the sensory appreciation of landscape. It makes available to a wider landscape architecture and urban design audience the works of three influential composers - Morton Feldman, Gyorgy Ligeti and Michael Finnissy (...) - presenting a critical evaluation of their work within music, as well as a means in which it might be used in design research. Each of the musical scores is juxtaposed with design representations by Kevin Appleyard, Bernard Tschumi and William Kent, before the author examines four landscape spaces through the development of new landscape architectural notations. In doing so, this work offers valuable insights into the methods used by landscape architects for the benefit of musicians, and by bringing together musical composition and landscape architecture through notation, it affords a focused and sensitive exploration of temporality and sound in both fields. (shrink)

Big data has brought about opportunities for landscape architecture, changing the design thinking of layout optimization simulation, expanding the platform for public participation in layout optimization simulation design, reflecting social and humanistic care, and promoting the integration of discipline cooperation and data. At the same time, it also brings about challenges. The proposal of data theory, the acquisition and analysis of data, and the protection of privacy are all issues that we need to face and solve. First, build (...) a layout optimization simulation program under the background of big data. Follow the procedures of conventional layout optimization simulation, add big data analysis technology to the preliminary analysis, layout optimization simulation design, and later evaluation management, introduce new data processing methods, and build a theoretical framework of landscape optimization simulation methods that integrate new and traditional data. Second, studying the evolution of the landscape image layout of the three-dimensional pastoral complex is different: the overall landscape image layout of the three-dimensional pastoral complex shows a trend of fragmentation and heterogeneity. Among them, the arable land is gradually fragmented, the wetland and water area are simplified in form, the woodland and grassland patches are gradually distributed, the fragmentation is reduced by 76.19%, and the connectivity index is gradually increased. From a spatial perspective, the edge area outside the Fourth Ring Road becomes the most obvious area of fragmentation tendency. Finally, by introducing big data into the landscape layout optimization simulation, a layout optimization simulation method based on big data is constructed and used in the layout optimization simulation of the landscape image layout of the three-dimensional pastoral complex to guide the participatory layout optimization simulation. (shrink)

The Education of the Eye examines the origins of visual culture in eighteenth-century Britain. It claims that at the moment when works of visual art were first displayed and contemplated as aesthetic objects two competing descriptions of the viewer or spectator promoted two very different accounts of culture. The first was constructed on knowledge, on what one already knew, while the second was grounded in the eye itself. Though the first was most likely to lead to a socially and politically (...) elite form for visual culture, the second, it was held, would almost certainly end up in the chaos of the mob. But there was another route through these conflicting accounts of the visual that preserved the education of the eye while at the same time allowing the eye freedom to enter into the realm of culture. This third route, that of the sentimental look, is explored in a series of contexts: the gallery, the pleasure garden, the landscape park, and the country house. The Education of the Eye sets out to reclaim visual culture for the democracy of the eye and to explain how aesthetic contemplation may, once more, be open to all who have eyes to look. The book will interest historians of eighteenth-century British culture and historians of architecture, art, and landscape, as well as readers generally curious about the origins of our current visual culture. (shrink)

Environmental landscaping is known to build, plan, and manage landscapes that consider the ecology of a site and produce gardens that benefit both people and the rest of the ecosystem. Landscaping and the environment are combined in landscape design planning to provide holistic answers to complex issues. Seeding native species and eradicating alien species are just a few ways humans influence the region’s ecosystem. Landscape architecture is the design of landscapes, urban areas, or gardens and their modification. (...) It comprises the construction of urban and rural landscapes via coordinating the creation and management of open spaces and economics, finding a job, and working within a confined project budget. There was a lot of discussion about global warming and water shortages. There is a lot of hope to be found even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. AI is becoming more significant in many urban landscape planning and design elements with the advent of web 4.0 and Human-Centred computing. It created a virtual reality-based landscape to create deep neural networks (DNNs) to make deep learning (DL) more user-friendly and efficient. Users may only manipulate physical items in this environment to manually construct neural networks. These setups are automatically converted into a model, and the real-time testing set is reported and aware of the DNN models that users are producing. This research presents a novel strategy for combining DL-DNN with landscape architecture, providing a long-term solution to the problem of environmental pollution. Carbon dioxide levels are constantly checked when green plants are in and around the house. Plants, on either hand, remove toxins from the air, making it easier to maintain a healthy environment. Human-centered Artificial Intelligence-based web 4.0 may be used to assess and evaluate the data model. The study findings can be sent back into the design process for further modification and optimization. (shrink)

