Geodesign development, IT tools and future prospects of a new integrated way of designing Theories of Contemporary Research in Architecture Flavio Venturini 2018
background cover taken from GeoDesign Summit 2018, CA
What’s Geodesign? Geodesign is a set of concepts and methods to get all professions involved in order to collaboratively design and realize the optimal solution for spatial challenges in the built and natural environments, utilizing all available techniques and data in an integrated process. “It’s a design and planning method which couples the creation of design proposals with impact simulations informed by geographic contexts." Michael Flaxman at GeoDesign Summit 2010
GEODESIGN IS
DESIGN IN
GEOGRAPHIC SPACE
1969
a milestone year context
- Richard Nixon 35th President of USA, population exceeds 200 million individuals. - end of the Vietnam war
- Apollo 11 lands on the lunar surface
- Woodstock; last live performance by Beatles; 1st album by Led Zeppelin and King Crimson - terrorism breaks out in Italy, Anni di Piombo
ďŹ rst telematic network ARPANET, the forerunner of Internet ESRI’s founded in California by Jack and Laura Dangermond Ian McHarg publishes his Design with Nature
Ian McHarg (1920-2001) grow up in the Glasgow countryside in Scotland at the height of the Scottish industrial development. After the war he moved to USA, in 1949 he graduated in Harvard University. He became a professor and in 1957 founded the department of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He's been a lot of things but I'm pretty sure, for what I've read, than he would like to be called a naturalist, before than a landscape architect, an urbanist, a geographer, a writer, an educator.
Design with Nature (1969) gave birth to a whole new way to thinking about regional planning and design. It laid out a clear procedure for assessing the geographic context of a site or region, giving a geo-based technique, viewing and overlaying thematic layers to choose the best (or worst) location for a particular land use. McHarg presented that procedure with a clarity that quickly led to the digital representation of geographic information and assessment strategies which in time contribuited to the conceptual development of GIS.
McHarg pioneered the use of map overlays to highlight intrinsic natural and man-made features. Each asset could be assigned an arbitrary value, depending on societal input an is catalogued as separate map. Overlaying these it’s possible to create a composite map illustrating for example physiographic obstructions. Areas containing multiple features would appear as the darkest might be valued more than lighter colored areas. McHarg demonstrated that societal traits could be represented on maps as well.
Richmond Parkway Project McHarg’s map overlay method gained national recognition in a consulting project for a 5-mile stretch of the controversial Richmond Parkway on Staten Island in 1968. McHarg’s hybrid map included ecological, political and aesthetic rankings that were combined with physical attributes to select a transportation corridor that would have the least impact on the residents.
While McHarg was receiving considerable attention for his book, Carl Steinitz (1938) was increasing his knowledge in environmental planning studying at Harvard School of Design. A Framework for Design (2012) delineates the conceptual framework for doing geodesign and has become a bible for both practitioners and academics.
If you think about changes you’ve seen in your lifetime, there are two basic ways that change happens: by accident, and by design. And that change is amplified by time. Accidental geography, as Jack Dangermond called it, is the exact opposite of geodesign which is that process that fixes it. With geodesign, we want to understand processes occurred in the past, and project them forwards in time, so that we can understand how changes to geography today might result in a new landscape tomorrow. That’s how you design the future. And that’s geodesign. Geodesign it’s about time.
The idea of geodesign is not new, the big innovation comes from the formalization of the ideas surrounding geodesign, such as those initiated by McHarg and later developed by Steinitz, and how those ideas, coupled with the work of others, now give us the power to use GIS as a framework for doing geodesign in digital geographic space.
What’s GIS ? Geographic Information System is a system designed to store, analyze, and manage spatial or geographic data. Rooted in the science of geography, GIS integrates many types of data. It analyzes spatial location and organizes layers of information into visualizations using maps and 3D scenes. With this unique capability, GIS reveals deeper insights into data, such as patterns, relationships, and situation helping users make smarter decisions. GIS applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries (user-created searches), analyze spatial information, edit data in maps, and present the results of all these operations.
GIS softwares are very complex because they give the possibility to work on more spatial data at the same time and perform a large number of operations on them. Although online sharing helps, all this data takes up a lot of space, moreover the software interface is complicated and using these software isn’t actually that easy but they are being exponentially improved.
OPEN SOURCE
released since 2002 by QGIS Development Team
NOT OPEN SOURCE
released since 1999 by ESRI (Environmental System Research Institute)
main features modularity _ products for editing and updating data; server products integrated into relational databases; client products for consultation and analysis; object libraries for the development of specific applications; simulation models. interoperability _ the ability to read different proprietary data formats (used by the different software platforms and applications on the market), to access several database structures, to quickly generate virtual databases and to cooperate with other software even from different manufacturers. accessibility _ aimed at the end users (citizens, professionals, public and private bodies and associations) through specific extensions for the publication of data on distributed networks, also thanks to the development of application solutions directly usable even by non-professional users. This makes it possible to extend the use to wider audiences, ensuring a real return of the considerable investments that are made and encouraging an ever greater development of these tools. instruments
MAP
DATA
ANALYSE
SOFTWARE
TYPES OF DATA VECTOR
RASTER
data containing attributes (text or numeric information) describing the elements and allowing the representation of reality through three basic elements
data that allows to represent reality through a matrix of cells each containing a value representing the conditions of the area it covers
POINT, LINE, POLYGON
PIXEL
TABLES & LAYERS
TABULAR DATA ( record )
SPATIAL DATA ( pixel, polygon, line, point )
TABLE ( file )
INFORMATION LAYER ( layer )
how GIS works ?
