Estudio de Mercado

Design ideas are often derived from the contextual nature of the site, the genius loci, understanding these diff erent qualities help in the development of a design response and guide the design process. A. The courtyard of the Mezquita de

Córdoba, Spain.

B. The English picturesque: Painshill Park, Surrey, UK.

C. Post-industrial: Duisburg Nord Landschaftspark, Germany.

D. Desert shelter, southern Sinai Desert, Egypt. E. Elevated viewpoint, Grebbeberg, the

Netherlands, overlooking the Rhine fl ood plain. F. Contemporary public realm, Liverpool, UK. G. Karst limestone scenery, Guilin, China.

D E SIG N P RO C ESS C L IEN T BR IE F D E SIG N M E TH OD S AC T IO N S, E VE N T S O R STE P S, S U B-P RO C E SS E S C O M P L E TE D P RO J E C T

G F E D C B A

E D

C

B A

G H F

V IS UA L A U DI TO R Y S M E L L TA ST E E P H E M E R A L S E N S O R Y P H Y SIC A L L AN D F O R M C O N T E N T S U RFAC E S F L O R A + FA U NA B UILT F O R M WAT E R C U LT U R A L C O N DI T IO NIN G M E M O R Y E X P E C TAT IO N L E ARNIN G & M Y TH S P IR IT O F TH E P L AC E U NIQUENESS G E NIU S L O CI GENIUS LOCI

Misty upland pasture, in the valley of Nant Cymdu, Aberdraw, Wales. The spirit of this place is that of Celtic culture, sheep farming and memories of the tailors who owned this fi eld, and made fl annel suits in their homes, using wool woven in local mills.

REVEALING THE SITE FOR THE DESIGN

There is an orderly sequence of techniques: for instance, site survey, analysis and design (known as SAD), the site as revealed by the analysis of the survey should in turn determine the design. For example, don’t build on a fl ood plain, don’t develop on steep slopes or areas of poor ground- bearing capacity or don’t develop on existing areas of biodiversity value. In the 1960s Ian McHarg’s sieve-mapping technique involved overlaying maps each showing diff erent criteria to defi ne the feasibility of diff erent areas. Nowadays digital design including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) facilitate this technique. Sieve mapping involves mapping constraints and opportunities. Environmental Assessment is another rather similar design method. Such methods require understanding of a site, the development of form, following rules of composition, whether symmetrical or asymmetrical, and so on.

M E TH O D S S K IL L S IN S P IR AT IO N C O N T E N T P RO C E SS

D ESIG N IS

A C O M P L EX

DIS CIP LIN E THAT

C O M BIN ES...

DESIGN SKILLS

DESIGN SKILLS

These may be summarized as:

• thinking; • problem solving; • research; • design;

• communication.

The necessary skills needed also involve the abilities to create a ‘product’ which could be in the form of:

• drawings; • models;

• visualizations and walk-throughs; • envisioning.

These can be analogue or digital or a combination of both. Drawings can be both freehand, mechanically drawn (i.e. analogue) or digital. Likewise, models can be real, three-dimensional objects or can be digitally created. Visualizations can be hand-drawn as in a comic book or fi lm storyboard, or can be digital

fl y-throughs. Envisioning involves creating mental images of things or events by means of spoken or written cues or even by an event such as a community workshop. UDATs (urban design action teams) are precisely this sort of community action and from the beginning involve the community in generating ideas for a project.

D E VE L O P M E N T F R A M E W O RK

S U STA INA BIL I T Y

ST Y L IST IC E C O L O GIC A L P O ST-IN D U ST R I A L H O L IST IC PAT T E RN M AK IN G D E SIG N W I TH NAT U RE IN T UI T IVE/G E NIU S L O CI PAT T E RN L AN G UAG E C O M M U NI T Y-B AS E D A L L E G O R Y & NAR R AT IVE P R AG M AT IC-L IN E AR-R AT IO NA L

H ISTO R IC A L L AY E R S/PA L I M P S E ST S

D ESIG N AP P ROACHES

Derelict hill village, Urbino, Italy.

Kent was infl uenced by seventeenth- century painting and the contemporary vogue for the Grand Tour of Italy which he undertook twice. Geoff rey Jellicoe was infl uenced by the early twentieth-century developments in psychiatry and the ideas of conscious and subconscious: some of his designs might be described as Jungian psychoanalysis-made-landscape. For instance Jellicoe described use of the subconscious in design thus:

‘The process is simple. You fi rst prepare a design in the normal way, you fi nd it uninspiring, you place the drawing at a distance and preferably upside down, and you gradually become aware that it suggests a shape foreign but friendly to your own. In this shadowy shape you hope to discern some form that aspires to the perfection we call beauty (in the fi rst three examples that follow are concealed animal forms, humans as symbolism, and allegory). You now reorganize the details of your design to conform (but not recognizably so) to the abstract idea within. Tell no one, if you can, for this is a message from one subconscious to another, and the intellect spoils such things.’

INSPIRATION

This comes from all sorts of sources, and is usually a product of our wider lives, meaning the society in which one lives, the education one has had, cultural interests, etc. Clearly people living in dense urban areas, or countries with high population densities where land is much scarcer, tend to have diff erent attitudes to people in more rural or less populated areas.

Nationally Americans and Russians who live in rural locations may have a very expansive view of the landscape because for them land is freely available; the American prairies or the Russian forest or tundra appear to go on for ever. The Dutch, the Danes or the Japanese have a much more managed approach in lands where space is limited. These are neat, man-made, tightly organized and managed landscapes.

American landscape architect Lawrence Halprin’s work was infl uenced by his marriage to a choreographer so his design work has investigated ways of provoking an ‘urban choreography’ (including UDATs). The landscape design of the English landscape gardener William

Later, in his Guelph lectures, Jellicoe defi ned fi ve archetypes which he termed transparencies ‘each carryng an imprint of the experience of an era’:

1. Rock and Water: ‘so remote as to be scarcely perceptible’;

2. Forester: ‘most small domestic gardens are inspired by the instincts of the Forester’;

3. Hunter: ‘from this idealistic transparency comes much of the English eighteenth-century Romantic landscape’;

4. Settler: ‘the era began through the discovery of geometry as a means of defi ning territory in an agricultural rather than a nomad economy... mathematics were divine’;

5. Voyager: ‘the unfi nished transparency of our own era, which might be called the Voyager in contrast to the Settler’.

Such an approach is very diff erent from the logical determinism of the SAD method, but that does not mean they cannot be combined. L O V E & HAT E E VE R Y DAY L IF E BIR TH - D E ATH C O N T E X T & P ROX I MI T Y (G E NIU S L O CI) AC CID E N T TH E NAT U R A L W O R L D S CIE N C E & M ATH E M AT IC S IN S P IR AT IO N M Y TH, L E G E N D & F O L K L O RE TH E S E AS O N S INSPIRATION