Landscape and brandingexplores the way landscape is conceptualised, conceived, represented and designed by professionals in a brand-driven age. Landscape - incorporating tangible physical space as well as intangible concepts, narratives, images, and experiences of place - is constructed by a number of creative industries. This book tests the hypothesis that place branding, a powerful marketing and management practice, increasingly blurs the distinction between the promotionof landscape and its production in design terms. Place branding involves the strategic (...) and systematic composition of single-minded, experiential and market-friendly place identities which are consistently communicated across various media, including physical space. How does this implicate or transform notions of place, nature, landscape experience, and the qualitative value of landscape itself? How does this affect the role of landscape architecture? To answer these questions, place branding theory and practice is critically examined alongside an in depth case study of one specific landscape - the Blue Mountains (Australia). Projects undertaken between 1995 and 2015, including a branding strategy for the region, media campaigns, television, cinema, and several landscape architectural works in the public and private domain are comparatively analysed, focusing on the discourse, conventions and values informing their production, and the landscape narratives they convey. (shrink)

Following Jean-Marc Besse’s identification of landscape as a dynamic, changing, relational and ‘emergent’ entity, I argue in this article that the artistic creative process is a way of ‘doing with’ landscape that fully embraces this peculiarity of landscape. The art of dance, in particular, makes it clear that it is the artist who creates a kind of mutual attraction between the (trans)formative forces of the landscape, suggesting its renewal and thus giving impetus to its metamorphic and (...) transformative nature. Drawing on Tonino Griffero’s neo-phenomenological approach to the characterisation of landscape as an atmosphere, i.e. as an emotional tonality effused in a ‘felt-bodily’ space, I emphasise the role of the affective dimension in the perception of landscape as something ‘to do with’ rather than ‘to act upon’ in artistic practice. To this end, I take as a case study Anna Halprin’s ‘exploratory’ dance, which focuses on fostering an individual and collective search for a harmonisation of the relationship between movement and emotion. Drawing on notions of the ‘felt body’, ‘atmospheric affordances’ and ‘ecstasies of things’, I analyse the role that her outdoor dance studio – designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin – plays in placing the creative process at the centre of dance’s very specific way of ‘doing with’ the landscape. (shrink)

Virtual landscape has a prominent role in digital games' virtual environment design. Since the attributes of the virtual landscape directly affect a game's characteristics, it is crucial to be explored as a design domain, apart from just being a tool for other domains' development. This study traces the gradual change of the virtual landscape in educational games and the chronological change of their carrying content, till now a gap in the literature. To examine the effect of the (...) virtual landscape evolution and the invention of the virtual reality (VR) technology on the intended topic of the education transmitted by the games, we classified all Steam games with the education tag based on KIM'S (2016) methodology. To do so, we transmitted their introductory information, whether they support VR and are simulation games or not, to an Excel database. Then we sorted them from 1992 till 2020. The virtual landscape classification methodology revealed a significant relationship between the content, VR technology, and the virtual landscape transformation. The study anticipates a future revolution in the landscape architecture domain by jumping into the digital game industry to enhance the virtual landscape for the sake of itself, not other disciplines. (shrink)

