IN-formed

Cornell University Landscape Architecture, formerly at SUNY-ESF. Modeling landscape, processes and prototypes, scenarios, feedback and adaptive/generative design.

[jvanucchi]

Contaminated sediment and historic oyster beds

[jvanucchi]

Modeling teams!  

ps. who broke the thermastat

[jvanucchi]

Historic USGS maps @ http://historicalmaps.arcgis.com/usgs/

Note how watery Fresh Kills is depicted, development patterns around the bays, and the wetland complex along the Arthur Kill.

[jvanucchi]

Step One.  Asking questions: What do we really want to know about this place?

[m-ban]

[science]

Astronomers find a new type of planet: The 'mega-Earth'

Typically, planets much larger than Earth would be gas giants. That’s what we thought, anyway. But now astronomers have discovered an exoplanet seventeen times heavier than Earth, made up of rock and solids, some 560 light-years away. Not only is the planet exceptionally large for its composition, it’s also surprisingly old. Its parent solar system is 11 billion years old. In order to make the heavier elements needed to create an earthy planet, you require stellar nucleosynthesis—stars merging atomic nuclei into successively heavier elements until they explode, dispersing the mass, which can then form planets. There weren’t a whole lot of heavy elements present in the universe less than three billion years after the Big Bang, but apparently, there was enough to create Kepler-10c. Fascinating.

Think of the implications for life elsewhere in the universe. Although we have yet to confirm its existence, the conditions conducive to it could have appeared much earlier than one would have thought.

[jvanucchi]

Look what Dan found!  City Woods...in Syracuse!  

"He knows every detail of the more than 50 locally milled trees in his shop. Each has its own story. There's a tree from Thornden Park here. One from Tipp Hill there. The black walnut that's his pride and joy came from Redfield Ave.

"When a tree is blocking a power line or needs to be removed, the city hires contractors to cut them down," he says. "Usually they get made into mulch or wood chips. So I'll pay or finagle to get them instead."

He mills the trees in the "Bone Yard" behind the factory and then brings them to his shop to dry and fashion. It takes about one year for every inch of thickness for a piece of wood to dry."

http://www.syracuse.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2013/10/inside_the_gear_factory_syracuse.html

[jvanucchi]

Lakeside sycamore.  

[thelandofmaps]

NatGeo: Trees of NYC, plus a link to an interactive site with 8 other cities in comments [1559x741] CLICK HERE FOR MORE MAPS! thelandofmaps.tumblr.com

[schiefla]

STUDIO PROGRESS!

LSA 327- ESF

[kchz]

thursday night progress

[jvanucchi]

pole stand, 9-18 yrs post farm field

[jvanucchi]

Amy, Sarah and Brandon present in progress scenario plot to 4th year review panel: Gena Morgis, Ben Bosclair and Charlie Oddo.  Thanks reviewers!!

[jvanucchi]

Representing a 'Thickened' Landscape

Anthropologist Geertz suggests that "thin description is an unadorned, first-order account of behavior.  But thick description adds many layers of cultural significance; it confronts a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which a researcher must contrive somehow to grasp and then to render.  Landscape researchers and designers must also examine, decipher, and appreciate the complex structures and processes that constitute a given landscape or site through reading, writing, and drawing, and eventually through design and site transformation."

"What then are the means and methods that determine thick readings of landscape architectural projects, and what do thick drawings look like?"

-Blanchon and Gill

[kchz]

fridayyyy progress

[from89]

[designcloud]

Reflected Landscapes by Victoria Siemer

[jvanucchi]

Yes, forests for timber production take time.  But let's not forget that experience of the forest is immediate and evolving.  These protection structures at the National Arboretum in Canberra, Australia provide a striking visual experience even when trees are very young.