Request What is the problem you are trying to solve or analyze, and where is it located? The guidance of the question will help you decide what to analyze and present the results to your audience. Acquire Then you need to find the data needed to complete your project. The type of data and geographic scope of your project will help direct your data collection methods and perform the analysis. Analyze Geographic analysis is the central strength of GIS. Depending on your project, there are many different methods of analysis to choose from. GIS modeling tools make it relatively easy to make these changes and create new outputs. Act The results of your analysis can be shared through reports, maps, tables delivered in print or digitally over a network or on the Web. You must decide how best to present your analysis. GIS facilitates the adaptation of results for different audiences.
exemplary graphic drawings
layer analysis
interpretative analysis
extrapolation of interested thematic levels, in this case the different types of vegetation have been highlighted according to the Corine Land Cover
overlapping different thematic levels, contact areas of greatest contrast between naturalness and anthropicity are highlighted
temporal analysis comparison between historical phases, the urban sprawl and the disappearance of the lakes are clear
geodesign proposal a planning metaplan which includes and show the project strategies in response to the critical issues encountered thanks to the analysis carried out through the GIS
Digital transformation has made geospatiality an indispensable part of our lives. But the question we often ponder upon is what’s the next thing to do to make spatial context more relevant? Recent changes to geography as a direct result of human activities are threatening the survival of many species, including our own. Geodesigning The City 2.0 Cities are complex systems where humans spend an increasing amount of our lives. They are intricate collections of elements with spatial and temporal relationships and dependencies. This requires progressively more sophisticated tools to help us design and manage them.
“The city 2.0 is not a sterile utopian dream but a real-world upgrade tapping into humanity's collective wisdom [...] Cities are our new man-made ecosystems, and it’s time we start to think about them, manage them, and design them as a such” Jack Dangermond (ESRI founder) California 2010
BIM values In the lifecycle of a construction project, BIM adoption brings a lot of benefits; an important one among them is to make digital information a part of the deliverables for each stage. With the stakeholders being able to share the information among them more easily, they are able to take more coordinated and informed decisions at each stage. GIS values Geographic information is an important component of the entire decision-making process in construction and nothing else than a GIS can enable everyone involved to become spatially aware most effectively. Using GIS enables people from different segments of the construction lifecycle to share a common picture of the project, provided by the GIS-generated maps. GIS must necessarily become the common visualization tool in the development sites. BIM n GIS GIS extends the value of digital BIM. Integration of BIM and GIS with time information, allows project participants to better understand the impacts of decisions before, during and after the construction of a project. Integration of BIM and GIS enables users to unlock the value in diverse data sets to enable applications including citizen engagement, sustainability analysis, disaster preparedness, and much more operational and management uses. Before building designs are created, GIS can play an important role in the selection of sites and integration of data throughout the process. GeoDesign has the potential to enable the stakeholders in a construction project make the best possible decisions. In conclusion, digital construction can scale unsurpassable heights with efficient integration of BIM and GIS.
GIS and BIM data ows throughout the operational and construction life cycle of assets
It’s one of the most important european events about Geodesign. The conference took place in Novotel Amsterdam City on the last 1-2 November 2018. It’s been sponsored by Autodesk and ESRI, probably the companies which are investing more in this field about research and software development.
extract from the presentation of Sanjay Kumar, CEO, Geospatial Media and Communications
INFRAWORKS by Autodesk It’s a planning and design platform that enables designers to quickly and easily bring preliminary design intent in a real-world, contextual environment, increasing stakeholder buy-in and team decision-making. It includes a 3D model building capability in development with web-based technology and allows efficiently access and integrate data from multiple sources into a increasingly accurate model. It’s possible to work on a large scale by importing clouds of points created through satellite surveys, which contains several informations within themselves.
buildings are highlighted with different colors according to their height
the color of the ground highlights his altitude that could help to understand the areas where meteoric water is conveyed
It is also possible to work on a much smaller scale. The software allows you to manage entire infrastructures or buildings, as well as work on urban furniture, road signs and trees.
in the images beside you can see: a ďŹ rst view as imported and proposed by the program a second image of the same view where a 3-storey building with a 4-pitch roof, a double tree-lined row near the road with an oak grove behind, and road vehicles simulating traďŹƒc, have
Bibliography Ian L. McHarg, Design with Nature, Garden City NY, Natural History Press, 1969 Carl Steinitz, A framework for Geodesign - changing geography by design, ESRI press, 2012
Sitography Introducing Geodesign ... designing in geographic space, www.geodesignwiki.com GEOforALL Geospatial Technlology and Geographic Information, www.geoforall.it, www.rivistageomedia.it Geospatial World, www.geodesignwiki.com ESRI understanding our world, http://www.esri.com Geomatic, http://www.geomatic.ma/en/ Land8. Landscape Architect Network, https://land8.com
Articles Matt Artz, ESRI’s GIS and Science Manager. Geodesign. It’s about time. published on Medium.com https://medium.com/@Esri/geodesign-its-about-time-a469ba749bb Yexuan Gu, Brian Deal e Linda Larsen. Geodesign Processes and Ecological Systems Thinking in a Coupled Human-Environment Context: An Integrated Framework for Landscape Architecture, published on MDPI in 2018
Software used Adobe Illustrator Autodesk Infraworks Office Excel QGis
thanks
student: Flavio Venturini professor: Anna Irene Del Monaco Theories of Contemporary Research in Architecture Landscape Architecture University of Rome “La Sapienza