Architectural style is a medium for the promotion of cultural identities and cohesion. South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation nations provide a prism through which all forms of vernacular architecture can be viewed. This study is presented through the lens of the soul of the eye coupled with the power of technological probing. This synthesis affords a most appealing and lyrical exploration of the course of the development of cities within the SAARC nations. It showcases research results combining the (...) above stated synergy—starting from some of SAARC’s sophisticated historic cultures, cultures that ebbed and flowed along its shores and valleys. This paper shall touch upon unique cultural roots stretching back to the Dravidian civilization that flourished over 3500 years ago and also look at the grouping of houses within the Indus Valley Civilization in Lothal and the Sarasvati Valley Civilization in Kalibangan. The sensitivity underlying SAARC architecture and its traditions are seen in many communal settlements, profoundly so in the Indian subcontinent and in Sri Lanka. The paper shall showcase two specific, but nevertheless, distinct styles of communal functioning within unique architectural strongholds in the ancient Ratnagiri University in Odisha, India, and also touch upon a unique blend of styles of landscape architecture in Sri Lanka. The overarching emphasis of this study is that throughout SAARC’s history, architecture has been creatively adopted to the need of its users and the characteristics of its climate and location. It has always fulfilled the needs and nourished the spirit of its people, promoting cultural cohesion even today. In this context, it is interesting to explore traditional techniques of vernacular architecture in houses in Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The common thread linking mass housing in Lothal, Kalibangan, Anuradhapura and Ratnagiri about 2 millennia ago, with present day housing patterns, is in the application of sustainable building practices using intelligent building forms, fabric and orientation. This paper explores this commonality from a modern perspective using CFD. As the SAARC countries still struggle to get a fuller understanding of their unique ecology and the complexity of their diverse cultures, revisiting the architectural legacy of their indigenous societies might prove insightful. The need for this revisit becomes even more relevant in the wake of the Paris Agreement and more recently the Kigali Agreement. The discourse on providing indoor thermal comfort to the SAARC people cannot be decoupled from the climate change story—heating, ventilation and cooling consume a large amount of energy and have a deep underlying link with the targets set at Paris and Kigali. The onus will be on a large number of stakeholders to meet these targets—engineers, architects, manufacturers, policy-makers, researchers and consumers. This paper aims at reminding the stakeholders of the richness and the usefulness of their vernacular architecture in upholding the ideal of sustainability. (shrink)

This paper aims to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue between Ricoeur’s phenomenological- hermeneutical thought and human geography, in particular with respect to the issue of landscape interpretation. The connection draws on the idea that landscapes and lived spaces can be read as texts, not unfamiliar to human geography and semiotics from 1980s onward. In the first part of the paper I will briefly expound some theories of landscape which make use of the metaphors “landscape as cultural image” and (...) “landscape as text” in human and cultural geography. Then, I will discuss the main contribution of Ricoeur to the issue of space. The philosopher already envisioned a possible application of his “threefold mimesis” of Time and Narrative to architectural spaces. In the conclusion, I will propose to rejuvenate the geographical metaphor of “landscape as text” by introducing a possible application of the Ricoeurian notion of “meaningful action as text” to landscape. (shrink)

Atmospheres are affective, sensory realms, where mood is palpable. Memory landscapes intensify affectivity, amplifying emotion. The senses, especially smell and taste, trigger and heighten memory. There is therefore a potent intersection between landscape, atmospheres, memory, and the senses. These connections present the compelling prospect that atmospheres could be designed, with the intention of enhancing memory landscapes through sensory means. This paper is written from the perspective of landscape architecture, a discipline which designs and shapes landscapes. Landscape (...) architects work within the spatially and temporally fluid context of the landscape, and aligned with this is the prospect of generating and tuning atmospheres. Past traumatic events, losses of people and places, float in atmospheres of melancholy. Two projects are explored here to probe the possibilities of intentionally invoking atmospheres, exploring how the landscape could be sensorially tonalised. The memorial landscape of Pike River where 29 men died in a mine explosion, and Laura Daly’s augmented reality artwork, The Storm Cone, offer insights into the possibilities of atmospheric design. (shrink)