| Digital Botany in Journal of Landscape Architecture |
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A cover-story and visual essay in JoLA 2, 2006, by Jörg Rekittke and Philip Paar
Cover of JoLA 2, 2006; "Excerpt of the Visual Essay") Excerpt of the Visual Essay Citatation of the essay text: “Should landscape architects and planners continue to doodle with green crayons until Domesday? Is it really acceptable for the representation of vegetation to remain little more than a pretty and decorative, though unidentifiable, botanical metaphor – even where projects make use of otherwise highly detailed computer-based design plans? Should we really leave the digital modelling of vegetation to the designers of those perverse ‘Ego-Shooter-Games’, and content ourselves with low resolution, two-dimensional billboard silhouettes? Will vegetation collages, drawn up by our professional colleagues, continue to consist only of shrubs and trees? As students did we never hear mention of the term herb layer? Is it not the case that the visual representation of vegetation and greenery merits special care, attention and ingenuity, as this is one of the few particularly unique features of our profession? For years, these questions have given us no respite. The unique, fascinating and complex potential of vegetation as a design element becomes overwhelmingly apparent as soon as one tries to create digital models of vegetation, especially when the aim is to replicate as nearly as possible the mosaic structure, distribution and forms of actual natural herb vegetation communities. A digital modeller must possess marked creative and aesthetic abilities, as well as a high level of technical skill, if the results of such attempts are to impress the critical observer as being ‘true-to-life’ and ‘realistic’. At the same time, we remain painfully aware that images, which today appear convincing in their degree of ‘realism’ to viewers of this visual essay, will, within a relatively short space of time, cause us all to smile ruefully and mutter something about the stone age of computer evolution. Nevertheless, we invite the reader to make critical judgements about the images presented here and their value as landscape architectural tools. It has taken three years of intensive interdisciplinary research to reach even this initial stage. The title of the project – Lenné3D – was chosen to reflect the fact that we view ourselves not as vanguard ‘smart alecs’, but as researchers and inheritors of an old and time-honoured profession. Our progress in creating digital visualisations of vegetation and plant life for landscape planners and designers has, we think, much to do with an unconventional research team comprising experts drawn from diverse fields, including computer graphics science, agricultural science and botanical science. The result of this cooperative project is the prototype system Lenné3D – a GIS-data-based visualisation tool for the interactive exploration of three-dimensional landscapes, with potential for further development. From 2002–2005, the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU) funded this research project, which included software development and testing in planning practice. Habitat and land-use data provide the basis for Lenné3D’s vegetation modelling; the input of further geographical data allows automatic generation of plant distribution maps. Three-dimensional plant models are assigned to the distribution map and positioned on the terrain model. The system provides interactive representational control of vegetation and landscapes in either photorealistic, ‘sketchy’ or graphically reduced style. It is generally agreed that photorealism cannot always be the main aim of digital representations, because highly realistic representations often ‘cloud the issue’ in question – producing the undesirable effect that one cannot address specifics, because of the lack of any focus. Instead, we try to adhere to the maxim that each specific task requires its own tailor-made form of graphic representation. Digital tools simply extend the repertoire of forms of visual expression. It is for this reason that we see ourselves as inheritors of our trade – not as competitors. Existing methods of representation are not replaced by computerised tools, they are enhanced by them." (Rekittke, R. & Paar, P. (2006): Digital Botany. Thinking Eye. Journal of Landscape Architecture, 2: 28-35 & cover.)[JoLa Website, [download excerpt, PDF, 1.9 mb] |
