Geodesign

The Latest in Digital Landscape Architecture 2018 – Conference Report

| Olaf Schroth

Knowledge transfer at a very high scientific level: the Digital Landscape Architecture Conference 2018 at Weihenstephan-Triesdorf (HSWT) hosted 130 participants from 22 countries from May 30th to June 2nd discussing the latest research and applications of information technology in landscape architecture. At the same time, the conference honored 30 years of landscape informatics through Prof. Dr. Ulrich Kias.

The conference started with a geodesign workshop run by Harvard professor Carl Steinitz and his colleague Olaf Schroth at HSWT, since 2017 professor of geodesign and landscape informatics at HSWT. In the workshop, six stakeholder groups developed and negotiated different scenarios for the area between Olympic Park and city´s edge in the north of Munich. The workshop was facilitated through the open online platform geodesignhub.

Other international scientists and practitioners, who gave key notes, were Prof. Joan Nassauer,  University of Michigan, Prof. Kelleann Foster, Pennsylvania State University, Prof. Stephan Sheppard, University of British Columbia and Mike Shilton of the Landscape Institute in England. The public talk by Dr. Jörg Rekittke, addressing the “Challenges and approaches of landscape research and design in the global south”, was also highly appreciated by the audience.

In addition to key notes, the various lecture sessions addressed the themes geodesign and climate change, big data in landscape architecture, Building Information Models (BIM), drones/UAVs for data survey, social media and VR/AR. Various speakers demonstrated the latest developments and applications in practice examples such as the use of high resolution laserscanning data and digital terrain models, the use of environmental sensors and VR/AR displays.

If you are now interested, the next DLA conference will take place in Dessau in 2019 and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the conference series and in 2020, the well-established Harvard Graduate Design School will host the 21st DLA. For more information please see the conference website at dla.hswt.de.

Papers and key notes can be downloaded at: gis.point

Digital Landscape Architecture Conference 2015

| Olaf Schroth

With quite some delay, a short recap of this year’s Digital Landscape Architecture Conference DLA 2015. After the brilliant DLA 2014 conference abroad, this year’s conference took place in its home town of Dessau again (before it will move to Istanbul for 2016).

DLA 2015 Group Picture

The first key note was delivered by Prof. Brian Orland from PennState and at the time, visiting Weddle Chair at the University of Sheffield: “Geodesign – The Family Car of GIS“. The main argument was that geodesign is still a black box but stakeholders need to participate in telling the story. As key stones Brian suggested the following three elements and illustrated them with the example of hydraulic fracturing:
– Storytelling
– System Exploration
– Group Interactions

Another highlight of the conference were the presentation by Prof. Carl Steinitz and colleagues of the “Coastal Georgia 2050 Geodesign Synthesis Workshop” and the hands-on workshop “Digital Workflow for a Dynamic Geodsign System” delivered by Hrishikesh Ballel, PhD student of Prof. Carl Steinitz. The tool can be tested under http://www.geodesignstudy.com/

Geodesign Tool

Prof. Stephen Ervin further pushed forward the theoretical framework of Geodesign: “A Proposed Map of a Geodesign Research Map.”

For these and further presentations and workshops at the DLA2015 Conference, please see the peer-reviewed conference proceedings published by Wichmann:
Peer-reviewed conference proceedings DLA2015

Bright (GIS) Future for CityEngine

| Philip Paar

On July 11, 2011, Esri has announced the acquisition of Procedural Inc, Zurich.

Years after the nifty but discontinued attempts of the SketchUp 6 / ArcGIS 9.2 Plug-in, ESRI takes the gloves off and finally makes a true jump into 3D cities modeling, planning and design. And finally GIS meets Games Design and vice versa. The rule-based approach of CityEngine apparently tasted right to Esri.
Read the press release.

Here are FAQs for CityEngine customers. Personally, I like the Question “Who is Esri and Jack Dangermond” the most. FYI, Procedural customers: Jack is one of the most interesting personalities I have met and he has a memory for faces and names of several petabytes.

I find it very interesting how Esri’s GeoDesign strategy and the CityEngine technology will merge.

Addendum: Esri Adds 3D Design Tools with Procedural Acquisition by Matt Ball