Abstract
Pragmatic planning juxtaposed with conflicting agendas has led to metropolitan territories with little quality for urban life. Rapidly growing urban agglomeration, synchronous with the Great Acceleration of the global society, is causing massive landscape change leading to radical breaks with traditional landscapes. By drawing from the formal properties of the environment that include existing qualities, it is possible to develop solutions that respond to both a broader and more specific context. The method resorts to laser scanning technology to produce three-dimensional point cloud models and use them as a prospective medium to perform informed transformations in the landscape. Laser-scanned 3D models can help take advantage of subtle topographic differences to support water management, capture significant site features, and provide an accurate site inventory that could reduce the cost of displaced terrain and replanted trees. The article discusses how point cloud models can support the site investigation as part of a digital design method in the field of landscape design. The approach engages formal characteristics of a physical landscape and results in a transformative workflow linked to the survey and the analysis of the site. By using modes of visualization and coloring to emphasize shapes, densities, and heights, the model can reveal relevant landscape features and patterns that are otherwise not noticeable. Section 1 introduces the methods used in other disciplines; Section 2 provides explanations about how the methods apply to a case study in landscape design; Section 3 presents the possibilities offered by the approach to integrate formal characteristics of the environment during the design process. Design development based on documented features in the point cloud model increases the control to shape environments that contribute to the process of accumulation occurring in the landscape.
Highlights
The perpetual transformation of landscapes by the people who inhabit them constitutes a fundamental characteristic in the morphology of the landscape
Attempts to include imprints of time were explored with the layering of geologic maps that lead to a prospective use of overlay maps in landscape design (Berrizbeitia, 2014)
The precision of change detection depends on the data quality of the 3D model (Kromer et al, 2015) and implies high standards for producing geometric documentation, since noise such as irregular surfaces recorded by photogrammetry may introduce errors (Du et al, 2016; Stal, Tack, Maeyer, Wulf, & Goossens, 2013)
Summary
The perpetual transformation of landscapes by the people who inhabit them constitutes a fundamental characteristic in the morphology of the landscape. The cartographic view of the environment influences the temporal perception of landscape transformation. Like architectural palimpsests in which residues of old forms are absorbed in the new layout of walls, residues of the former site configuration become part of the transformed landscape. Any design aimed at transforming the landscape contributes to an ongoing accumulation of environmental and anthropogenic changes. It is useful to explore how the accumulation, physically manifested in landscape forms, can be addressed during a design process. In the field of landscape design, a similar relation to the environment calls for specific management of site characteristics. The absence of specificity when giving form to a new landscape during the design process results in a conceptual break between form and information. The methods of geometric documentation and geometric analysis with 3D models open the possibility to include accumulated properties of a site in the design process
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