The first book on the use of robotic technology in landscape design that introduces new, dynamic methods and previously inconceivable scenarios for implementation. The Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich has been researching the integration of robots into the architectural practice, both in design and the fabrication process, for some time. This book--created in collaboration with the chair of Christophe Girot, Gramazio Kohler Research, and Marco Hutter at ETH Zurich's Robotic Systems Lab--is the first to investigate the use of robot-based construction equipment for large-scale soil grading in landscape architecture. As landscapes evolve due to ever-changing environmental conditions, the application of autonomous systems that respond to the environment rather than perform predefined and static earthwork is of particular interest in this field. Robotic Landscapes sheds light on a series of groundbreaking experiments in an interdisciplinary collaboration of landscape design, environmental engineering, and robotics that aims to make landscape architecture sustainable and ecological in the long term.

The most significant architectural spaces in the world are now entirely empty of people. The data centres, telecommunications networks, distribution warehouses, unmanned ports and industrialised agriculture that define the very nature of who we are today are at the same time places we can never visit. Instead they are occupied by server stacks and hard drives, logistics bots and mobile shelving units, autonomous cranes and container ships, robot vacuum cleaners and internet-connected toasters, driverless tractors and taxis. This issue is an atlas of sites, architectures and infrastructures that are not built for us, but whose form, materiality and purpose is configured to anticipate the patterns of machine vision and habitation rather than our own. We are said to be living in a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, in which humans are the dominant force shaping the planet. This collection of spaces, however, more accurately constitutes an era of the Post-Anthropocene, a period where it is technology and artificial intelligence that now computes, conditions and constructs our world. Marking the end of human-centred design, the issue turns its attention to the new typologies of the post-human, architecture without people and our endless expanse of Machine Landscapes. Contributors: Rem Koolhaas, Merve Bedir and Jason Hilgefort, Benjamin H Bratton, Ingrid Burrington, Ian Cheng, Cathryn Dwyre, Chris Perry, David Salomon and Kathy Velikov, John Gerrard, Alice Gorman, Adam Harvey, Jesse LeCavalier, Xingzhe Liu, Clare Lyster, Geoff Manaugh, Tim Maughan, Simone C Niquille, Jenny Odell, Trevor Paglen, Ben Roberts. Featured interviews: Deborah Harrison, designer of Microsoft’s Cortana; and Paul Inglis, designer of the urban landscapes of Blade Runner 2049.

This book reflects and expands on the current trend in the building industry to understand, simulate and ultimately design buildings by taking into consideration the interlinked elements and forces that act on them. Shifting away from the traditional focus, which was exclusively on building tasks, this approach presents new challenges in all areas of the industry, from material and structural to the urban scale. The book presents contributions including research papers and case studies, providing a comprehensive overview of the field as well as perspectives from related disciplines, such as computer science. The chapter authors were invited speakers at the 7th Symposium “Impact: Design With All Senses”, which took place at the University of the Arts in Berlin in September 2019.

This book is a guide to computational design for landscape architects replete with extensive tutorials. It introduces algorithmic approaches for modeling and designing landscapes. The aim of this book is to use algorithms to understand and design landscape as a generative system, i.e. to harness the processes that shape landscape to generate new forms. An algorithmic approach to design is gently introduced through visual programming with Grasshopper, before more advanced methods are taught in Python, a high-level programming language. Topics covered include parametric design, randomness and noise, waves and attractors, lidar, drone photogrammetry, point cloud modeling, terrain modeling, earthworks, digital fabrication, and more. The chapters include sections on theory, methods, and either visual programming or scripting. Online resources for the book include code and datasets so that readers can easily follow along and try out the methods presented. This book is a much-needed guide, both theoretical and practical, on computational design for students, educators, and practitioners of landscape architecture.

NPR Best Books of 2018 A teen girl and her robot embark on a cross-country mission in this illustrated science fiction story, perfect for fans of Ready Player One and Black Mirror. In late 1997, a runaway teenager and her small yellow toy robot travel west through a strange American landscape where the ruins of gigantic battle drones litter the countryside, along with the discarded trash of a high-tech consumerist society addicted to a virtual-reality system. As they approach the edge of the continent, the world outside the car window seems to unravel at an ever faster pace, as if somewhere beyond the horizon, the hollow core of civilization has finally caved in.

The sensing, processing, and visualizing that are currently in development within the environment boldly change the ways design and maintenance of landscapes are perceived and conceptualised. This is the first book to rationalize interactive architecture and responsive technologies through the lens of contemporary landscape architectural theory. Responsive Landscapes frames a comprehensive view of design projects using responsive technologies and their relationship to landscape and environmental space. Divided into six insightful sections, the book frames the projects through the terms; elucidate, compress, displace, connect, ambient, and modify to present and construct a pragmatic framework in which to approach the integration of responsive technologies into landscape architecture. Complete with international case studies, the book explores the various approaches taken to utilise responsive technologies in current professional practice. This will serve as a reference for professionals, and academics looking to push the boundaries of landscape projects and seek inspiration for their design proposals.

The book presents research from Rob|Arch 2018, the fourth international conference on robotic fabrication in architecture, art, and design. In capturing the myriad of scientific advances in robotics fabrication that are currently underway – such as collaborative design tools, computerised materials, adaptive sensing and actuation, advanced construction, on-site and cooperative robotics, machine-learning, human-machine interaction, large-scale fabrication and networked workflows, to name but a few – this compendium reveals how robotic fabrication is becoming a driver of scientific innovation, cross-disciplinary fertilization and creative capacity of an unprecedented kind.

The Routledge Research Companion to Landscape Architecture considers landscape architecture’s increasingly important cultural, aesthetic, and ecological role. The volume reflects topical concerns in theoretical, historical, philosophical, and practice-related research in landscape architecture – research that reflects our relationship with what has traditionally been called ‘nature’. It does so at a time when questions about the use of global resources and understanding the links between human and non-human worlds are more crucial than ever. The twenty-five chapters of this edited collection bring together significant positions in current landscape architecture research under five broad themes – History, Sites and Heritage, City and Nature, Ethics and Sustainability, Knowledge and Practice – supplemented with a discussion of landscape architecture education. Prominent as well as up-and-coming contributors from landscape architecture and adjacent fields including Tom Avermaete, Peter Carl, Gareth Doherty, Ottmar Ette, Matthew Gandy, Christophe Girot, Anne Whiston Spirn, Ian H. Thompson and Jane Wolff seek to widen, fuel, and frame critical discussion in this growing area. A significant contribution to landscape architecture research, this book will be beneficial not only to students and academics in landscape architecture, but also to scholars in related fields such as history, architecture, and social studies.

No single project or endeavour is immune to the issues that the climate crisis brings. The climate crisis encompasses a broad register of "symptoms" – increased global temperatures and sea-level rise, droughts and extreme bushfire events, salinification and desertification of fertile land, and the list goes on. It reveals and amplifies complex causal relationships that are inherently present and traverse scales, sectors and communities divulging a range of impacts and inequalities. This publication asks designers and academic practitioners to describe their own work through an ecological lens, and then to articulate design approaches for developing new practices in landscape architecture teaching. Designing Landscape Architectural Education: Studio Ecologies for Unpredictable Futures, the Landscape Architecture Design Studio Companion, serves as a resource for academic practitioners in the preparation and delivery of "design-research studios" and students seeking guidance for design methodologies as a part of their landscape architectural education. It draws on the manifold issues of the climate crisis as a set of drivers to examine the utilisation of a range of innovative design approaches to address the current and future priorities of the discipline. The landscape architecture discipline is evolving rapidly to respond to both a broadening and intensification of changes in the environmental, social and political conditions. These changing conditions require innovation that extend the core competencies of landscape architects. This book addresses two fundamental questions – what are the design competencies required of landscape architects to equip them to deal with the complexities brought forth by contemporary society, and as a result, how could we design the future design studio?

With a bit of imagination and a heavy dose of artistic talent, Minecraft blocks can be used to build almost anything. But as you’ll see, some artists are taking Minecraft building to a whole new level. Beautiful Minecraft is a compendium of stunning artwork built in Minecraft. Using millions of blocks and spending hundreds of hours, these artists have created floating steampunk cities, alien worlds, detailed classical sculptures, fantastical landscapes, architectural marvels, and more. The results are simply beautiful.